Kake Walk

The other day my supervisor and I met with a librarian in charge of UVM's Collections of Digital Imaging to discuss archives dealing with social justice and diversity. She wanted our input as to how she should structure the collection. She brought to us the idea of creating a collection of Kakewalk. I, being the naive Texan, had no idea what kakewalk was and they kept using the term black face as well. Granted I have seen black face before I still couldn't find the correlation between black face and kakewalk.

The only time I have heard or seen a cake walk was back home during the jamaicas and carnivals. A cakewalk is where we walk around in a circle to music, and once the music stops you sit on the chair you land and depending where you land you win a cake. Sometimes, to make it fun for the kids adults try to motivate the kids to dance to the music which is sometimes extremely festive resulting in a fun game. Out of the cakewalk the toy and plantwalks originated. So . . . that's the image I had of "kake" walk.

Kakewalk originated from an African-American dance in the south. Early forms of the cakewalk were easy-going and with time the dancers added flamboyant kicks and struts trying to outdo each other in the presence of their white masters. Afterwards, it evolved into a parody of white manners and social graces in the south. In the 1980's a dance craze followed and cakewalk contest were held all over the US in major cities and remained popular until the early 20th century. In theater, since African Americans could not perform, white Americans would paint their faces black emphasising big white eyes, lips and palms (characterizing an African American). With the growth of universities and fraternity celebrations, kakewalk and black face created large spectacles of cakewalk events. There would be large contests between fraternities in which members would try to out dance each other and at the end a trophy for the best dance would be given out. Here are UVM they had the event called "Kake Walk Weekend, also known as Winter Carnival and would attract hundreds of students and donors.

This discussion of black face quickly took me back to A&M's controversial video of two students in black face with a 12th man towel in their back pocket. My supervisor, wanting to illustrate black face to me, googled it and what appeared as number 1? . . . A&M's video. I constantly wonder how A&M and Texas for that matter would react to everything that I am learning. However, at times I just feel extremely overwhelmed and I just want to crawl in bed and ignore all the lessons of the day. Everyday I am reminded of how sheltered and conservative I have been. My views and values clash every day with the liberal culture, but a part of me wants more and wants to reveal more, not just about the difference of culture, but about myself - self discoveries.

Anyways, that's the story of cakewalk and black face, now what I am going to do? I'm going to lecture, JK. Everything I am learning makes me want to open a center of Social Justice and simply program like crazy about issues that may be under the blanket and not addressed. And they do not have to be about American social justice issues, but internationally, like the Women of Juarez, or the "Desaparecidos", or South American politics, etc. There was a program my department would put on comparing the film "Bamboozled" to cake walk and understanding black face. However, they discontinued it because they saw a "decrease" in interest. But they did it with in a two year span, so there were already students who had seen the program. Hopefully we can bring it back and make it a four-year thing.