As stated earlier, in areas where minstrelsy was most popular they had kept blacks out but, having done so, found themselves in a white America that could not determine its own nature, could not figure itself out. If to be white was to be privileged or free, then who does the manual labor and menial jobs in an all-white America? White Americans realized that they could not define themselves without comparisons to the non-whites around them. Without these non-whites present, white Americans were like a single finger trying to touch itself. In this way, they found themselves as much owned by blacks as owning them.
Minstrelsy offered them a way to find themselves and on their own terms. The blackened face then was an attempt to erase their race in an effort to see themselves through fresh eyes. They were saying to themselves, "If we are superior because we are white, there must be something there that accounts for it other than simple skin pigmentation. It must be something in our character and not magically bestowed upon us by dint of our lightness otherwise we are superior by complete accident or by a totally random choice of God (who could have as easily chosen someone else) rather than chosen by Him because He made us better or because He recognizes our superior character and talents. To be superior means we must conquer other lesser peoples and employ them doing what is necessary work but beneath our important station but for which they are perfectly suited."
So the audience at the minstrel show was as much a part of the performance as the act onstage. The blackface performer showed the audience a mythical black man who was innocent, child-like and at least likable if not lovable—the white people themselves before their fall into urbanization. The audience was white people in whiteface watching the antics onstage of whites in blackface with a pang of nostalgia for their lost childhoods. Here, they could set aside all their social responsibilities for a while and re-live their fun, innocent days by imagining themselves as black people living the way they thought black people lived, namely as easily-pleased and happy-go-lucky. All was well with the world after all. After the show, shouldering the white man's burden seemed a bit lighter and more purposeful. Their mission as white people seemed a bit clearer to them and they were able to make some sense of themselves as a race of white people. They could stop worrying if they were doing the right thing. It had to be right because there was no other way.
The other important thing about presenting blacks as children in the minstrel show was to always make the black man sexually non-threatening. In minstrelsy, the adult black male is a man-child whose goal is to please massa and missy while doing as little as possible to achieve it. From this, we can see that there had to be an underlying feeling of insecurity in general on the part of white males even if only mildly. The psychology behind this fear was that light-hued people tend to regard dark-hued people as sexually superior to themselves.
In the South, the idea of the sexually threatening black man was so great that preserving the purity of white Southern womanhood became a battle cry revealing both the sexual insecurity of the Southern white male as well as the moral and intellectual vacuum that was really white superiority. The idea that black men must be stopped from raping white women by any means necessary is too ridiculous to entertain seriously. Obviously, no one should be allowed to rape anyone else under any circumstances. A black man raping a white woman is certainly no worse than a white man who does the same. They may as well have demanded that black men must not be allowed to burn down apartment buildings with white women in them or be allowed to run into the streets firing shotguns and throwing firebombs indiscriminately where it might possibly injure or kill a white woman. The white supremacist argument is completely ridiculous and insulting to anyone who can think with any clarity. If this was the superior white Southern culture, it was a pitiful thing indeed worthy of nothing but contempt.
