> Why, other than because Americans have negative connotations with the practice?
But it's not just people from the US. There are protests every year in Europe against various traditions which involve blackface (eg. Black Peter). There are plenty of people who protest and given the colonial legacies of some European countries it's pretty clear to me that this is not just invented racism/conflict from "the American left".
As a European myself I understand the complaints of US defaultism and agree with plenty of them but this simply not one of them.
Don't paint the kid black and leave the nativity play as-is? If the goal is to teach them that the people in the biblical stories weren't all white I'm sure there's plenty of other better ways than putting one of them in blackface. Traditions are not sacred, and can and do change over time.
White people painting themselves black is not black representation regardless of the historical justification or US culture. Calling this out and asking for traditions to stop or adjust is not "woke".
But it's not just people from the US. There are protests every year in Europe against various traditions which involve blackface (eg. Black Peter). There are plenty of people who protest and given the colonial legacies of some European countries it's pretty clear to me that this is not just invented racism/conflict from "the American left".
As a European myself I understand the complaints of US defaultism and agree with plenty of them but this simply not one of them.