brownface

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English

Etymology

From brown +‎ face, based on earlier blackface.

Noun

brownface (uncountable)

  1. A style of theatrical makeup in which a white person colours the face brown in order to represent somebody of another race.
    • 2007 September 2, Terrence Rafferty, “Elmore Leonard’s Men of Few Words, in a Few Words”, in New York Times:
      The problem isn’t so much Lancaster’s unconvincing brownface makeup — though it looks as if it had been applied by the same heavy laborers who blacktopped Laurence Olivier for “Othello” — as it is the extremely un-Leonardian softness of his presence.

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