For the umpteenth time this year, Aussie hip hop artist Briggs has found himself calling out people for celebrating blackface and posting about it on social media.
A mother from Western Australia has shared a photo of her child, having painted his face and body to mimic West Coast Eagles AFL star Nic Naitanui, calling it her “Queening Moment”.
“I was a little worried about painting him. (So many politically correct extremists these days),” she captioned the photo. “I grew a set of balls and painted my boy brown and he looked fanfuckingtastic. After being told by everyone on Facebook not to do it and it’s a horrible idea etc, my son won the fucking parade!!!”
Briggs has since uploaded a screenshot of the woman’s post, along with this message, “This was such an obviously reckless, racist thing to do – I thought it was a set up. This mother has acknowledged what she was doing was wrong but decided she was going to ‘grow some balls’ and do it anyway with complete disregard to whoever she was going to offend.”
Typically, Briggs’ post was met with the standard rebuttals, and he had to explain for the umpteenth time why people using the ‘White Chicks’ argument, claiming ignorance, and those calling him out for “creating the divide” had no leg to stand on and could “kindly go and fuck [themselves]”.
He was even forced to respond to those questioning whether he would consider it racist if someone was painted and dressed as Barney The Dinosaur, a Smurf or The Hulk. “Smurfs, Shrek, The Hulk and various others the numbskulls have mentioned are… FICTIONAL CHARACTERS. They don’t exist in real life. There’s no history of oppression, appropriation, dispossession, genocide etc. THEY ARE MADE UP,” Briggs responded.
West Coast player Naitanui even weighed in himself, revealing his sadness for the child who obviously would clearly have no concept of the historical significance of blackface.
Honestly I've encouraged this mistake in the past but I'm now educated of its origins.lets grow together #BookWeek pic.twitter.com/syvDibeWSS
— Nic Naitanui (@NicNat) August 25, 2016
You would’ve thought that everyone would have learnt how harmful and racist blackface is after Briggs spoke up when two Victorian men dressed up in elaborate blackface costumes mimicking traditional indigenous Australians earlier this year, before Frankston Bombers Football Club held a party which saw several people rock up in blackface once again.
