Blackface, Gender, and assimilation to "whiteness'

In Michael Rogin's "Blackface, White Noise: The Jewish Jazz Singer Finds His Voice", the author introduces an interesting argument between immigration and desired "whiteness", gender relations, and race. Firstly, he emphasizes the role of immigrants using blackface in the early to mid 20th century as a tool of assimilation, shown in The Jazz Singer. As Rogin states, in the film, "the jazz singer escapes his immigrant identity through blackface (420)." Moreover, he states that "the Jazz Singer use[s] black men for access to forbidden white women (419)." What interests me is the dichotomy between these two ideals through the use of "playing black", and the identity that white women hold in society. He touches on the idea that in becoming American, Jackie Rabinowitz must mask his "jewishness" with black features, as he "transfers his identity from immigrant Jew to American", but also by giving him access to the forbidden white woman (434).

Now this concept of blackness being an access to white women confused me at first, for the fears and stereotypes surrounding black males and white females at the time.  However, as Rogin states "the movie's romance unites the two...Jack's double gives him access both to his mother and to her gentile rival. Blackface takes Jack from his mother to Mary, expresses their conflicting demands on him, and finally acquires them both. Miming the most tabooed romance in American culture, that between black man and white woman, blackface disempowers both threatening participants...the aggressive, self-confident Jack Robin is feminized in blackface. He plays not the black sexual menace of reconstruction...but the child Negro of the restored 1920s plantation myth. In a decade that feared Jewish aggression...and when white collegians considered blacks less aggressive than Jews, the black mask of deference enforced on one pariah group covered the ambition attributed to the other (441-442)."

In essence, Jack becomes Americanized by obtaining the white woman through the performance of blackness and juxtaposition of his Jewishness. Blackface helps Jack escape from the stereotypes of his own Jewish identity, placing him in the subservient, humorous, Negro child-like facade of black identity, while at the same time allows him to cross racial and gender lines because the "blackness" is not actually apart of his identity, thus making the union acceptable. Paradoxically, "assimilation is achieved through the mask of the most segregated; the blackface that offers Jews mobility keeps the blacks fixed in their place (447)."