Blackface - Television Tropes & Idioms

Not an actual black person.

Blackface is the tradition of a performer putting on stylized black makeup to appear as a stereotyped character of African descent. Blackface performances often took the form of Minstrel Shows. As much as some people would like to forget it, blackface performances were mainstream American entertainment for almost 100 years until racial backlash finally capsized them. Blackface imagery was also transported to other countries, where the lesser stigma against it allowed the tradition to prosper for longer. Blackface characters still pop up in Japanese culture from time to time.

Due to sensitivity over this issue, particularly in America, any attempt by a non-black actor to play a black character will usually be labelled by someone as outright blackface, even when it's really just a Fake Nationality. Yellowface is a similar practice involving Asian characters, while Brownface is for characters of various "brown" races.

Tropes associated with Blackface

Ash Face: Older animated works would often segue from an Ash Face incident to a Blackface gag.
Big Lipped Alligator Moment: (A rather unfortunately named trope for this page.) A common trope of early cinema was to find some excuse for the main character to intentionally or accidentally take on the appearance of blackface, then pause for a minstrel show-style musical number.
Black Like Me: A white person makes himself look black and experiences everyday life as a black person and learning An Aesop about tolerance.
Dead Horse Trope: Blackface never appears in modern mainstream media played straight. If it shows up at all, it's for Black Comedy (No Pun Intended) or satirical purposes, or it comes from a country where it's not as taboo. Of course, racists still cling to it for warmth.
Modern Minstrelsy
Older Than They Think: The tradition of blackface extends hundreds of years before its rise in popularity in America.
Old Shame: In its heyday, blackface was a major part of America's distinct artistic culture. Today it's treated as an embarrassing episode in American history. Many beloved film and cartoon characters appeared in blackface in the early days of film and animation, when the trope was still mainstream. The companies who now own these intellectual properties are understandably reluctant to air them out.
Paper-Thin Disguise: Often when blackface cropped up in old cartoons and slapstick it was being used as a disguise. This was seen as no more wrong than having the character cross-dress at the time.
Pretty Fly For A White Guy: The modern-day successor to blackface, in which non-black people will behave in ways that are stereotypical for black people. However, the intention in this case is usually to be cool rather than to mock black culture.
Values Dissonance: Blackface was once considered as harmless good fun, but appearing in blackface today is about as acceptable as burning a cross.
Zeroth Law Of Trope Examples: The eponymous role in Othello was traditionally played by a white actor in blackface, and this remained the case long after blackface had become unacceptable in most media. Shakespeare himself at least had the excuse of black actors being in rather short supply in England at the time.

Works in which Blackface appears

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Anime and Manga

Dragon Ball: Mister Popo and other black characters have the appearance of blackface characters.
The Galoot Sect assassins from Flag invoke this aesthetic with their creepy, golliwog-like masks, possibly meant to represent the black goddess Kali.
The Black Looks, an anti-robot hate group, hide their identities by wearing blackface in the classic Astro Boy story Capetown Lullaby (aside from their leader who wears a weird mask that looks like a black Gonzo the Muppet).
An unknown character in an omake from The World God Only Knows appears to don this (bottom left panel). The character was going to perform a ritual to curse people.

Film

Spike Lee's Bamboozled: A modern African-American filmmaker creates a television minstrel show in which black actors perform in classic blackface. He's trying to make a point, but to his horror, the show becomes successful. Real-life audiences didn't respond well to the use of blackface in making a heavy-handed point about modern portrayals of black people.
Al Jolson's The Jazz Singer features the main character performing in blackface in a minstrel show as part of his journey to self-expression. Ironically, Jolson's character can only express himself by putting on the mask of a black man. This was also semi-biographical, as Al Jolson really did perform in blackface and felt a special kinship with African-Americans. He actually helped a lot of blacks break into the music business, demanded that they receive equal treatment, and was famously the only white man allowed in the all-black nightclubs in Harlem.
Gangs of New York features a propogandized performance of Uncle Tom's Cabin, in which actors playing parts of slaves wear blackface.
Fred Astaire does a blackface number in Swing Time (1936). Many fans regard this as more of an "Othello" than a "minstrel show" situation, as it was an homage to a specific black performer (Bill "Bojangles" Robinson).
The otherwise squeaky-clean classic Holiday Inn shows for Lincoln's Birthday a full minstrel show featuring dancers in blackface.
In the 1936 film version of Jerome Kern's Show Boat, Magnolia and the show boat troupe don blackface for the "Gallivantin' Around" number. Since one of the themes of this musical is the destructive nature of race prejudice, this may be deliberate irony — or it may just be a lamentable lapse of taste.
In Whoopee!, Eddie Cantor tries to pass himself off as a black man, performing a pretty racist shuffling darky routine, then belts out a performance of "My Baby Just Cares for Me" in his classic singing style. Eddie Cantor was the last major vaudeville performer to use blackface in his act, and his character was Fair for Its Day - an intelligent, in fact nerdy character, as opposed to the "Carry Me Back to Ol' Virginee" standard.
The Three Stooges disguised themselves as slaves using blackface in the Civil War-themed short "Uncivil Warbirds".
Laurel and Hardy disguised themselves in blackface after breaking out of prison in Pardon Us.
The Marx Brothers, evading the law, momentarily done blackface to hide among a bunch of stable hands in A Day at the Races. Harpo only paints half his face.
The Birth of a Nation used blackface not as a comedic device, but as a means to allow white actors to portray black and "mullato" characters in an overtly racist film.
The Eighties comedy Soul Man features a Harvard Law student who darkens his skin to get a scholarship for black students. The film caused some controversy during its release.
In the Polish film Vabank, set in 1930s' Poland, one of the protagonists, Moks, at one point sings in blackface.
In Bob Dylan's film Masked And Anonymous, Ed Harris appears as the ghost of a murdered minstrel named Oscar Vogel, very much in the Al Jolson mode. Dylan has invoked minstrelsy on other occasions, notably naming his 2001 album Love and Theft after Eric Lott's academic book Love and Theft: Blackface Minstrelsy and the American Working Class.
Lampshaded/parodied in Tropic Thunder—Robert Downey, Jr..'s white Australian character Kirk Lazarus portrays black Sergeant Lincoln Osiris by getting his face and body surgically altered to look like a fairly realistic black man. His character's personality, however, is embarrassingly over-the-top, and he stays in character at all times, much to the chagrin of the actually-black Alpa Chino. The fact that the whole thing is meant to be a parody of Oscar Bait and extreme Method Acting went over the heads of some critics and viewers, who claimed it was tantamount to blackface.
Pops up, of course, in C.S.A.: The Confederate States of America, where in the Alternate Universe in which the South won the Civil War it never becomes taboo.
The Paper-Thin Disguise variant shows up in Silver Streak. Con man Richard Pryor helps to disguise traveler Gene Wilder, who's been framed for murder. Presumably it helps that Wilder has naturally curly hair. Hearing Wilder's clueless Soul Brother patter, Pryor says, "I sure hope we don't run into any brothers."
Trading Places also uses it as a Paper-Thin Disguise for Dan Aykroyd in the scene on the train. The others with him are also in disguise/costume, but their target for a theft has met Aykroyd's character before, necessitating something more drastic: brown shoe polish.
The white voice actors of Amos N Andy appear in blackface in their sole feature film Check and Double Check. The comedy duo was at the height of their fame, but fans were apparently disappointed to see their favorite radio characters looking like white guys in blackface. The film was not a success.
An interesting example is found with Tommy Chong as the blues singer Blind Melon Chitlin' in Still Smokin: the humor is not based around the character being black, but being blind.
This is how the villain of The Zebra Killer disguised himself while committing murders.
Inverted in White Chicks in which Shawn and Marlon Wayans play two detectives who disguise themselves as white women.
In South Park: Bigger, Longer and Uncut, Cartman briefly appears wearing blackface during his performance of "Kyle's Mom is a Bitch."
In The Last Emperor, the deposed Emperor Pu-yi performs a concert backed up by Chinese musicians in blackface.
A character seen briefly at the start (and in a throwaway gag near the middle) of Forbidden Zone is a slumlord and crack dealer played by a man in blackface; there are several others in bit parts throughout, done for comedic shock value.
Rochester the butler in Gross Out is not only done up in blackface, but is a grotesque stereotype.
The Cinema Snob: My God, man! You're drunk and shockingly racist!
In Django Unchained, Samuel L. Jackson put on darker makeup to play Boomerang Bigot house slave Stephen. Jackson conceived of the look when deciding that Stephen had no white ancestry at all. Funnily enough, he actually wore more than needed because he thought he didn't looked dark enough yet, only to later see the film and realize the photography was making him even darker.

Literature

In one of the Little House on the Prairie books, the town has a contest where different townsfolk each put on a little show. Laura's father and a few his friends win it with a Blackface routine. Don't bother looking for this scene on the television series, obviously.
Part of the immense, immense controversy involved in the self-published Revealing Eden book is that, in its future where blacks have all the cultural cache and whites are a minority, a number of whites use "Midnight Luster" cream that not only protects against UV radiation but allows them to "pass" as black. And yes, there were trailers for the book featuring white actresses in blackface.
The 1960 German children novel Jim Button features the main character with a clear blackface design on the cover. Even the 1986 TV puppet adaptation follows the design very closely, as it did not hold the same negative conotations in Germany as it did in the United States.

Live-Action TV

The Mad Men season 3 episode "My Old Kentucky Home" features Roger Sterling in blackface, singing the title song to his new, twenty-something wife. Some of the characters are horrified, but more about a respectable businessman making an ass of himself than moral indignation over the racial insensitivity.
Lampshaded in It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, when the gang decide to do a sequel to Lethal Weapon with both Mac and Dennis playing Murtaugh. Dennis refuses to be in blackface, but has no problem doing a "black voice." Mac dons full shoe polish and tries to retroactively use Laurence Olivier as justification. Nobody remarks on the fact that Frank spends the entire movie playing a villainous Native American stereotype.
In Australia, The Footy Show memorably did this one time when Indigenous player Nicky Winmar was unable to appear, and the show was speculating what happened to him. Well on the final segment of the show host Eddie McGuire was going to review the teams for Freemantle and West Coast when the audience starts laughing. He twigs that Sam Newman has done something and is almost scared to look at Sam impersonating Winmar wearing black facepaint. Despite the cries of outrage over the incident Winmar had the last laugh. One year later, there would be a knock at the guest door after Sam laments they never had that anymore. He gets up to answer it to reveal Winmar, all smiles, apologizing for being a year late.
In another Australian incident, an act called "The Jackson Jive" appeared on Hey Hey, It's Saturday, a variety show, shortly after Michael Jackson's death. Five men, doctors in everyday life, danced in blackface and afro wigs, while a sixth, dressed as Michael, replete with ghost-white makeup, sang "Can You Feel It." American guest judge Harry Connick Jr. was understandably offended. The host apologized to Connick on air. Chalk it up to cultural differences - Australian media has historically never used blackface in the same way the US did. Also the Jackson Jive are all decidedly not white.
In the Polish comedy series Alternatywy 4 (1983), one character was a black American exchange student named Abraham Lincoln, played by a white man wearing blackface. Poles attempted to justify the portrayal due to the relative lack of black people in Poland at the time.
In a Halloween episode of the Irish video-diary sitcom Dan and Becs, the main characters plan to go to a party in fancy dress as a couple. Due to a miscommunication, Bec thinks they're going as Richard Gere and Julia Roberts from Pretty Woman and dresses accordingly. Dan thinks they're going as... Ike and Tina Turner. They give their diary entries on the night, still in costume, Dan still covered in blackface. Their black taxi driver is not impressed with Dan's get-up until, that is, he remarks, "Oh, you're meant to be Ike Turner. Why didn't your girlfriend go as Tina?"
According to The Goodies, their ancestors were cruelly kidnapped by the BBC and forced into blackface. They eventually fought for equal rights, no matter what colour paint, be it black, white, green, polka-dot. The episode was actually labelled: DO NOT BROADCAST - RACIST in the BBC archive. The Goodies also appear in blackface in the South Africa and Eckythump episodes. The show also mocked The Apartheid Era racists by showing how horrified they are of blackface performers: white people imitating black people.
In Jeeves and Wooster, Bertie Wooster and Jeeves both disguise themselves in as part of a troupe of blackface minstrels in order to escape J. Washburn Stoker, father of Pauline, the girl in of Bertie's ill-fated engagements. The minstrels were there as part of Stoker's son's birthday party. Wooster ends up having to perform Lady of Spain in blackface with the minstrels before being able to escape. Later the the Harley St. doctor Sir Roderick Glossop has to dress up in blackface to entertain a young boy who was promised that he could see the minstrels at Stoker's son's birthday party, but is unable to go in the confusion.
The Sarah Silverman Show played with this. Sarah argued with a black man that being Jewish is harder than being black, and the two agreed to go through one day as the other ethnicity for a day to test it. Sarah dressed up in a horribly stereotypical and offensive way, receiving very unpleasant remarks, thinking they actually thought she was black and their responses were genuine racism. When she met the man in the usual spot she and the gang get their coffee and said that she agreed that being black was harder, the black man said he realised being Jewish was actually harder. He was wearing a yarmukle, peot, a long false nose, and a shirt saying �I <3 Money�. The man left the place as the two exchanged suspicious looks.
The Python crew occasionally donned blackface to play Indian or black roles for Monty Python's Flying Circus sketches.
In an episode of The Mighty Boosh, Julian Barret plays "Rudy", a partially two-dimensional guitarist/sage with an appearance resembling Jimi Hendrix. Barret has darkened skin as well as fake teeth to make him appear to be gap-toothed. He also has a large fake afro with a door to another dimension. In another episode, Rudy is fully three-dimensional and is no longer blackface, though he does retain his magic afro.
Are You Being Served?.
- Mr. Grainger does himself up in blackface to perform "Mammy" in the B-plot of an episode. Ultimately, this rolls back into the main plot: In order to replace a malfunctioning animatronic Santa, the Men's and Lady's Wear staffers are auditioning for the role (and its extra pay). Grainger doesn't have time to remove the blackface before the audition... which makes him more attractive to the child brought in to select who'll get the role. The kid is black.
- Another episode has the staff performing a minstrel number, in blackface, to celebrate Old Mr Grace's supposed African heritage. As you can see on his face at the end of the show as his staff is strutting about in blackface, he is horrified at this spectacle.
Seen in the pilot episode of Boardwalk Empire (which takes place in the 1920s) during the New Year's celebration.
Parodied by Spitting Image in "The White & White Minstrel Show" that features the polar opposite of this trope: black people wearing whitefaces. The sketch itself is a bitting satire of the apartheid in South Africa where they think "that blackfaces don't belong with black".
The Black and White Minstrel Show performed musical numbers in blackface on a primetime BBC slot from 1958 to 1978. The show scaled back the blackface numbers toward the end of its run. It's cancellation was not due to the blackface, however, but due to cutbacks on variety shows. The stage show version continued until 1987!
Scrubs has a flashback to an incident where Turk convinced JD to wear blackface (where Turk himself would be wearing whiteface) while they met with some friends of Turk's. Turk ends up being distracted at an inopportune moment, meaning that JD seems to be alone when the guys see him. It does not end well.
In an episode of Community, Chang dresses up as his Dungeons & Dragons Drow character, which includes jet black skin. Both Shirley and Pierce think he's in blackface.
In an episode of Gimme A Break, Samantha dresses Joey up in blackface to perform at Nell's church. Hilarity does not ensue.
In the All in the Family episode "Birth of the Baby", Archie is forced by his lodge to appear in blackface in a minstrel show. Right before he's supposed to go onstage, he's informed that his daughter has gone into labor, so he ends up in the hospital in blackface.
Played for Laughs in an episode of Soap when the Major, Chester, and Donahue are in blackface in preparation for a night raid on the Sunnies church/bunker along with Benson in order to rescue Billy. (The blackface in this case is an ordinary stealth technique so as not to be easily seen.) As they're planning, Jessica comes in and apologizes for interrupting Benson's reunion with his family. After they explain that they're them, Jessica asks why they're dressed as 'Negros'. During the raid they get caught, and Benson covers for them by saying they're the Step Brothers, and leads the others in a dance "audition."
30 Rock
- Jenna Maroney has appeared in blackface twice. The first time, not unlike the The Sarah Silverman Show example, arose from an argument with Tracy Jordan about whether it is harder to be black or a woman. The second occurred when Jenna dressed as Pittsburgh Steeler Lynn Swann while her crossdressing boyfriend dressed as Natalie Portman in Black Swan making them ...two black swans.
- A live episode, where Kenneth defends live television, has a flashback to an Amos And Andy expy show - Tracy Jordan plays one half of the team, and Jon Hamm plays the other, in poorly applied blackface and horribly over-the-top mannerisms that finally got on Jordan's last nerve. Kenneth explains that the network thought two black people on the same show would make the audience nervous - "...a rule NBC still uses today!"
Saturday Night Live
- When Fred Armisen started playing Barack Obama, a minor stink was raised about whether it constituted blackface. The issue died out after it was argued that Fred Armisen and Barack Obama are both mixed race and the fact that they're not the same mix just makes it a standard case of Fake Nationality. Plus the darkening of Armisen's skin looks like the spray tan it probably is, and most people aren't offended by spray tans.
- Darrell Hammond played Jesse Jackson with fewer complaints.
In the pilot episode of Life's Too Short, Warwick watches a performance of "Ebony and Ivory" performed by two dwarfs, one of whom is a woman in blackface. Warwick says that he's pretty sure you can't "black up" these days, but "maybe in the North."
Billy Crystal sparked some very minor controversy when he appeared as Sammy Davis Jr. during his intro to the 84th Academy Award presentation. Crystal used realistic makeup to resemble Davis, not stylized blackface. Critics were apparently unaware that Crystal had been doing Davis impressions for years, including his time on Saturday Night Live, with Davis's personal blessing.
It's implied Barney once used this on How I Met Your Mother. He mentions that the worst lie he ever told to get a woman into bed (and that is a very competitive category) was when he used a seduction technique called "The Soul Man". We're not told the details of what it involved, but he used it to hook up with a woman who would only date black guys, and he did it while going by the alias "Barnell".
Inverted in Chappelle's Show in sketches where the black host Dave Chappelle lightens his skin and plays a stereotypical white man.
In The Office US, Dwight has a warehouse employee dress up as Black Peter, complete with blackface. Luckily he figures out that the office staff will find it offensive, so he texts Black Peter to not show up. He appears later with most of the makeup wiped off.
In the episode "Korzenie" ("Roots") of Polish sitcom Swiat wedlug Kiepskich, the main protagonist wakes up to discover that not only him, but everyone around is suddenly black, including people on TV. Nobody understands his surprised reaction, all the pictures in the family album suggest that he has always been black, and his apartment holds a church service with gospel music. The episode ends with him finding out that his asshole neighbour is still white, and upon pointing it out he responds with "So what? Just because I'm white doesn't mean you can bully me! I'm a human being just like the rest of you!".
The Man Show had two recurring skits where Jimmy Kimmel browned his skin. One skit had Jimmy dressing up like Utah Jazz forward Karl Malone and dispensing Cloudcuckoolander ramblings about nothing. Kimmel had previously developed his Malone impression for the radio, where costuming was not an issue. The other skit had him dressed up like Oprah Winfrey as a parody of Oprah's feminine lifestyle segments on her own show.

Music

An entire genre of music, the "coon song" was dedicated to mocking black people, sung by performers in blackface. Paradoxically, such songs were often written by African American composers such as Ernest Hogan, Sam Lucas, and Bob Cole. The genre was a precursor to ragtime and was eventually replaced by it. Note that in popular usage, "coon song" was often applied to music sung, originating from, or merely in the style of, Negro music, without regard to content. One who sang Negro songs was a "coon shouter."
Appears rather shockingly in the video for Culture Club's "Do You Really Want To Hurt Me?" as Boy George is convicted by a jury of jazz-handing minstrels.
Florence + the Machine's music video for "No Light, No Light" has two savage people in blackface menacing the white singer, who is saved by white choirboys and seen at the end with a white lover. Supposedly, the men in blackface are meant to be demons.

Professional Wrestling

In 1998 D-Generation X mocked the all-black Power Stable Nation of Domination by dressing as them, complete with blackface. This somehow received little to no complaints, and is still considered one of Raw's funniest moments.
At Wrestle Mania VI Roddy Piper fought Bad News Brown with half his body in blackface, after Bad News Brown called him racist. Apparently he did it to show that color doesn't matter.

Stand-Up Comedy

One Retraux sketch by The Two Ronnies has Ronnie Barker playing "Al Vermont", a singer who performs in blackface.

Theater

Most black vaudevillians wore blackface. Some were light enough that they needed to put on burnt cork to make it clear to the audience; others just bowed to vaudeville standards.
- Popular vaudeville actor Bert Williams often performed in blackface. As he gained more success, his works phased out the extreme racial humor. His popularity among white and black audiences ultimately made him a force for increased racial tolerance.
- Bill Robinson was among the first black performers to make it big without blackface.
Many opera roles, such as Otello in Verdi's opera, and Monostatos in The Magic Flute have been portrayed in blackface. There is still a shortage of black opera singers, but white singers playing these roles no longer black up.
Similarily, the title character in Shakespeare's Othello was traditionally played by a while actor in makeup, though the original King's Men might not have used it. It wasn't until 1943 that a black actor played the role in a major stage production of the play, but the success of that production didn't stop the common practice of using blackface to last well through the 60s.
Referenced in the play No Sugar, which revolves around a family of Australian aborigines in the 1930s. In one scene, they recall a recent trip to the cinema, where they saw an American film with a blackface performer, who they joke must have been having a really rough time as a whitefella if he saw becoming black as a step up.

Toys

"Golliwogg" dolls are dolls made in the style of a person in blackface. They can still be purchased in some areas.

Video Games

Pok�mon
- Jynx was originally designed after this aesthetic before its coloring was changed to purple due to complaints. It is sometimes claimed to have been designed after the "ganguro" style, though it was only just beginning to come to prominence in Japan at the time. A more likely candidate is the European Zwarte Piet holiday character mentioned below, considering its Ice typing and appearance as Santa's helpers in the anime.
- Whiscash, the catfish pokemon, also has a similar face, though he's actually more dark blue. This may be unintentional, as many catfish do have rather pronounced "lips" and dark skin in real life. It is probably worth mentioning, however, that catfish is a popular food in many black communities in the southern US...
The turtle shell in Doki Doki Panic has a blackface appearance.
MadWorld has the Black Baron, revealed to be white by the announcers. He has the mannerisms of a stereotypical pimp. Given the entire game is all about shock value, it's not surprising to see this trope in action.
Kingdom of Loathing features a status effect called Black Face, which raises your Muscle stat and damage, but lowers your combat initiative. The effect description simply reads: "Yeah, we went there."
Unintentionally occurs with Passionate Patti in Leisure Suit Larry 5 due to a malfunctioning copy machine.
An extremely unfortunate example occurs in Square's NES adaptation of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, released only in Japan. The caricature used for Jim would almost be cause for Torches and Pitchforks in the U.S.
One of Xeno Blade's main antagonists is actually named Blackface, though he's actually kind of an inversion, being a black and gold, baroque-looking robot with a sinister white mask. Nonetheless his name was changed to Metalface in the English version for fear of the name's nasty associations.
Oil Man from Mega Man Powered Up. He was recolored blue and yellow in the English version, but his voice actor still plays him as sounding black-ish and worse yet he's portrayed as being somewhat lecherous, shiftless and not overly bright.

Western Animation

Looney Tunes characters such as Bugs Bunny would often get soot blown in their faces, causing them to spontaneously parody The Jazz Singer or Eddie Rochester.
Appeared in quite a few of the early Tom And Jerry shorts as well. When re-aired these scenes tend to be edited out, and a couple shorts which can't be easily edited have been all-out banned and don't even appear on the DVDs.
Really, nearly every studio during The Golden Age of Animation did this as a gag at some point. At least one Terry Toons short has done this, as seen on Jerry Beck's site.
South Park riffs on this trope in "Summer Sucks." The town gets covered in ashes, causing all the ash-covered residents to look like they're in blackface. Needless to say, Chef, the resident black man who'd just returned from his vacation, isn't pleased.
Parodied on Family Guy in season 9, when Chris wanted to dress up as Bill Cosby for Halloween, using blackface as well as his trademark sweater. His mother tried telling him it�s wrong, but Chris just said, �Why, don�t I look like him?� His mother agreed that he did, but then said, �You can�t just go out on the street in blackface, it�s racist! Now go put on that Indian head gear I bought you!�
The book Kaboom! Explosive Animation from America and Japan mentions that "Even today, the question can be legitimately asked: How much of Mickey Mouse is mouse, and how much is blackface clown?"
The Little Mermaid contains a one-off blink-and-you'll-miss-it blackface gag with the blackfish in "Under The Sea". This wouldn't be racist if the blackfish was actually black, but as it isn't...
The Smiths in American Dad show up to a black organization's party in blackface after misreading the invitation.

Other

This happens in The Philippines, particularly in the province of Aklan in the Visayas every January, when the native brown people smear their bodies with black coal to celebrate a feast with the indigenous black minority called the Aetas, with a help of a miracle from a memento from the Spaniards that helped develop a culture. It's called the Ati-atihan, which literally means "festival of acting like Aetas".
A Japanese earthquake safety pamphlet passed out as late as 2004 featured a cartoon "sambo" character with a blackface appearance. After some complaints, the pamphlet was redrawn.
The helpers of Sinterklaas (the Dutch Santa Claus) are usually white people in blackface and colourful costumes called Zwarte Piet ("Black Pete").
In the lates 90's, Japanese girls would do a style called Ganguro. It was said to be started by a clubber by the name of Buriteri, who had darker skin and more extreme makeup than most gonguro. Over the years there were othe styles called Manba, Banba, etc., but today 'gals' tend to just have bronze skin or even paper white skin.
There is a picture of Eva Braun dressed as Al Jolson, in suit and full blackface. Yes, you read that right.◊
New York Assemblyman Dov Hikind landed in hot water when a picture surfaced of him costumed as a black basketball player for Purim, complete with darkened skin and an afro wig. Critics labeled the costume blackface, while Hikind insisted that no offence was intended.