Vox, February 11th, 2019: The complicated, always racist history of blackface
A series of scandals last week brought the issue of “blackface” — when nonblack people darken their skin using makeup or other products to imitate a black person — roaring back into the cultural conversation.
Democratic Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam was embroiled in scandal last week after photos from his 1984 medical school yearbook were leaked, showing a person in blackface and one in Ku Klux Klan robes.
Then Virginia Attorney General Mark Herring, who would be third in the line of succession to the governorship, admitted that he had also appeared in blackface at a college party in the 1980s.
