So, if you haven't read by now, Billy Crystal did a sketch at the Oscars impersonating Sammy Davis Jr.

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/new...y-davis-295558

He has garnered criticism for first doing a "blackface" sketch and later joking "After I saw The Help I just wanted to hug the first black woman I saw, which from Beverly Hills is about a 45 minute drive."

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz...#ixzz1ngUHrH9t

Are these things racist? Do they make Crystal racist?

Someone better educated in the history and meaning of blackface is better equipped to respond to the sketch than I, but it seems to me that, while you can't escape the dirty history connected to blackface acts, impersonating a specific character or person (Crystal did his Sammy act many times on SNL, it can be noted) is not the same as blackface. Crystal was not being "a black guy", he was being Sammy.

For that matter, if Crystal's act was racist, or at least racially insensitive, what of Robert Downey Jr's performance in Tropic Thunder?

As for the second point, the The Help joke: I can see WHY it's been interpreted badly, but I can't help but feel that anyone who interpreted the joke as racist simply misunderstood the jibe. It was, maybe stealthily (but I don't think so), a pretty cutting joke about The Help's pretty hopeless attempt at adding to the race conversation -- I did like the "fixed title" for the movie I found on George Takei's Facebook, "White People Solve Racism" -- as well as a joke about the lack of diversity around Beverly Hills. The joke was at someone's expense, certainly, but not black people's -- rather the naivete of the filmmakers behind The Help and the rich white Beverly Hillians.

Am I being too forgiving? Is there a deeper cultural context that just makes these jokes untenable?