German Politician Wearing Blackface To Portray Obama Sparks Outrage

A well-known German comedian named Martin Sonneborn is in hot water over a satirical political billboard of him posing in blackface makeup as President Barack Obama.

The billboard is the latest in Sonneborn’s campaign for his satirical political party Die Partei. It’s meant to make fun of the entire German political establishment and go up to the edge of propriety – another billboard is entitled “MILFS against Merkel” and the campaign has also mocked the neo-Nazi National Democratic Party.

In a recent interview, Sonneborn said his billboard wasn’t racist. Sonneborn joked that he was “Germany’s Obama” and added he was mocking the “hype” surrounding the U.S. president. Sonneborn, formerly editor-in-chief of the German satire magazine Titanic, said he wasn’t aware of the history of blackface in the U.S. and didn’t care if anyone was upset. “No, I didn’t know that,” he told reporters. “If Americans associate it with that, then I’m sorry, but I’m not going to take it down.”

But Tahir Della, a spokesman for the Initiative for Black Germans (ISD), which tries to represent the interests of the black community in Germany, called the billboard "unbelievably hurtful."