brownface

noun

brownface

noun

/ˈbɹaʊnˌfeɪs/

Etymology From brown + face, based on earlier blackface.

1

A style of theatrical makeup in which a white person colours the face brown in order to represent somebody of another race.

  • The problem isn’t so much Lancaster’s unconvincing brownface makeup — though it looks as if it had been applied by the same heavy laborers who blacktopped Laurence Olivier for “Othello” — as it is the extremely un-Leonardian softness of his presence.2007 September 2, Terrence Rafferty, “Elmore Leonard’s Men of Few Words, in a Few Words”, in New York Times:
Related terms
blackface, redface, transface, whiteface, womanface, yellowface

Entry derived from the Wiktionary, under licence CC BY-SA 4.0 — list of authors.