Audrey Hepburn in Blackface

Hang on...

Most any film that includes a "blackface" scene, such as "The Jolson Story," is not going to get on TV anymore.

Doing "blackface" even in jest, gets you into big trouble (see: Danson, Ted, who put on blackface as a goof when he was dating Whoopi Goldberg, and was excoriated in newspapers all over the country).

BUT...if you decide that iconic actresses in scenes from their classic movies should be re-done with BLACKS...that's ok.

Can you imagine the reaction if a white "artist" substituted white models into scenes from "Shaft" or "Porgy and Bess" or "Roots?"

According to the brilliant (?) Senegalese photographer who did these black-outs, "I wanted to imagine what these movies would look like if they were conceived and shot in Africa."

Yeah? Guess what. They weren't. Get over it. Think we should do an all-white version of "The Gods Must be Crazy?" How offended would you be, ol' Diop, if somebody thought it would improve matters to shoot it in Scotland with an all red-head cast? Just because, "Well, Laddie we thought we'd take your Africa and make it Dundee, and those blacks become redheads..."

As it is, blacks are still pissed off that white artists sing R&B, and that Lennon and McCartney "ripped off Chuck Berry" and Jagger ripped off Muddy Waters. Right? How DARE they steal from us!

It would be nice if in this world, Janis Joplin, even so long dead, isn't referred to as the best "WHITE blues singer" because she has to be SEGREGATED from the superior black ones. It would be nice if Al Jolson and Stephen Foster, whose hearts were with the plight of the blacks, weren't dismissed as racists and shunned. It would be nice if they received the same courtesy as Andre Watts or Leontyne Price, who were never reviewed as being "the best black classic pianist and best black opera singer" because they couldn't possibly be in the same league as the white ones.

Lastly, it would be nice if America owned up, in the midst of this Trayvon Martin vs George Zimmerman crap, to admit that Martin's use of the term "cracker" is racist and offensive, and shouldn't be dismissed as "oh, that's the way blacks talk among themselves, so it's all right." By that "logic," then the use of "darky" or "coon" or, oooh, "nigger," should be ok if it's "the way rednecks talk among themselves." And it isn't.

Diop, instead of praise, instead of an exhibition, how'd you like to be shunned, and a boycott was called, and people wouldn't fund you, and you were labeled "offensive" and "insensitive?" Well, that's what would've happened if you were Caucasian, and took iconic black images and substituted white faces. Nevermind artistic intent or some kind of admiration for the originals, or any other excuse. OUT. GOODBYE. YOU'LL NEVER WORK AGAIN.

That's racism.