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An ignorant pastor in Bartlesville, Oklahoma, is under fire after a Tulsa activist group exposed a photo of him performing at a church event in blackface.
Pastor Sherman Jaquess’ church proudly displayed a photo of him on their Facebook page in a black afro wig with his face and hands painted black. According to the Examiner-Enterprise, Jaquess was “honoring” singer-songwriter and pianist Ray Charles at a 2017 Valentine’s Day event at his church, Matoaka Baptist Church.
The outlet reported the pastor received numerous messages and calls from people concerned about the offensive photo. Instead of apologizing, Jaquess played the “I’m not racist. I have colored friends” card.
“It wasn’t derogatory, wasn’t racial in any way, and we’re not racist at all,” the pastor said. “I don’t have a racist bone in my body. I have a lot of racial friends.”
Jaquess made matters worse when he stated he couldn’t fathom why people were making a fuss about the photo. He said playing Charles without appearing like a Black man is hard.
“We have people [who] are offended by a lot of things, but it’s hard to play Ray Charles if you don’t play a Black man; it wasn’t anything,” he said. “It was honoring to Ray Charles. We sang the song as best as we could.”
Let’s give the inerudite pastor a history lesson.
During the “Jim Crow” era, white people would perform in blackface in minstrels and impersonate “Black people,” but not in the way Black people actually act, but as caricatures. Their impersonations were based on how they viewed Blacks — as lazy, illiterate and non-human, showing the audience they viewed Blacks as inferior to whites.
So, Jaquess can tell himself he was “honoring” Charles and that he’s not racist, but his actions say something completely different.
“You can honor anyone by not putting on blackface, and he is ignoring the historical references and all of the satirical types of caricatures that African Americans have gone through in this country,” Marq Lews, the Tusla activist who created the Facebook post, exposing the pastor, said. “For him to say that’s not racist says to me that he is completely out of touch with the reality of what this world and this country has dealt with — it’s actually a slap in the face of African Americans and all people of color.”
The upsetting part for Lewis is that the man behind the Ray Charles costume is a pastor who ministers to many people.
“The saddest part is that he’s a pastor, and he has parishioners feeling as if that is OK to do these types of depictions,” Lewis added. “If he is not going to take accountability for his own actions, his parishioners are certainly not going to take accountability for his actions, which is even worse.”
Jaquess told the outlet he had “racial friends,” yet a church group photo showed many white people, not one Black person.
Furthermore, the pastor’s entire Facebook account is anti-LGBTQIA+, including drag queens.
Yet, he posted a picture of him wearing a dress for his Native American woman costume with his face painted brown for a Cowboys and Indians night event at the Falls Creek church camp.
Jaquess says his costume was unlike drag queens because he “was fully clothed.”
“Well, nothing I did was sexual,” he said. “I did not do a sexual dance. I did not have children putting money in a G string. It’s just a totally different thing.”
Jaquess clearly doesn’t know the definition of drag, which is an exaggerated form of gender expression and usually involves cross-dressing.