Is blackface always offensive?

[Athene]

Historical context, OP. If you're interested.
https://www.history.com/news/blackface-h...sm-origins

Excerpts below:

The portrayal of blackface–when people darken their skin with shoe polish, greasepaint or burnt cork and paint on enlarged lips and other exaggerated features, is steeped in centuries of racism. It peaked in popularity during an era in the United States when demands for civil rights by recently emancipated slaves triggered racial hostility. And today, because of blackface’s historic use to denigrate people of African descent, its continued use is still considered racist.

“It’s an assertion of power and control,” says David Leonard , a professor of comparative ethnic studies and American studies at Washington State University. “It allows a society to routinely and historically imagine African Americans as not fully human. It serves to rationalize violence and Jim Crow segregation.”

Blackface minstrel shows soared in popularity, in particular, during the period after the Civil War and into the start of the 20th century, as documented in the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture’s official blackface history. The widespread demeaning portrayals of African Americans paralleled a period when southern state legislatures were passing “black codes” to restrict the behavior of former slaves and other African Americans. In fact, the codes were also called “Jim Crow” laws, after the blackface stage character.

As society modernized, so did the ways in which blackface was portrayed. Not only was blackface in theaters, but it moved to the film industry. In the blockbuster movie The Birth of a Nation, blackface characters were seen as unscrupulous and rapists. The stereotypes were so powerful they became a recruiting tool for the Ku Klu Klan. African Americans protested the film’s portrayals and its distorted take on the post-Civil War era, yet it continued to be popular among white audiences.