It seems incredible to me that, in the year 2025, a bunch of young people, anywhere in this nation — but especially in the Deep South — would believe it was perfectly acceptable to don blackface outfits. But it happened right here in Georgia, at Fayette County’s Whitewater High School, during a game against LaGrange.
To his credit, the county’s capable School Superintendent Jonathan Patterson quickly stated that “it is never acceptable to paint one’s face black.”
Of course, Patterson is correct, but why didn’t the five young white people involved already know that fact?
Credit: Contributed
Credit: Contributed
In my opinion, this situation is indicative of the push by the MAGA movement to return us back into the good ol’ 1950s. And it is working, per recent polling that shows fewer Americans believe Black people face “a great deal” or “quite a bit” of discrimination in the U.S.
During President Donald Trump’s first administration, a poll showed that a substantial proportion of Americans — including most GOP supporters — thought dressing in blackface was just fine. Only 53% of those polled thought white folks donning blackface was unacceptable. Even worse, that figure fell to 37% for Republicans who apparently support demeaning Black people. If this poll were taken today, I wonder what it would find?
Megyn Kelly, formerly of Fox News, is undoubtedly a bright and attractive woman. But in 2018, she showed how clueless she was about civil rights and Black history by recklessly defending Halloween participants who donned “blackface” costumes. On her talk show, Kelly stated, “You do get in trouble if you are a white person who puts on blackface for Halloween, or a Black person who puts on whiteface for Halloween. Back when I was a kid, that was okay just as long as you were dressing as a character.”
To her credit, she later apologized, saying, “We do need to be more sensitive in this day and age. Particularly on race and ethnicity issues, which, far from being healed, have been exacerbated in our politics over the past year.” If she were in the same position today, in Trump’s “take no prisoners” second term, I wonder if she would have seen the need to apologize?
I was raised in New York and Georgia, where I have lived the majority of my life. Although I found plenty of bigots in both places, my blue-collar ethnic neighborhood in N.Y. will forever be burned into my memory. The Italians hated the Irish. The Irish hated the Poles. The Jews hated the Germans. And all of them hated the Blacks — even though there were none in the immediate area. Yes, the North was very segregated.
People in each of the ethnic groups would talk negatively about those in the others, frequently using demeaning ethnic and racial slurs. If I would question them about their language, a risky endeavor, they would either vehemently defend their bigotry, calling me a wimp or deny their bigotry entirely, saying it was just a joke, and the problem was that I just did not have a sense of humor.
FBI data has proven that bigotry is rising rapidly. For example, in 2019, during Trump’s first term, there were 7,413 hate crime incidents. By 2024, that figure had risen to 11,679 — an increase of 57%!
However, despite the facts, polls show that more Americans are ignoring the obvious bigotry in our midst. In 2021, 60% of adults believed that Black people were exposed to substantial levels of discrimination. But that figure fell to only 45% in July of this year, even while hate crimes rose.
I wish I felt more positive about this situation, but I do not. Until we have a change in national leadership, and I do not just mean changing our current president, race relations will continue to deteriorate, and bigotry will become even more prominent. Both in Georgia and nationally.
Jack Bernard, a retired business executive and former chair of the Jasper County Commission and Republican Party, was the first director of health planning for Georgia.
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