Blackfishing, a term developed by black women to describe white celebrity's who adopt black physical features in order to trick others into thinking that they are black, is the new blackface. Blackface was used to openly attack black people onstage and make them seem culturally irrelevant to the American experience. Blackface was also utilized by white celebrities to mock black people, often times stereotyping blacks as lazy, uneducated, useless, and unimportant. Blackface minstrelsy is considered by many to be the first original form of American entertainment; one of the main reason why racism remains a problem to this very day is because it was ingrained in American culture by this racist "performance art". Initially, blacks were not even allowed to play these characters because the all white entertainment establishment considered black people to be too unintelligent to be able to rehearse and memorize lines. "White men would darken their faces to create caricatures of black people, including large mouths, lips and eyes, woolly hair and  coal-black skin." (AP News) John Gruden's recent comments about black football players having "big lips" is nothing new; he is merely pulling from his deeply racist culture. Surely, such a degenerate and childish form of entertainment must have developed as a Southern response to losing the Civil War, right? Wrong. That is a myth that dimwitted networks like the History Channel have promulgated. Here is the real history of blackface, "The practice took hold in New York City in the 1830s and became immensely popular among post-Civil War whites. In fact, the Jim Crow  laws that enforced racial segregation in the South took their name from a  character played by blackface performer Thomas Dartmouth Rice. He said  his act “Jump, Jim Crow” (or “Jumping Jim Crow”) was inspired by a slave he saw." While it is true that blackface became much more popular in the south after the Civil War, it was actually the racist "genius" of good old New York City that invented it. Racism remains a huge problem in New York to this day. Though it loves to paint itself as some bastion of Civil Rights, the New York entertainment industry rarely hires black performers specifically because of its very racist roots, this idea that white performers are superior to black performers. Now you know why every time I hear Jay Z's "Empire State of Mind", I cringe at the thought of a black man encouraging other black people to have such a racist state of mind. That godawful song remains my least favorite Jay Z song of all time to this very day, but white people sure do love it, don't they? White people loved blackface too and they still do. Who could forget Robert Downey Jr, Ted Danson, Billy Crystal, Sarah Silverman and Jimmy Falon all dawning the blackface makeup only to then pretend that they were not mocking blacks for laughs? White people can forget, but I ain't white. An African man once told me that the elephant never forgets his fallen brethren; instead the forlorn elephant will stop at the grave site of his ancestors and mourn sometimes for hours. Consider me the elephant in the room of the black world. I will never stop mourning my ancestors; you cannot make me forget. I owe you nothing but the truth, and the truth is not as pretty as pictures on Instagram. This is the real world. There are no filters. "In 1848, after watching a blackface act, abolitionist Fredrick Douglass called the  performers “the filthy scum of white society” in The North Star newspaper. Blackface performers, he said, “have stolen from us a complexion denied to them  by nature...to make money and pander to the corrupt taste of their white fellow-citizens.” Now we have blackfishing, and, once again, white people are putting on makeup, clothing and hairstyles in order to portray themselves as stereotypes to make money while pandering to their white fellow citizens. To be frank, this sucks. Boo! Get off the stage!