Woman Complains About Pub Owner's Blackface, Is Verbally Abused

A woman who complained on social media about a UK pub owner’s decision to wear blackface for Halloween was subject to some pretty messed up abuse as a result.

The picture itself is largely self-explanatory. The Brixton* pub owner decided to dress like…whatever the fuck that is, and come on, do we need to keep having this conversation? Black face isn’t OK, and no, it is not equivalent to Eddie Murphy’s White Like Me sketch or LaVar Arrington’s J.J. Watt Halloween costume. There are a variety of reasons why this is the case. Here’s a good one for starters.

His friend dressed in a KKK costume is also incredibly baffling.** Considering the person who wore the costume is black, that feels like if I, as a Jew, had worn a Nazi costume: certainly still not OK, but it’s not quite the same as a white person in a KKK outfit. Still, though…why? I mean, really. As if to make it even weirder and less OK, there’s also a picture of Clayton Bigsby over there giving a seig heil later in the evening.

After seeing the pictures, Brixton resident Nisha Damji was less than pleased, so she posted about it on the pub’s Facebook page. That’s when someone associated with the account (it’s still unclear who) responded with “Yo bitch. Ask my black clientele what they think and suck my dick”. Lovely.

Simon Tickner, he of the blackface and whatever that hat is supposed to be, apologized for both the costume and the comment in a BBC interview. It was a sincere apology that — hahahaha, I can’t even finish that sentence, no it wasn’t. He drew from a few of the well-known fauxpology wells: he claimed the costume itself was “an absurdist joke” (check off “learn to take a joke” on your bingo cards, ladies and gentlemen) and that his best friend was “a black klansmen” (there’s “none of my black friends think I’m racist”). He denies posting the comment to Damji, but makes perhaps the most baffling racist dog whistle statement possible in reference to it, saying the comment is “just hip-hop language.”

Nancy, what the fuck are you talking about please. I have a pretty strong suspicion whatever you’re trying to say there is unequivocally awful, Simon, but I couldn’t even begin to parse what the hell it actually is.

* Just as a side note, this is the only time I’ve seen a story location mentioned in the UK without some wonderfully bizarre place name attached to it. It’s just “Brixton.” I’m shocked and disappointed this didn’t happen somewhere like “Brixton, Whimsy-on-Rye, Wobblecester, England.”

** The cross also has the letters “IRS” scrawled across it, so I guess this is a Libertarian Klansman costume. Insert your own joke here.