Whiting Up: Whiteface Minstrels and Stage Europeans in African American Performance

In the early 1890s, black performer Bob Cole turned blackface minstrelsy on its head with his nationally recognized whiteface creation, a character he called Willie Wayside. Just over a century later, hiphop star Busta Rhymes performed a whiteface supercop in his hit music video "Dangerous." In this sweeping work, Marvin McAllister explores the enduring tradition of "whiting up," in which African American actors, comics, musicians, and even everyday people have studied and assumed white racial identities.

Not to be confused with racial "passing" or derogatory notions of "acting white," whiting up is a deliberate performance strategy designed to challenge America's racial and political hierarchies by transferring supposed markers of whiteness to black bodies -- creating unexpected intercultural alliances even as it sharply critiques racial stereotypes. Along with conventional theater, McAllister considers a variety of other live performance modes, including weekly promenading rituals, antebellum cakewalks, solo performance, and standup comedy. For over three centuries, whiting up as allowed African American artists to appropriate white cultural production, fashion new black identities through these "white" forms, and advance our collective ability to locate ourselves in others.

Author: Marvin McAllister
Publisher: University of North Carolina Press
Published: 08/01/2014
Pages: 352
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 1.10lbs
Size: 9.10h x 6.10w x 1.00d
ISBN: 9781469618807

About the Author
McAllister, Marvin: -

Marvin McAllister is assistant professor of English and African American studies at the University of South Carolina and author of White People Do Not Know How to Behave at Entertainments Designed for Ladies and Gentlemen of Colour: William Brown's African and American Theater. He has worked as a dramaturg for theatrical productions in New York, Chicago, the District of Columbia, and Seattle.