Black blackface performers impersonated white impersonations of Black people

Evidence

And so was born the upside-down, inside-out phenomenon of Black blackface minstrelsy, in which Black performers corked themselves up—with a straight face or a wink, depending upon the onlooker. Custom obligated them to fulfill an audience’s expectations, expectations that white performers had established. A Black minstrel was impersonating the impersonation of himself. … According to Henry T. Sampson’s book Blacks in Blackface, there were no sets or effects, so the Black blackface minstrel show was “a developer of ability because the artist was placed on his own and was not aided by scenery and stage effects to get laughter.” For the Black blackface minstrel, mastery entailed both an awareness of a white audience’s preferences and the psychological struggle to keep one’s own Blackness, not to mention one’s own humanity, intact. A Black blackface minstrel had to learn a white minstrel’s routine in order to both copy and, perhaps, subvert it. — Nikole Hannah-Jones et al., The 1619 Project, 1122

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines the layered inversion of Black blackface minstrelsy — impersonating the impersonation of oneself.
• CANDY: ‘A Black minstrel was impersonating the impersonation of himself’ is a compact, striking one-liner.