csMay 20
“Ever heard of the Savannah Bananas? They're a baseball team with millions of followers on TikTok and Instagram — known as much for their dance routines and shenanigans as their actual baseball. Now their league, Banana Ball, has resurrected the Indianapolis Clowns, a Negro League team with a contentious history of racial minstrelsy. We chop it up with journalist Josh Levin, who followed the Clowns through their Banana Ball debut.” #Baseball #race #NegroLeague #Minstrelsy
https://www.npr.org/2026/05/13/nx-s1-5814745/what-the-savannah-bananas-have-to-do-with-race-and-baseball
Hypothetically SoundApr 25, 2025
Birth of a Nation (1915) wasn’t just a film—it was racist propaganda. It glorified the KKK, used blackface, & spread violent tropes. Hollywood was built on this. #BannedHistory #RacistCinema #Minstrelsy #UnlearningMedia
Hypothetically SoundApr 24, 2025
Minstrel shows created racist stock characters: Jim Crow, Mammy, Zip Coon, Sambo. These tropes still show up today — think “Mammy” in old Tom & Jerry or the “sassy Black friend” on TV. Different names, same harm. #BannedHistory #Minstrelsy #RacistTropes #UnlearningMedia
Hypothetically SoundApr 23, 2025
Before Hollywood, there were minstrel shows — white performers in blackface mocking Black people for laughs. These acts shaped U.S. entertainment & spread racist stereotypes still seen today. #Minstrelsy #BannedHistory #RacismInEntertainment #UnlearningAmerica
Hypothetically SoundApr 22, 2025
That catchy ice cream truck jingle? It’s “Turkey in the Straw,” a 19th-c minstrel tune. In the early 1900s, it was paired with racist lyrics like “N****r Love a Watermelon.” This wasn’t background music — it was a tool of mockery. The melody stuck, even as the lyrics faded. #BannedHistory #RacismInEntertainment #Minstrelsy #HiddenAmerica
🧙🏽Muirén🦉Jan 24, 2025
When I was a child in the late 50s through early 60s, "I'm not racist!", white people still claimed we were too sensitive if we reacted to racist remarks and their collecting racist memorabilia from pickaninny dolls, salt and pepper shakers, piggy banks to celebratory lynching postcards with smiling white families dressed in their Sunday best beside the hanging body were also NOT racist.

The Ugliest Trope in Modern Horror
GoldFro aka Scrapple Roan
@goldfro.bsky.social
#BlackMastodon #RacialHierarchy #Blackface #Minstrelsy
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OK_jVFslcsA
The Ugliest Trope in Modern Horror

YouTube
Rest In ParadiseDec 10, 2023

#NormanLear's TV shows pioneered depictions of Black families, but it's complicated

https://www.npr.org/2023/12/10/1218433058/norman-lears-tv-shows-pioneered-depictions-of-black-families-but-its-complicated

#legacy #tv #stereotypes #whitegaze #whitesupremacy #ericmonte #bigotry #minstrelsy #dynomite #obits #obituaries #restinparadise

@[email protected] has movedJul 27, 2023

Watching David Harewood's documentary on #Minstrelsy & #Blackface contained the (oddly) shocking seldom seen footage of Judy Garland, Bing Crosby & Fred Astaire in blackface.... now edited out when the respective films are shown....

fascinating stuff....

sazatorJan 13, 2023
Âşıklık (#minstrelsy) tradition of Turkey is performed by wandering poet-singers known as âşıks.
https://ich.unesco.org/en/RL/klk-minstrelsy-tradition-00179
UNESCO - Âşıklık (minstrelsy) tradition

The Âşıklık (minstrelsy) tradition of Turkey is performed by wandering poet-singers known as âşıks. Dressed in traditional clothes and plucking a stringed saz, the âşık is a common performer at weddings, in coffeehouses and during public festivals of all sorts. The âşık is called in a dream to undertake a long apprenticeship in the arts of playing string and percussion instruments, si...

Aram SinnreichDec 2, 2022

Fellow academics:

Strongly consider changing your syllabi now, and designing assignments that can't be fulfilled by #AI chatbots. Even better, consider only assigning work that students will actually be excited to do themselves (for instance, autobiographical essays).

I just got OpenAI to write a better essay on #minstrelsy & US #popmusic than most of my UG students could muster, in about 1 second.