As “blackface” has become a catchall for a range of practices in contemporary global popular culture, use of the term has entrenched an implicit assumption that blackface is distinctive to the United States. To grasp the manifest globality of blackface, however, it is necessary to consider the many histories and forms blackface has taken across disparate geographies as well as its role in shaping racialized mappings of the world.
Hoxworth et al. (2026) studied this question.