Casual racism is as much a problem as intended racism. It might not be as dangerous, but it can be unaddressed, owing to the fact that it is often unnoticed. However, one twitch streamer and her attempt to cosplay a character was not-so-subtle casual racism… because she was a Lithuanian and she wore blackface to cosplay a black character.
Karina Martsinkevich a.k.a. Karupups recently did a cosplay stream on the online platform Twitch where she went live on the “Just Chatting” category. For the session, the twitch streamer decided to do a cosplay of an Apex Legends character named Lifeline, a visibly black woman from the game. For this, Karupups wore blackface and even painted her torso with a dark skin shade:
Because of this, the twitch streamer got banned on Twitch and her stream was even shut down before it finished. Her penalty? A 30-day ban from the streaming platform. According to Twitch, she violated the platform’s policy against “content or activity that promotes, encourages, or facilitates discrimination, denigration, objectification, harassment, or violence.”
The twitch streamer issued an apology after this, expressing “It was just for fun. I just wanted to change into my favorite Legend from the game. If you found my cosplay painful for your feelings, I’m really sorry for that but it didn’t meant to be like this. It was prepared and made for fun, for showing all the viewers the preparation for cosplay can take.”
It also appears Karupups did not know much about the negative historical connotations of blackface or its effect on actual oppressed races. While she could have easily meant no harm, ignorance is often harmful and shouldn’t really be an excuse these days. Despite the twitch streamer’s apology, her social media account still has the blackface cosplay in full display at the time of writing.
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