In response to an incident of blackface at an Emory Halloween party last week, the Office of Multicultural Programs and Services screened a documentary about the history of blackface continuously on Tuesday.

In two discussions held along with the screenings in Harland Cinema, students and staff members talked about the implications and consequences of blackface.

The film, “Ethnic Notions,” captured the history of black caricatures through the country’s racist history. It traced the birth of Sambo, a simple, docile, laughing black man in the antebellum period, through the evolution of the jolly Mammy seen in “Gone With the Wind” and to the “dandy,” a feeble imitator of posh, white men, of the Reconstruction era.

“Ethnic Notions” also discussed the advent of blackface minstrelsy in the 1920s and how these devastating images have had a lasting impact.

The short notice and midday scheduling of the showings led to sparse attendance of the film screenings themselves, but the following discussion was emphatic and lively, with about 10 attendees.

The discussion opened with the moderators, Portia Allen, a program administrative assistant in the School of Medicine, and Michelle A. Purdy, a doctoral student in educational studies, asking audience members to share the first three words that came to mind after watching the film.

Junior Carolyn Cole said that she felt disgusted.

“I also put down ‘guilt’ because these images and types of thinking are still present today,” she said. “We have internalized such thinking so much that actors like Denzel Washington who play stereotypically negative roles in movies like ‘American Gangster’ and ‘Training Day’ are applauded and rewarded with Oscars. And I’m promoting this indirectly by going to these movies.”

Attendees agreed that the most appalling note of the documentary was how the image of the black person changed so much across the span of a hundred years.

During the antebellum period, there was a consistent image of “the happy black slave” who was always depicted as dancing, singing and laughing.

But after the Civil War, the need to justify both returning to slavery and killing blacks resulted in a depiction of a vicious, brutal savage.

Donna Wong, the assistant dean of campus life and director of the OMPS office, noted that the kind of programs aired on channels like Black Entertainment Television (BET) are a continuation of this historical, negative images.

“The rappers and comedians mostly underscore existing stereotypes and the women are barely clothed,” she said.

Purdy noted that three music channels — MTV, VH1 and BET — are owned by Viacom, but BET tries to appeal to its target audience by making programming louder and flashier than on the other channels.

“What is perceived as black entertainment differs vastly from mainstream media,” she said. “BET recreates common programs like The Real World for black people.”

The group discussed another controversial joke, the “Viva Mexico” party held recently at a Duke University fraternity to coincide with the Mexican Independence Day. The party featured invitations that looked like expired green cards, T-shirts with the image of a drunk Mexican, and a “border patrol checkpoint” at the entrance.

To prevent such offensive events, Cole and Purdy advocated screening movies that depict other ethnic groups as well to make people “cognizant of how you dress up for parties and don’t dismiss something like this as ‘all in good fun,’” Purdy said.

Jody Usher, the co-director of the Transforming Community Project, said the fine line between entertainment and offense is determined by a society, not a single person. She spoke on her perceptions of the recent Emory Pride-sponsored drag show.

“I don’t want to equate blackface with drag but I thought that men dressing up as women was denigrating and dehumanizing of women,” she said. “But drag is so accepted by society — the place was packed. I grew up in a time when minstrel shows took place and that doesn’t happen now. But the audience then wasn’t too different from that at the drag show.”

Cole said what helped destroy the acceptability of blackface was providing opposing images that represented intelligent black people.

But Faughn Adams, a psychologist from the Student Counseling Center, said she hates having that kind of burden.

“To say ‘we have to hold ourselves up to a higher standard’ is not something we want,’” she said. “The responsibility for racism does not rest with people of color. The responsibility for homophobia does not rest with those of alternative sexual orientation. I highly resent it when people say, you can’t be a masculine lesbian because that happens to be an existing stereotype.”

The discussion went on to address possible action steps, including the creation of a mandatory diversity-themed course and support for Emory’s “truly revolutionary” Strategic Plan, the long-term University initiative that seeks to address challenges such as religion and conflict, race and social barriers, and environmental and global health concerns.

One segment of the film that resonated with the audience, eliciting applause, was a white critic musing about white people donning blackface.

“People weren’t just watching white people imitate blacks, they saw white people release themselves as blacks,” the critic said. “Suddenly these performers could sing and dance, laugh, cry, and show emotion. I think it must have been very cathartic.”

— Contact Samyukta Mullangi at smullan@emory.edu