It is true that the cosplayers who do this generally aren’t slapping on shoe polish or anything that takes them to that offensive level, and they (and their supporters) are always quick to point that out. They’re quick to use words like “appreciation,” as in, they love and appreciate the character so much that they just want to do a good job representing them. They aren’t trying to mock them, but pay homage to them. They aren’t really doing “blackface” because they’re using proper makeup techniques and they don’t look like they’ve just dipped their faces in oil.

But here’s the thing. At the end of the day, those people? They can take the make-up off. They can stop being black.

We can’t.

So I’ll be completely honest, it was both very difficult to wait to weigh in on this, but I knew this article was going up today so I didn’t want to say my thoughts until it went up (since it covers all of my feelings on the subject), and… I was kind of nervous to even write this piece because when this issue comes up, there is a lot of backlash toward people who are against painting your skin. I watched friends get belittled and saw people just trample over their feelings, and I’m not just talking followers, I’m talking about friendships just collapsing because they didn’t want to hear what their black friend had to say.

Before I wrote this I considered either a) not writing it at all or b) just posting something on my page and that being the end of it. But then my frustrations of this being a yearly thing took over and I sat down, looked at as many comments as I could stomach, the different articles, and everything I could before I got my thoughts together and wrote this up in an attempt to break down every reason given that tries to justify changing your skin to represent a different race.

Everything I feel on this issue is in this article, so if you want to know what I think, then all you have to do is read it. If you do decide to comment, I ask that you be respectful to me or anyone else who comments, even if they don’t agree with you. I don’t expect everyone to agree with me, but if we’re going to make any sort of progress, I do hope that people will at least listen.