Mark Henry addresses DX’s parody of The Nation from the WWE Attitude Era
While speaking to Inside The Ropes, Mark Henry reflected on D-Generation X’s parody of The Nation from the WWE Attitude Era in 1998 that included Sean “X-Pac” Waltman wearing blackface to look like Henry…
“Dwayne [The Rock] didn’t like it from the beginning. He was like, ‘I don’t like it. I don’t like people dressing up like us. I don’t like people putting blackface on.’ He didn’t like it. But at that time, I was like, ‘Man, we’re in entertainment.’ It wasn’t bothering me.
He was like, ‘If y’all want to do it, then we’ll do it. But I just don’t like it. I’m just letting you know.’ Dwayne never liked it. I didn’t care because I just looked at it as being part of the work, because I knew the people, and I knew they weren’t racist.
X-Pac didn’t know until probably like a month or two after they started taking heat. Like, ‘Man, y’all dressed up like black people and you put makeup on to look like that.’ And he was like, ‘What is the big deal? We were just playing. We were acting like our guys.’ And they were like, ‘You ever heard of a minstrel show?’
He was like, ‘What is that? I don’t even know what that is.’ And I explained to him what people used to do after slavery times—dress up, put black on, make big red lips, and do characterizations of what they thought a Black person was. He cried.
He had no idea about that history, because America doesn’t teach the nasty history. They just sweep it under the rug. And then this guy finds out that what he did was some of the worst stuff you can do to people. It hurt him.
And I told him, I said, ‘Man, look, I know who you are.’ He was like, ‘Mark, I’m not a racist.’ I said, ‘I didn’t say you were a racist. I said that that situation was deemed racist, and they’re going to fight that for the rest of their careers, for their life, because it was a little bit distasteful.’
And it took for people that I know outside of wrestling to say, ‘Man, you shouldn’t have done that. You shouldn’t have let them do that.’ And I was like, ‘Man, what was I supposed to do? Just say I’m not going to go to work?’
So it was complicated. And we all learned a valuable lesson from it on both sides.”