A Call to End Blackface Performances in the Iranian Community

Siyah bazi - “playing black” literal translation and Persian for blackface performance, is a practice intended as comic entertainment, that is performed by a group of white performers with black-painted faces, often the material caricatures the singing and dancing of enslaved Black people. To date, siyah bazi or blackface is a tenacious and harmful practice within the Iranian community including in its diaspora. A practice that many to this day still justify under the guise of customs and traditions.

Join the Collective in shifting our perception of self and opening it to the world.