Talk:Thomas D. Rice

message: It is different from the one at Find-A-Grave. Lincher 12:43, 23 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: That doesn't worry me much. Find-A-Grave is not a very authoritative source. - Jmabel | Talk 04:47, 29 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Date of birth 

message: That may not be an exact quote, but my point is Rice was white, not black, so I'd like to see the claim that he did something at all positive for black people through his very racist acts (not just in current terms, but as the article says but then backpeddles on, in the terms of the times)! I have no expertise nor extensive enough knowledge to correct or even positively identify problems here so I ask that those who know more attend to this. Thank you. --Fitzhugh 04:54, 14 August 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: You're right on that Rice's act was racist, as was minstrelsy in general. I think what that line was supposed to mean was that minstrelsy opened the door for black performers, not Rice specifically. He was one of the earliest blackface dancers, but it does seem a bit of a stretch to extend the argument of "minstrelsy opened the door to black performers" to "Rice opened the door to black performrers", so it's probably not a good idea to include that in the article. An interesting book to pick up for a primer on this is Mel Watkins's On the Real Side: A History of African American Comedy from Slavery to Chris Rock. He traces black humor from slave times, into blackface comedy (which eventually did get taken over to a great extent by actual black comedians) on into Vaudeville, early films, and so on. It's a very good book, and it makes you realize just how profound the influence of black culture on American culture in general has been and continues to be. — Amcaja (talk) 05:40, 14 August 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Questioning "opened the doors for black comedians" statement. 

message: I think the following excerpt attempts to address an important issue but lacks sufficient depth to be effective: "As a white man playing highly derogatory imitations of black men, Rice's brand of entertainment was highly racist, though not necessarily thought of as such at the time." This quotation smacks of an indignant historian who is in a hurry to label Thomas Smith as a racist, but has not taken the time to provide sufficient support for the assertions that his imitations were "highly derogatory" or that the entertainment was indeed "highly racist". Both uses of the word "highly" seem superfluous, especially without any qualification as to what differentiates "derogatory" from "highly derogatory" and "racist" from "highly racist". Furthermore it does not acknowledge the fact that the concept of racism as our contemporary society knows it was poorly developed at the time, and it was not merely that Thomas Rice's contemporaries did not "necessarily [think] of [his imitations]" as racist, as if they had failed to see the commonalities between features of his imitations and those included within some notion of "racism" that existed at the time.
I think that the article would benefit from a more explicit description of the characterizations Thomas Rice presented in his shows at least in enough depth for a reader to conclude that they were "derogatory" and I think that both instances of the word "highly" should be removed because they are both arbitrary. cmac 06:44, 8 October 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree. Is there evidence that blacks saw this as "highly derogatory imitations of black men"? This sounds like a centuries-later characterization. The fact that blacks embraced this form is odd if they found it hightly derogatory. Mattisse 22:59, 1 March 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  "highly racist" 

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thread_title:  External links modified 

message: 'was an American performer and playwright who appropriated African-American vernacular speech, song, and dance' This sounds like something off an SJW blog.--Johnny 42 (talk) 22:05, 2 September 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Bias 

message: I propose that Jim Crow (archetype) be merged into Thomas D. Rice. The small amount of content in the 'archetype' has already been merged and really only explores the character, not in any sense an 'archetype' I suggest a redirect Jim Crow (character) be added redirecting to here. Pincrete (talk) 17:12, 30 May 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Merger proposal 

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thread_title:  External links modified 

message: To add to this article: the fact that Rice was known as an "Ethiopian delineator." 173.88.246.138 (talk) 20:47, 21 July 2020 (UTC)
thread_title: To add to article

message: Surprising that this page does not discuss the Jim Crow laws.
National Geographic:  Fifty years ago, the Voting Rights Act targeted the laws and practices of Jim Crow. Here’s where the name came from.  Experts don’t really know how a racist performance in the North came to represent racist laws and policies in the South. But they can speculate.
Since the phrase originated in blackface minstrelsy, Lott says that it’s almost “perversely accurate … that it should come to be the name for official segregation and state-sponsored racism.”
“I think probably in the popular white mind,” he says, “it was just used because that’s just how they referred to black people.” https://www.nationalgeographic.com/history/article/150806-voting-rights-act-anniversary-jim-crow-segregation-discrimination-racism-history
Peter K Burian (talk) 13:21, 23 February 2021 (UTC)
replies: text: Thomas D. Rice >> Jim Crow (character) >> Jim Crow laws.   I don't see why the laws need to be discussed directly in this article, which is a biography.  Ghmyrtle (talk) 08:02, 24 February 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  What is the relevance of Jim Crow more recently 

message: Basic information to add to this article: Rice's ethnic background. Was he white and of European heritage? If so, why fail to mention that anywhere in the current version of this article? 173.88.246.138 (talk) 03:11, 1 November 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  To add to article