As a black girl, it’s just impossible for me to ignore the similarities between black face and drag as phenomenons that were/are incredibly normalized in popular culture. Both are offensive exaggerations of an oppressed class to the point of caricaturization by the oppressor class for entertainment and perpetuate harmful stereotypes. The defence line drag apologists always use is that drag is an exploration of gender expression especially for gender non conforming males who were never able to express their femininity and that’s why it’s different from black face in that sense which is just blatant racism. What they don’t know is that white performers often used the excuse of exploring their “inner negro” when in blackface and it was actually a very popular response to blackface criticism lol. And even then..why should women be mocked and made sexual objects in order for men to be able to “express themselves” it’s really just grade A sexism so many drag performers have expressed not thinking that women should participate. There is no other explanation for why drag queens are overwhelmingly much more popular than drag kings and that’s the fact that embodiments of men aren’t seen as jokes. Recently read this really fascinating paper that talks about how similar the two are I strongly recommend it