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Consequences for Brock U students who donned blackflace remain unclear

Brock University blackface controversy

A week after a costume contest at Brock University saw four students in blackface take home first prize, there’s still dissent over how the school has reacted to the incident.

The campus in St. Catharines, Ont., has been in an uproar over a group of students who dressed up as the Jamaican bobsled team of Cool Runnings fame for a Halloween costume contest at the Brock University Students’ Union’s pub last week.

The foursome won the $500 prize based on audience applause. But a few days later both the students’ union and the university administration found themselves in damage control over the incident.

While the president of the university tells Yahoo Canada News this is a teachable moment, members of the black community say they’d like to see the students apologize and perhaps be punished.

The students apparently had no malicious intent in dressing up like the beloved characters of the 1993 movie, based loosely on the unlikely entry of Jamaica in the 1988 Calgary Winter Olympics bobsled competition.

But critics say intent is not the issue. Ignorance is.

The display apparently shocked many students and instructors once word got around, and drew a strong backlash on social media, forcing first the students’ union (BUSU) and then Brock’s administration to weigh in.

After an initial statement by the students’ union, which critics deemed inadequate, union president Roland Erman promised that staff would undergo diversity training to raise awareness of issues like this.

In the future, costumes would also be vetted before being allowed to compete in the annual contest, which is decided by audience applause. A Jamaican bobsled entry reportedly won second prize in the same contest in 2007.

“BUSU recognizes that this was definitely an area of shortcoming this year and in the past,” Erman said. “BUSU will be committed to making sure students, staff and partners are aware of the potential issues, insensitivities and best practices to ensure that all parties have a respectful and enjoyable time at an event on or off-campus.”

University president Jack N. Lightstone, a historian, issued his own statement Tuesday commending the student union’s response and stressing the negative historical connotations of blackface in the black community.

Blackface is a powerful symbol of racism in the black community. Throughout the latter half of the 1800s and well into the mid-20th century, white performers painted in blackface staged “minstrel shows” that pandered to the nastiest stereotypes of black people. They were even held for tourists visiting Niagara, the area neighbouring St. Catharines.

“I surmise that none of this was on the minds of those at the Halloween party who donned blackface and portrayed themselves as the Jamaican bobsled team,” Lightstone said in his statement, posted on the university’s web site. “But it should have been, and would have been, had they had adequate historical consciousness.”

But Prof. Larry Savage, director of Brock’s Centre of Labour Studies and one of several signatories to an open letter to Lightstone raising the issue, said he’s still not sure the leadership understands the incident’s significance.

“Neither the student union nor the president of the university have used the word racism in any of their releases,” Savage told Yahoo Canada News.

[Related: What One Celebrity’s Blackface Costume Says About Education in America ]

Lightstone defended the university’s handling of the incident and the decision to let the students’ union deal directly with it.

“This was a BUSU affair and I think the student union leadership are the people who’ve been in contact with the students,” he said in an interview Wednesday.

Lightstone said he issued his own statement less than 24 hours after learning of the incident Monday.

He said he was not surprised the students were ignorant of the powerful symbolism of blackface to students born in the last decade of the 20th century.

“There is a generation of young people, whether we like it or not, who simply are not in tune with that [part of] history,” Lightstone said. “It’s not something they’re aware of.”

He didn’t think of using the word racist in his statement but agreed the costumes were offensive because they had “racist overtones.”

“The word didn’t come to mind. I think calling something racist is very different than saying why it’s offensive,” said Lightstone. “I think more important than the labels is understanding the dynamics. If you read my statement, that’s what I intended to focus on.

“I think once we elevate things to labels there’s always a danger that the teaching moment is lost.”

The contemporary use of blackface comes up almost every year at Christmas in the Dutch tradition of Sinterklaas, the St. Nicholas character who has a mischievous minion known as Black Pete, a blackface elf.

[ Related: Should Dutch ‘Black Pete’ character still be part of Christmas in Canada? ]

Rosemary Sadlier, president of the Ontario Black History Society, said no educational purposes are served by making fun of characters based on racial characteristics.

“So in that sense it is wrong, it is stupid, it is inappropriate, even if they didn’t know,” said Sadlier, herself an educator who once taught at Brock.

“They could honour the Jamaican bobsled team without doing it in blackface.”

What disappoints Sadlier just as much is the fact no one challenged the entry at the time.

“Because at the end of the day it wasn’t just the people who were in blackface,” she said. “It was also those people who applauded and found them to be the winners of the contest. There’s a problem there that goes beyond the four gentlemen who were in blackface.”

The students should have received more than a reprimand, said Michael Forrest, president of the National African Canadian Association.

“What I don’t agree with is there’s no suspension given to these students who are are university students and who should know better, too,” he said.

Sadlier would be happy with a public apology from the students, though apparently that has not been forthcoming so far.

“I’m actually going to let the student union determine whether that’s the case,” said Lightstone, who has not spoken to the students. “If I were them, I would apologize once I’d understood the implications of what I’d done.”

The students’ union president did not respond to request for an interview.