Tyler Bozak goes blackface
By Cam Charron
11 years ago
Nobody’s perfect, but I figured I’d leave this image up. Tyler Bozak tweeted out the picture, then deleted, but it was caught by a Leafs fan who posted it on Tumblr. Not too much to write, considering Thomas Drance at Canucks Army wrote the necessary words last year:
Here’s the point to me: blackface halloween costumes are racist at worst, and woefully ignorant at best. They’re in indefensible poor taste and any smart person knows it. There’s context here though, hockey players and the world they inhabit isn’t always enlightened. Just based on Bissonette’s usually excellent twitter account you can infer some borderline medieval attitudes towards topics like in-game toughness, and women. Up until tonight I wouldn’t have included “ethnic minorities”(*) on that list, but the fact that one of the most “with-it” NHLers wasn’t wise to the shit-storm that would ensue when he tweeted out a photo of a teammate in blackface is baffling, revealing and sad.
Those words will live on in infamy across this network. There’s no article here, it’s been written already. Keep the comments clean.
Meanwhile, i’m reminded that Bozak and Darryl Boyce have done something like this. I can’t find an image, but two halloweens ago, they dressed up as the Jamaican bobsled team from Cool Runnings, according to this Tumblr post and a few people from Twitter.
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