I mean I’m terrible with names but like, skin tones vary. Go back three generations and my great grandparents look very different from each other, only one of them is all that white but godsdammit they are the whitest shade of white that ever whited white. Albinos put on sunglasses when I walk by, I inherited it somehow from gamgam. You’d think it would have been recessive not dominant but here we are. I blame all the cheese we eat, gamgam loved cheese like I love cheese.
My point was there’s this gorgeous actress/model (I think she was a bond girl) who has an amazingly dark skin tone.
I was kind of kidding, as like a “duh” response because I didn’t want to look it up.
Gloria Hendry was the first Black Bond girl, portraying Rosie Carver in the 1973 film Live and Let Die. Other notable Black actresses in the Bond franchise include Halle Berry as Jinx in Die Another Day and Naomie Harris as Moneypenny in Skyfall
With the war and influx of American GIs in Britain, not to mention their colonies, I stand by my statement for Britain as well.
What helps in the case of the UK is a larger percentage of their population lives in cities than the US too. Just by the math living in urban areas you’re just going to see more people and more people from outside your community will be come in.
True. A decade or two earlier might have been different: All the historical examples in this thread had my mind locked in to the twenties or thirties, not the fifties!
The Black and White Minstrel Show is a British light entertainment show on BBC prime-time television that ran from 1958 to 1978. The weekly variety show presented traditional American minstrel and country songs, as well as show tunes and music hall numbers, lavish costuming and often with cast members in blackface.
and that was the problem … the Brits loved the idea of a minstrel show in black face because it had everything they loved about it … presenting black people as comical caricatures to be made fun of while also being presented and performed by white people … because they never thought of hiring and paying for actual black people to do these things.
I mean let’s be real minstrel shows are explicitly a western concept, and were huge in the US. Go down another comment and I addressed the UK as well, but really that’s going to apply anywhere Americans were during WW2 as well.
Anywhere that minstrel shows were popular by the 1950s most of those people would have at least seen a black person. America or otherwise.
Idk maybe all the black Americans actively fighting in some of Europe’s most populous countries during WW2 and the following American presence after the war.
And that’s ignoring the interactions between European nations and their African colonies. I’ll ignore the human zoos as well
If you have never actually seen a person with dark skin that’s how you might imagine one. Or so I did when I was a kid, growing up in a bunghole village in the impenetrable forests up in northern europe where the darkest skin I’d seen was that greek girl (not very dark at all).
My friend is also charcoal black, so that’s definitely a possibility too, human skin is amazing, it can be black-blueish, chocolate, white or red (me in the summer).
While skin tones can vary, and in sun drenched parts of Africa, tones can get so dark brown that they look charcoal in appearance, It was just the book being written by a white man, for white kids, in an country where 99% were white that caused them to make the unwarranted comparison.
They « were » in theatre and movie production at the time. Black American weren’t allowed to play a role so they used white male with charcoal and shoe shine
Fun fact they were some black actor that did black face as a kind of protestation IIRC
I’m just spitballing here but maybe back in the 1950s and earlier there wasn’t as much mixed race couples or children from those interracial marriages? Like today we have so many shades of “black” that maybe wasn’t as popular nearly 100 years ago.
I genuinely don’t even understand what this means. Black people aren’t charcoal black.
According to old-timey racists, they are.
Exactly … according to old-timey racists in the 1950s … this is what they imagined about black people
I mean I’m terrible with names but like, skin tones vary. Go back three generations and my great grandparents look very different from each other, only one of them is all that white but godsdammit they are the whitest shade of white that ever whited white. Albinos put on sunglasses when I walk by, I inherited it somehow from gamgam. You’d think it would have been recessive not dominant but here we are. I blame all the cheese we eat, gamgam loved cheese like I love cheese.
My point was there’s this gorgeous actress/model (I think she was a bond girl) who has an amazingly dark skin tone.
You mean Halle Berry?
No like two decades earlier. Opposite Connery or Dalton
Grace Jones?
I think so? Like I said, horrible with names
It’ll be her. She’s very dark skinned, extremely striking, and definitely had a role in at least one Bond film
I was kind of kidding, as like a “duh” response because I didn’t want to look it up.
Yeah I could look it up too but that would defeat the purpose
In the 1950s … to average white people who might have never seen a black person before … they would imagine this
I can promise you that the vast majority of white Americans had seen a black person in the 1950s.
This is a British book, though
With the war and influx of American GIs in Britain, not to mention their colonies, I stand by my statement for Britain as well.
What helps in the case of the UK is a larger percentage of their population lives in cities than the US too. Just by the math living in urban areas you’re just going to see more people and more people from outside your community will be come in.
True. A decade or two earlier might have been different: All the historical examples in this thread had my mind locked in to the twenties or thirties, not the fifties!
I don’t think minstrel shows with black face were common in Britain?
It’s more likely that white British people took it as “much darker than the skin we’re assuming for people” which is enough to make the simile work.
You’d be wrong on that I’m afraid:
and that was the problem … the Brits loved the idea of a minstrel show in black face because it had everything they loved about it … presenting black people as comical caricatures to be made fun of while also being presented and performed by white people … because they never thought of hiring and paying for actual black people to do these things.
What the fuck‽ Until '78‽
:(
I’ll hope that it was still less common than in the US
I know it’s difficult to grasp the idea that the world is larger than just the US. But you’ll just have to try.
I mean let’s be real minstrel shows are explicitly a western concept, and were huge in the US. Go down another comment and I addressed the UK as well, but really that’s going to apply anywhere Americans were during WW2 as well.
Anywhere that minstrel shows were popular by the 1950s most of those people would have at least seen a black person. America or otherwise.
The whole idea of minstrel shows was to mock africans. Seeing a white guy in blackface is not equivalent to seeing a black person.
What the fuck are you talking about?
My whole point was by 1950 most white people had seen a black person and that their only idea wasn’t a minstrel show
What makes you think “most white people” in Europe had seen a real black person in 1950?
Idk maybe all the black Americans actively fighting in some of Europe’s most populous countries during WW2 and the following American presence after the war.
And that’s ignoring the interactions between European nations and their African colonies. I’ll ignore the human zoos as well
lies, lies! foreign countries are just made up for the movies
If you have never actually seen a person with dark skin that’s how you might imagine one. Or so I did when I was a kid, growing up in a bunghole village in the impenetrable forests up in northern europe where the darkest skin I’d seen was that greek girl (not very dark at all).
My friend is also charcoal black, so that’s definitely a possibility too, human skin is amazing, it can be black-blueish, chocolate, white or red (me in the summer).
Remember the meme about the guy being immune to BnW filter?
Alright, that’s actually pretty funny.
While skin tones can vary, and in sun drenched parts of Africa, tones can get so dark brown that they look charcoal in appearance, It was just the book being written by a white man, for white kids, in an country where 99% were white that caused them to make the unwarranted comparison.
They « were » in theatre and movie production at the time. Black American weren’t allowed to play a role so they used white male with charcoal and shoe shine
Fun fact they were some black actor that did black face as a kind of protestation IIRC
I’m just spitballing here but maybe back in the 1950s and earlier there wasn’t as much mixed race couples or children from those interracial marriages? Like today we have so many shades of “black” that maybe wasn’t as popular nearly 100 years ago.
Just a random thought