Michael Jackson and the Blackface Mask

Michael Jackson and the Blackface Mask traces Michael Jackson's dance moves and imagery back to the blackface minstrel show tradition, for which white dancers wore black masks and parodied black people. The racism that motivated the minstrel show lives on in black stereotypes (Blacks as mad, bad and dangerous) and Harriet J. Manning argues that this was at the source of many of the troubles that Michael Jackson had to face.Yet at the same time, Michael Jackson fought hard against this tradition: Manning suggests he took the traditional blackface mask and deconstructed it in a powerful act of reclamation in which black self-representation was showcased, celebrated and set free.'Dancers come and go in the twinkling of an eye, but the dance lives on.' Michael Jackson