Twitch temp-bans white streamer after she used blackface in Apex Legends cosplay - Sensationalist Headlines

https://kotaku.com/twitch-punishes-white-apex-legends-cosplayer-who-painte-1834055934 Twitch has temporarily banned a Lithuanian streamer after she cosplayed the Apex Legends character Lifeline using blackface makeup. On Saturday, Karina “Karupups” Martsinkevich was streaming herself preparing her Lifeline cosplay in Twitch’s “Just Chatting” section to roughly 160 viewers. Martsinkevich, who had dyed her hair and put on a white shirt and surgical mask, then applied a dark foundation to her face to mimic Lifeline’s appearance. “On my stream, I wanted to show the viewers, how hard is to prepare for a cosplay, how much time the make up, costume and another details can take,” Martsinkevich said in an email to Kotaku. Martsinkevich’s stream was taken down before she could finish her cosplay preparation in what constitutes a direct denouncement of blackface on Twitch. After announcing her apparently 30-day suspension, Martsinkevich posted a YouTube video in which she explained that she was banned for “engaging in hateful conduct against a person or group of people.” She went on to contend that she “just wanted to be similar to Lifeline from Apex...it wasn’t meant to have [sic] a joke of anyone. It was just a cosplay, guys, for my favorite legend from a computer game.” The Twitch streamer says that she didn’t mean for her cosplay “to be painful for anyone” and apologized to those who were hurt.

https://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media/image/upload/s---67jSbRe--/c_fit,f_auto,fl_progressive,q_80,w_636/ivcnpqeldlmodzjewz5l.png I was expecting it to be worse

Or, she knew what she was doing, and it got her the attention she was hoping for.

Twitch is such a shit hole.

That's not "blackface", that's like poorly applied spray tan. That is hardly something you can say is intentionally racist, there's more crimes against humanity in that photo that you can pick apart.

She must be pretty fucking dumb to think she could get away with blackface, regardless of how immoral blackface is or isn't. Like, the current climate being how it is, why would you *do* that??

I don't even see it as blackface. Like, seriously? Please don't try to twist my commentary but: The way she's wearing that is like people putting on makeup and w/e. It isn't meant to be derogatory and it's purposefully malevolent and ignorant to interpret it as such.

One could argue that blackface is defined by caricaturizing black people, not making a good-faith effort to actually resemble a black person. Blackface, when it was at its prevalence, was not in good faith, nor did it even attempt to resemble an actual black person.

Looks like she applied a tan to her upper body, am I missing something or is darkening your skin the slightest amount equal to performing blackface?

She's Lithuanian, which means she has less understanding of America's hyper partisan view of race, racism, and racial expression, than you do, and applying the same standards of social responsibility to someone who doesn't exist in a context with those is silly

Not everywhere is America.

So we should hold people who don't know about say, Jesus, to the standards of christianity? Even religion gives people a pass for not being informed. How little value can be placed in any view that is this un-nuanced? None. Fucking none.

Black face isn't black face if you're not using it to mock the race of the character you're cosplaying. It's probably a bad idea if you're in the US, but racial makeup =/= blackface inherently. Fucking hell. Would you mind explaining to me what's inherently wrong about making yourself look like another race if you remove the united state's history of minstrel shows?

Different countries and cultures have different contexts about blackface. Not everyone in the world has the same history and aren't taught the same things in school. Take Downtown's end of the year Gaki no Tsukai game where they came under fire for dressing up as Eddie Murphy. It was only to get one of the comedians looking as close as possible to a character who happened to be black. It's not like they were using said look to insult or connote racist meaning. And if you notice, it's only Westerners who raised the issue and took offense to it because they have that context.

https://www.timetunnel.com/mm5/graphics/00000001/mins0123_461x705.jpg

I think you Americans sometimes forget the absolutely massive power you wield in dictating the morals of this world. One might even say you’re ignorant of it. Everyone else has to watch American tv, right? Everyone has to read American websites, right? Everyone needs to know English, and also do those things, and if they fail to hold themselves to the standards currently in vogue, god help them.

I was prepared before seeing the actual cosplay to say "okay maybe she should have just done it without the skin paint" but i don't think what she actually did was that bad right? It's pretty simple and its not like it poorly characterizes or mocks anything the way blackface historically did. Unless she was also behaving in a way that was disparaging i guess.

It's not black face it's a fucking cosplay of a black character, it's not the fucking same. Should white people cosplaying anime characters be banned from twitch for cosplaying asian characters?

i don't really see these two being on par with one another

The problem people have is not cosplaying as characters from another ethnicity, it's using that ethnicity as part of the costume.

If she had half her tits out, twitch wouldn't have banned her.

The other side of the spectrum is that if she did the cosplay without darkening her skin, it would've be possible that she would be called out for whitewashing the character. It's a weird catch 22.

Are you that oblivious to this? Its a cosplay not a fucking joke skit or to make fun of someone, its a costume appearance. An frankly tbh, its not like she intended to make fun of anyone with it. Let her do her but to be a tenderfoot about this is pretty petty.

That's still pretty dumb, unless the intent is hate or mockery it shouldn't be a problem for cosplays to include skin color.

Tropic Thunder was explicitly lampooning Hollywood whitewashing and blackface though. That's quite a different context from a white person spraytanning and calling themself Jamaican.

I heard a black person on NPR one time say "there is no scenario where black face isn't racist and bad." I surely think that if Tropic Thunder came out today that it would be lauded as the next white power manifesto and the single worst atrocity to ever grace the big screen. The amount of offense taken at black face is ridiculous. As someone said earlier in the thread.. if you're caricaturing black people, then it's racist. If it's a good faith costume (like someone dressing up as a famous black person because they like them or something) we really need to dial back our sensitivity on it. White people dressing up as Kanye West and Kim K on Halloween isn't hurting anyone.

You're dead wrong, because that character was a parody. Some black guy on NPR one time does not equal all black people.

Okay, so there are contexts in which attempting to look like another race is acceptable. This is progress from the stance of "BLACKFACE ALWAYS BAD". Now the question becomes "where is the line?" I think the line's position is quite clear, but the point is there is a line between acceptable and unacceptable, and some things fall on the acceptable part of the line. So, therefore, "it's blackface so bad" isn't a justifiable reason for something being bad. You have to show why it's bad beyond being blackface, because we've demonstrated that blackface is not inherently bad. ("blackface" in this context taken to mean "using any method to change your skin color to resemble another race", as opposed to what I view its actual meaning to be, namely "caricaturizing black people"). They didn't do that. They spray-tanned themselves as part of a larger whole of making themselves look like a specific character.

Loool never change facepunch. Its 2019 and you guys think a young adult doesn't understand the implications or the reaction they would get if they spray painted themself black to represent a jamaican video game character? I don't think Twitch actually gives a fuck about the social context but it was still stupid as fuck for her to do.

Can you demonstrate why it's wrong to share superficial characteristics with something that's wrong, while not sharing any of the substantive characteristics that make that wrong thing wrong?