Soon the fools will be loose again in Cologne. Carnival fans are already racking their brains about what to dress up as and rummaging through the shops to find the right costume. In a Cologne carnival shop, however, a customer has now discovered a disguise idea that can hardly be surpassed in terms of discrimination and disrespect.

In the “Karnevalswierts” shop, the woman from Cologne came across an Afro wig. But according to the usage image on the packaging, the hairpiece should not be used to dress up as a disco dancer from the wild 70s, comedian Atze Schröder or painter Bob Ross.

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Rather, the manufacturer suggests disguising oneself with it as a dark-skinned person – complete with a face painted black, red lips and a golden creole that African slaves had to wear in colonial times as a sign of their submission. This is how the woman demonstrates it in the usage image of the costume entitled “African Boy”.

This racist disguise comes as a shock to the customer. She sent a photo of it to the “Express” and denounced the “classic blackface”, in which light-skinned people put on darker make-up to appear like dark-skinned people. Blackfacing was a common practice in the 18th and 19th centuries in so-called “minstrel shows” in the United States, where white actors made fun of black people. At the beginning of the 20th century, these shows were banned in the USA, in Germany the ban came only a few years ago.

“Karnevalswierts” did not want to comment on the “Express” request as to why the carnival shop still has a racist item in its range. The wig could not be found or could no longer be found on the website.