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The article is titled “Black style and resistance: The Met Gala, dandyism and blackface in Canada.” It was originally published on April 29, 2025 and is authored by Cheryl Thompson, Canada Research Chair, Professor in Performance, Toronto Metropolitan University.

In her groundbreaking book, Canada and the Blackface Atlantic: Performing Slavery, Conflict and Freedom, 1812-1897, Cheryl Thompson, professor of performance at Toronto Metropolitan University, maps the transnational flow of minstrel culture and racial ideologies, revealing how blackface performance — and the racism it reflects — was not strictly an American phenomenon.
In this interview with The Conversation Canada, Thompson shares some of her ideas on performance, politics and race, including this year’s Met Gala.
Your book uses the term ‘Blackface Atlantic.’ Can you explain what that means, and how Canada fits into that history?
Traditionally, when we talk about Atlantic world studies, we’re usually focused on the United States, the Caribbean, maybe parts of Europe. Canada is not often considered to be part of conversation. But blackface performance/minstrelsy was actually one of the first forms of entertainment that travelled across the Atlantic. It started in the U.S., moved to Britain and then landed in Canada. That means many of the same cultural and political issues we associate with the United States — racism, segregation, white supremacy — have been part of Canada’s narrative too, from the beginning.
The book draws on Paul Gilroy’s concept of the “Black Atlantic.” He defined this not just as a geographic space shaped by European colonization and Black servitude and resistance, but as an ideological space, too. Gilroy articulated how Black people disidentified with western ideas of nationhood, citizenship and freedom to forge new ways of imagining their identities and futures.
Canada and the Blackface Atlantic asks us to stop seeing Canada as a self-contained nation-state. It places Canada within an Atlantic world context where race was traded as a currency in terms of slavery but also on the theatrical stage where it was performed. On stage, “Blackness” became a way for white audiences to make sense of Black people as performing subjects without having to contend with Black people as real political agents.
Why do you think Canada’s role in the history of blackface performance has been so overlooked?
I think it’s partly because writing about blackface requires such a multidisciplinary understanding of different disciplines, multiple points of view, historically and geographically disparate people and places. While as an academic, I have sometimes been discouraged from positioning myself in “too many” disciplines, my training across disciplines helped me to see the throughline in the story.
And that throughline is about race, but also the building of cities and towns, migration and immigration, visual culture and print culture, theatre and performance.
I also believe it has been overlooked because many white Canadian academics simply do not talk about or examine issues related to race. It’s not something they are comfortable with in the context of Canada, and to research blackface requires that you confront race and white supremacy head-on.
And because discussions of race in Canada are still taboo in some circles, blackface remains a topic that is largely ignored or minimized.
I think my work is changing this pattern, and my book will help to open people’s minds to a topic that has long been avoided in Canadian cultural conversations. These conversations have already been happening for decades in the U.S. and the U.K. and elsewhere.
The Met’s big show and gala this year focuses on Black Style and dandyism as powerful forms of self expression and resistance. How do you think fashion can help challenge racist narratives?
I love that the Met is thinking about questions of race and style, because Black dandyism is so intertwined with the question of Black freedom. What shows like this do is remind the public of how Black communities have historically used expression as a means to exercise their own agency. In the absence of political agency, Black men, in particular, used style to assert their autonomy. Clothing, hair, etc., were the few sartorial elements that could not be sanctioned or denied to Black people even if other aspects of life were restricted or denied. I think at this moment these conversations are so timely given the renewed restrictions being placed on Black, racialized, LGBTQIA+ people under the Trump administration. The Black dandy says unequivocally that we’re here, and we’re showing up to be seen. It’s a powerful statement that contradicts the deficit model that is often placed onto Black bodies as being in states of lack, and disempowerment.
What are some of the most surprising or revealing sources you uncovered in your research?
I was truly surprised about how much of the book required me to understand American history as it intersected with Canadian history.
For example: the songs that came out of the War of 1812 became some of the first popular songs in America. Communities in Ontario, Québec and New Brunswick were conflicted in their allegiance to the North and South during the American Civil War. There were a lot of Confederate sympathizers in Montréal and New Brunswick. All that really surprised me because that’s not history that we learn about in school.
I was also surprised by the number of Canadians who became stars on the American minstrel stage. There was Toronto-born Colin “Cool” Burgess (1840–1905) who performed in blackface on stages across Canada, the U.S. and Britain. There was Québec-born Calixa Lavallée (1842–91), who would become best known as the composer of “Chant national” (“O Canada”), a song he wrote after performing across the U.S., and as a blackface minstrel musician for the Union Army during the Civil War. These two figures have been written about before, but authors often excused or tried to minimize their participation in minstrel shows. It’s likely because there are no pictures.
What I’ve been surprised about most is how so much of this history has been hidden in plain sight. The book reflects my ability to make connections, explain complex narratives across time and space, and to intertwine narratives that have, before now, been kept separate. It was quite a feat!

Black style and resistance: The Met Gala, dandyism and blackface in Canada

April 29, 2025 • My Project Name

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