It's one thing when you make a mistake once, but when you make the same mistake TWICE, that's a problem.
Like a growing but unknown number of black people across the world, I am fan of K-Pop. I don't know what it is that got me hooked, but when a song by Big Bang comes on or one of those cute Girls' Generation hits start making the speakers boom, it puts a smile on my heart and makes my booty do a little dance. But of course, it seems when there is anything good, there has to be something bad. In the case of the K-Pop world, that evil zombie created in antebellum America seems to show it's face (its blackface, which should have died in the 1950s).
For those of you that are not familiar with blackface, here is a classic example from a movie starring one of America's sweethearts, Judy Garland.
Blackface, as defined by Webster's dictionary as "makeup applied to a performer to play a black person, usually in a minstrel show." However, one thing that Webster's does not tell us is that most of the time this was done by someone who was usually a non-black to push a stereotype of a black person, and almost always it was negative and had racist overtones, further marginalizing blacks from mainstream society. Blackface minstrelsy was prominent for over 100 years in the United States and has critically damaged the image of black people globally and can even be blamed for the black self-hate theory. Black people across the world are still recovering from its legacy.
The first time I heard of this blackface mishap going in Korea was back in 2009 when BEAST member Lee KiKwang was in classic blackface makeup on a variety show and there were complaints on blogs (English language blogs as far as I know) from mainly black fans. Yes, I was one of the pissed, but also I was curious why this was thought to be funny. At this point, I had met several Koreans (many of them are my good friends today) and I had never gotten a racist vibe from them, so assumed maybe Koreans thought that was cute. Then I went to Korea, worked on a documentary (coming soon) and learned that the views of black people vary, but there is general consensus pushed by the media images they get from the United States and other Western countries, which is not a very good image. I also considered the homogeneity of Korea, and, in general, when you seldom see any other race or ethnic group, you are ignorant of that group. Then, only a few days ago, a similar incident arises with Super Junior.
Despite the ignorance to to the lack of diversity in Korea and blackface is arguably a thing of America's past, why is it in Korea's present? South Korea is a highly developed nation with probably one of the world's most rigorous educational systems. So, how can a group of educated people be so ignorant, especially with the Internet being right at their finger tips? Well, there are two types of education that I feel a person needs to be successful on this planet: a formal academic education and a world education. The latter is a the type of education that no school can teach. An academic education is paramount to help one understand the world, but a world education helps you apply what you have learned in a formal educational setting. Both go hand and hand, especially considering how our world is "shrinking" and the economy is becoming more global, it's more important than ever to have both.
Sadly, from my interviews while I was in Korea, I noticed time and time again the most ignorant were the ones that had not left Korea and most of them were 40 or older. Many of people in their 20s and 30s, however, either have been outside of Korea or were planning on traveling to another country. Now, don't get me wrong, Koreans are extremely welcoming to foreigners, especially to me. I felt like a celebrity the whole time I was there because I was treated as such, but there was definitely a lot of ignorance about black people and if I was an extremely aggressive and easily offended person, things would have been different. Luckily, like I try to do any time I'm not in the United States, I arrived in Korea with an open mind.
Back to this recent blackface incident in Korea, most likely most of the blame does not go to Shindong, just like the incident with Kikwang; fingers can be pointed at their managers and producers, who are usually in their 40s. As in a lot of popular music today, the performer is pretty much does what their managers and producers tell them to do, or they could lose their job (and we all know that a paycheck is important). However, the performer and the producers have the responsibility to be ethical, especially in media. Whatever the reasoning was, even if it was an homage to black folks (because there are Koreans that I met that are obsessed with black people), it is still a caricature of a black person by someone who is not black and when something like that is done in a homogeneous society, it perpetuates a generalized image of an entire group of people that is far from true for every individual in that group. It legitimizes and preconceived distinctions between Koreans and blacks people and hinders successful intercultural communication.
So, should it have happened TWICE? NO! Koreans are not stupid people (well, I met a few that were, but there are dumb people in every society). If one K-Pop celeb does something that causes an uproar with your international fans, you should know not to do. And if you don't know why, RESEARCH why. As a producer, that is what you are supposed to do - keep the wrong type of press from your product. And if you are not doing that, you are failing at your job. Since Korea's government is pushing multicultural education, this is one thing that needs to be considered.
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