William Brett

Trapped in a shaming role

Racial shame looms large in this ‘imaginative reconstruction’ of the life of Bert Williams, the black American entertainer. Williams only began to achieve notable success after deciding, in 1895, to smear his face with burnt cork and widen his lips with make-up, in order to ‘play the coon’. He would shuffle his feet and boggle his eyes, thereby providing white audiences with a stereotype they could easily recognise.

Performers can experience complex and ambiguous emotions when presenting characters for the benefit of audiences, and the adoption of ‘blackface’ by black performers is perhaps the most potent example of this phenomenon. It is for this reason that Caryl Phillips is entitled to turn Williams’ story into a novel. A historical account would be unable to explore the conflicting nuances of intense shame and deceptive pride that must have plagued ‘the most famous coloured man in America’.

Phillips is perfectly qualified to tell this story; his novels have all dealt with issues of race and identity, and especially with the far-reaching legacy of the Caribbean. Williams was born in the Bahamas and emigrated with his father to the US, attracted by the promise of an emerging black middle class. But the fact that his success as one of ‘The Two Real Coons’ in the New York vaudeville scene comes only after he blackens his face makes it immediately apparent that racial equality in the US was a myth.

W. C. Fields described Williams as ‘the funniest man I ever saw, and the saddest man I ever knew’. He was a supremely talented performer, blessed with impeccable timing and comical physicality, and was adored by his audiences as a result. But he was riddled with shame, mindful of his proud West Indian roots and unable to look up at his black audience segregated in ‘nigger heaven’.

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