There are times to laugh, and times to be serious. These actors flipped the racist script of blackface, using whiteface to create an entirely new perspective.
#1: Eddie Murphy on Saturday Night Live (1984): While it was satire, Eddie Murphy’s role as an undercover white person shined a light on white privilege, especially when a bank just handed him free money. Too bad it wasn’t like that when redlining made it nearly impossible for Black people to get home loans.
#2: White Chicks (2004): Who would have guessed that the “white chicks” portrayed by Marlon and Shawn Wayans were predictors of today’s “Karens”? In 2020, Christian Cooper notoriously encountered a Karen who tried to get him arrested just because he asked her to put her dog on a leash.
#3: Dave Chappelle and Trading Spouses (2003): mpersonating Black and white husbands who swap families, Dave Chapelle gets to have sex with a white woman. That experience was completely different for enslaved Black men in America, though, who were often forced into sexual relationships with white slave owners.
There’s a lesson in everything, even jokes. Whiteface doesn’t just show how absurd Blackface is, it tells the truth about white privilege. We don’t need the last laugh, but a lasting resistance - continuing to paint a vibrant future of our liberation.