Harmless in its time, it has since become another victim of wokeism

I find that people who use the word woke as an insult don't really understand what it means.

Take the red pill Neo and wake up.

Wakes up to all the injustices in the world.

Noooo Neo, not like that!!!
- You mean, he woke up?
- regularly scheduled reminder that the matrix was written by at least one trans person (can't be fucked to research more than that) who outright said it's a "trans metaphor", according to the BBC.
yeah, and then they are like "wake up sheeple" and i'm like "make up your mind"

Back when it was still running I remember my Dad trying to explain to his parents how appalling it was.

Harmless to whom?

White people.

1978! Wtf?

Yes, you think this was some piece of ancient history and it really wasn't. I don't think I ever saw it as my folks wouldn't allow it and my Dad's parents would have got a flea in their ear if it was on when we were round but they enjoyed The Good Old Days and The Wheeltappers and Shunters Social Club, which also invoked the old variety show or working men's club spirit.
Wait until you find out that Butlins was still running the stage show in 1989.
- Hi-de-hi campers!

When people wax poetic about awful shit that was “harmless” what they are really upset about is that “it was harmful to a group of people it used to be ok to harm and I wish I could harm them again”

The ones who claim their rights and freedoms are being taken away are the ones who are being told "being racist isn't tolerated anymore"
I was in a bar i used to hang out in almost 20 years ago. It was kinda weird to see the same people still sitting there. There were two guys on my table that i knew from back then, but even then, not too well. They talked about how these days, they can't say anything anymore, not like in the good old days. They said it over and over, just phrased it differently every time. So i asked: sorry, but what can't you say anymore.

One of them shrugged and said: you know, things that were okay in the good old days?

Like what?

Things.

You want to be racist and homophobic, which by the way you still can, but you don't want to deal with the repercussions.

It used to be okay

FOR YOU!!
Oh no, it's nothing as introspective as that, it's a much more lazy mindless stance than that, it's just knee-jerk "They took [some thing] away from me!"

Britain didn’t vote to leave the EU for the Black And White Minstrel Show to stay cancelled

Make telly racist again!

Nothing is sacred today.

Being bit overdramatic, aren’t we?

Wouldn't make it onto this community if they weren't.

So harmless.

I . . . I don't . . . wh- . . . that's. . .

Wow.

"If it was so popular why did they cancel it" is my usual snipe.

Ffs that cancellation date is nearly 50 years ago, the fuck are you shocked it doesn't meet modern standards you decrept old bastard

this guy's move

He is the only one you don't get serious "just here for the money" vibes from.
- He's a student of "culture"
Now that's a guy that has seen almost twenty minutes of an episode of Soul Train.

Any good links to the history of minstrils and the change in cultural acceptance?

Here's an article on the Black and White Minstrel Show.

I'll have a dig around but this is the article on Minstrels from The Oxford Companion to Black British History (2007) which is concise but covers the whole history.

Worth also catching Warwick Davis' episode of How Do You Think You Are? He was delighted to discover he was from a long line of entertainers but horrified to find out some were minstrels. So they gave him a potted history of the tradition.
The US Smithsonian African American History museum has a good exhibit on the topic

https://nmaahc.si.edu/explore/stories/blackface-birth-american-stereotype

I vaguely remember the black and white minstrels being a thing, but by the time I understood what was really going on it had stopped. I don't remember enjoying it.