ABSTRACT
Few incidents openly demonstrate some white’s racial anxieties and resentment toward black success and social mobility into formerly white social, political, and educational spaces than the spate of blackface parties and hanging nooses on American college campuses. Many in the academic community expressed shock and disbelief in 2001 and 2002, when a string of so-called “blackface incidents” came to light after white fraternity parties or variety shows at Auburn and Oklahoma State universities and the universities of Wisconsin-Whitewater, Alabama, and Mississippi. 1 The posting of photographs from these parties on the worldwide web made these events seem more horrendous, yet possible suspensions, condemnation
dents. Between 2002 and 2009 at least ¿ fteen blackface, twenty-six noose, twenty-four neo-Ku Klux Klan, and over two hundred sixty racist e-mail, sign-À yer, or graf¿ ti incidents hit the American university with a vengeance. 2 These numbers exclude twenty-six socalled “ghetto parties” where largely middle-class white college students engage in what scholars Eric Lott and Michael Rogin call “racial cross-dressing.” 3 Many black and some white and minority students saw these pictures as hard evidence that even the most overt forms of racism continue to exist on American college campuses. “History repeats itself in Blackface,” 4 noted one article, where one of America’s most popular forms of entertainment has resurfaced with a millennium twist. Others, like the Association for Fraternity Advisors, saw these incidents as an opportunity to educate white fraternities about the history of blackface. This became a chance to inform white students about why some students found these party antics offensive. 5 While a growing body of historical research has begun to reexamine blackface minstrel traditions with regard to white working-class culture and identity, few studies have highlighted the rise of blackface minstrelsy, racial caricature, and white supremacist groups as a part of white middle-class college culture in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. 6 The difference between these forms of racialized expression at the turn of the twentieth century versus similar incidents at the turn of the twenty-¿ rst century is that the earlier responses to increased black student enrollment became more formalized university traditions, that college administrators recognized as established and approved custom.
