topic Re: Al Jolson in blackface in Content Questions

Al Jolson in blackface

xTown — Thu, 16 Jun 2016 21:16:44 GMT

I recognize that Jolson performed in blackface, and I understand the argument that "this is the album cover and it represents history", but I'm kind of sick of seeing this.

https://play.spotify.com/album/57ChWPx3JInG6eNhP900nS

Re: Al Jolson in blackface

xTown — Thu, 16 Jun 2016 21:30:39 GMT

And I also understand the censorship policy.

https://support.spotify.com/us/using_spotify/search_play/content-censor/

...but it's still gross.

Re: Al Jolson in blackface

velocetocelot — Wed, 12 Oct 2022 15:31:58 GMT

Thanks for calling this out. It's disgusting and it's all over his cover art. Shame, shame on Spotify for ignoring this.

It's part of a string of abstentions of responsibility, too: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/09/23/spotify-has-white-supremacist-problem-watchdog-says/

Would love to work on pressuring the company to remove this garbage imagery. Mindblowing that it's still up.

Re: Al Jolson in blackface

pine_tree21 — Wed, 01 Feb 2023 07:32:56 GMT

YESSSSS! I can't STAND this! I thought I was the only one having this issue. I went to try and report it to spotify a few years ago and then realized HOW HARD it is to find a good 'portal' to submit a complaint. I finally was able to send my complaint directly to a representative and I even compiled a list of each and every single album that held these offensive images so that they would know precisely the ones that needed to be 'redone'.

I think this personally goes beyond 'history/art/etc' and it is pure hate speech imagery. Not only that but given how old this artist and his music is... A LOT of his music is free domain now. I'm not even getting into the argument of 'what the songs contain/song titles' but at the very LEAST they have EVERY opportunity to be able to replace the album imagery with even just the title to the said album only, no album art, to respect this. It's not a hard thing to do and very possible.

It's been a few years since I submitted my own complaints against this (To which of course they responded 'We apologize and will look into it' and clearly essentially are doing nothing about it. I don't understand how this request is a hard one to meet. I understand a lot of album covers have offensive things on them but this one is ridiculous and can easily be resolved/removed.