Stateside, blackface has a bad connotation, which makes it all the more startling to see Europeans donning it. There are, as you would expect, Sinterklaas celebrations in the United States, for instance, in Rhinebeck. No blackface there, but ample dark paint in Holland, as seen in this picture.
In Germany, we saw blackface groups in the carnival parade in Mainz, and we also saw native German blacks in white marching bands.
In January of this year, the folks of the thelocal, Germany's News in English, ran an article about a play in Berlin, Germany, which featured a blackface actor.
The theater got redfaced about this one, because the, let's say traditional, shortage of German blacks has been overtaken by demographic change, and a spokesperson for the Initiative for Black Germans called this modern day use of blackface "idiotic".
We'll end this post with a less controversial choice of purple and green face colors as demonstrated by this Swiss marching band at a carnival night parade.
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