As of this writing, all of the remaining contestants are white. Down Under’s glaring lack of melanin even extends to the Pit Crew and judges’ panel. It’s also impossible to ignore that the controversy took place in the near-total absence of non-white people on the spin-off aside from Ru. That was well before Scarlet’s documented history of appropriative and downright racist costumes, which reportedly spanned from 2012 to 2016. Many consider Harry Connick Jr.’s public condemnation of blackface on a highly rated national talent show in 2009 to be an inflection point in the country’s cultural conversation. “It’s the luxury of white thoughtlessness.”īut a more robust reckoning with the racism of minstrel performance has been ongoing in Australia for at least the past decade. “The legacy of white supremacy in Australia isn’t the fiery cross and the white hood,” Smith wrote. Smith, a senior lecturer at the United States Studies Center at the University of Sydney, in a 2016 New York Times op-ed entitled, “Why Isn’t Blackface Taboo for Australians?” “White domination seems so natural here that whites don’t recognize it, though it is shockingly obvious to outsiders,” wrote David T. Many fans of the show decried how casually RuPaul dismissed Scarlett’s history of racist performances, especially given the Australian cultural context. “But once you continue to take the piss out of numerous cultures on various occasions after you’ve been called out concerning and down right vulgar.” “I fully understand that people make mistakes and grow from them,” Felicia captioned her post. Racist getups seem to have been part of Scarlet’s schtick for some time. Indigenous queen Felicia Foxx, who shared a slideshow of Scarlett’s offensive costumes on Instagram, pointed out that this is about more than just one look, or a young performer not knowing any better. Rather than take an uncomfortable stand as a cultural ambassador - and a queer, Black ambassador at that - Ru swept the whole thing under the rug.Ĭritics have also suggested that Scarlet is guilty of more malice than she claims. By offering Scarlett easy and unearned redemption instead, Ru brushed over an important conversation instead of using the platform provided by the show to advance it. Whether or not Ru ought to have handed down any concrete punishment to either queen, at the very least she could have turned the controversies into teachable moments.
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