Darkology and the Deep Roots of American Racism: A Conversation with Rhae Lynn Barnes

Reproduction of a 1900 minstrel show poster, originally published by the Strobridge Litho Co. Library of Congress.

Darkology, written by Princeton historian Rhae Lynn Barnes, is a comprehensive, jaw-dropping survey of the grotesqueries known as minstrelsy and blackface. The book explodes the comforting notion that the minstrel show was a long-ago curiosity, an outdated relic of a less enlightened time. It was not a curiosity, nor did it lurk in the cultural margins: It was a shockingly entrenched...