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Thursday, October 01, 2026
After Blackface at Blue Moon, Black Performers Are Asking Pittsburgh’s LGBTQ Community to Do More Than Be Outraged
QBurgh: An alleged blackface performance at Blue Moon Bar’s weekly Open Stage Wednesday has sparked anger, grief, and calls for accountability across Pittsburgh’s LGBTQ community, with Black performers asking not only how it happened, but what will change now that it has.
It is terrible that this performance was allowed to happen, but how was it allowed to happen? This question is posed multiple times throughout the article but I’d like to pose it again. Did the audience simply sit back and watch? Did they not exclaim? Ask security? Did the host not step in? How did the host simply sit back and watch? The way in which this incident occured is foreign to me in all honesty. I’m from Savannah Georgia, a black majority city, where if this had happened at one of our clubs, the performer would have left in an ambulance. It makes me wonder if the lack of exposure to anti-black racism that a city like Pittsburgh, with its extremely small black population, experiences may be part of what lead to the passive response. When so few people encounter anti-black racism, they never consider what to do if it occurs. I don’t know for certain though.
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It is terrible that this performance was allowed to happen, but how was it allowed to happen? This question is posed multiple times throughout the article but I’d like to pose it again. Did the audience simply sit back and watch? Did they not exclaim? Ask security? Did the host not step in? How did the host simply sit back and watch? The way in which this incident occured is foreign to me in all honesty. I’m from Savannah Georgia, a black majority city, where if this had happened at one of our clubs, the performer would have left in an ambulance. It makes me wonder if the lack of exposure to anti-black racism that a city like Pittsburgh, with its extremely small black population, experiences may be part of what lead to the passive response. When so few people encounter anti-black racism, they never consider what to do if it occurs. I don’t know for certain though.
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