How to Use minstrelsy in a Sentence

minstrelsy

noun

• And is black skin a mask that dictates behavior or does the mask free one to engage with the minstrelsy at the heart of American blackness?
  — Hilton Als, The New Yorker, 6 Mar. 2017
• In one passage, Stevens is forcibly escorted by a dark-skinned soldier in the Pashtun hills, and his description of the man amounts to straight-up minstrelsy.
  — Robert Isenberg, Longreads, 26 Apr. 2022
• The initial minstrelsy was obvious to the black patrons but not so obvious to others.
  — Adrienne Gibbs, Forbes, 10 Feb. 2023
• Blitzstein, sometimes at the risk of minstrelsy, absorbed the musical voice of the South, where the opera takes place, while writing symphonic music with the economy and directness of Copland.
  — Joshua Barone, New York Times, 5 June 2018
• What better framing device for a racist travesty than minstrelsy, a theatrical form based on the grotesque caricature of blacks?
  — Andrea Simakis, cleveland, 16 Feb. 2020
• Blackface, and minstrelsy, the performance tradition that featured it, bear a freight of white condescension and contempt.
  — Nr Editors, National Review, 26 Sep. 2019
• The turn of the century represented the height of black minstrelsy, violent attacks on black communities, and the Supreme Court ruling on Plessy v. Ferguson, which made segregation the law of the land.
  — Kellie Carter Jackson, The Atlantic, 19 June 2020
• Some people reject the idea that blackface – a relic of minstrelsy, popular entertainment from the 19th century rooted in the mimicry and mocking of plantation slaves – is racist.
  — Monica Rhor, USA TODAY, 8 Feb. 2019
• Blackface minstrelsy is considered by some to be the first uniquely American form of entertainment.
  — Jesse J. Holland, The Seattle Times, 6 Feb. 2019
• In one scene, Jason reacts to the scandal of Gucci’s offensive cluelessness in marketing a sweater evocative of blackface minstrelsy.
  — Troy Patterson, The New Yorker, 30 Aug. 2019
• All of that playing with current forms of popular culture meant that Klan violence confused observers—especially white Northerners, who were fans of minstrelsy, too, and quite ready to laugh at a black person who was the butt of a joke.
  — Rebecca Onion, Slate Magazine, 17 Aug. 2017
• European blackface and American minstrelsy alike assume that performing blackness is a white birthright—that the stage is a white domain in which blacks are not allowed to tell their own stories, or even enjoy basic dignities.
  — Ayanna Thompson, Smithsonian Magazine, 29 Apr. 2021
• Is this content a new kind of collaborative performance art — or modern minstrelsy?
  — Cheri Lucas Rowlands, Longreads, 16 Dec. 2020
• In this, Glover certainly isn’t the first artist to suggest that black popular entertainment can simultaneously work as minstrelsy, appeasing a racist system, and as a gas valve of joy for people crunched by that system.
  — Spencer Kornhaber, The Atlantic, 7 May 2018
• As Kondabolu argues in a conversation with Whoopi Goldberg, there’s an undeniable element of minstrelsy in Apu.
  — Jeet Heer, The New Republic, 14 Apr. 2018
• Richard Wright accused her of minstrelsy, and the broader literary movement toward race-conscious social realism caused her books to slide into obscurity.
  — Sam Sacks, WSJ, 17 Jan. 2020
• One of the most universal terms in comedy was created by Charlie Case, who pushed the Black entertainment needle away from racist minstrelsy and blackface during the vaudeville era by forging a new path of entertainment with storytelling.
  — Elise Brisco, USA TODAY, 2 July 2022
• His music included elements of both rough-hewn minstrelsy and domesticized parlor songs, at times in combination.
  — Alex Lubet and Steven Lubet, Smithsonian Magazine, 3 Sep. 2020
• Last Knight benefits by shedding the obvious problems: No Beijing appeasement, no explicit minstrelsy.
  — Darren Franich, EW.com, 31 Mar. 2022
• The production’s all-black cast performs this section in whiteface, employing ultrastylized buffoonish movement and diction that emphasize the characters’ stupidity and cravenness, with a nod to the dehumanizing stereotypes of minstrelsy.
  — Celia Wren, Washington Post, 15 Oct. 2019
• By the mid-1840s, blackface minstrelsy would become what many historians consider America’s first popular mass-entertainment form.
  — Mel Watkins, WSJ, 12 Apr. 2018
• Put simply: digital blackface is 21st-century minstrelsy.
  — John Blake, CNN, 26 Mar. 2023

Last Updated: 24 Jul 2024