Ethnic Notions (1986) - full transcript

"A is fer Aunty, de oldes' er all.

She rocks all us chil'ren
ter sleep in her shawl.

D is fer Daniel, who tends ter de door.

He took care of massa,
way back 'fore de war.

F is fer Felix, who won't do no work.

He's lazy and shif'less
and ready to shirk.

Z is fer Zonia, chunky and small,

but here come de Missus
so I guess dis am all."

Listen, Mammy,
that ain't no way to wash clothes.

What you all need is rhythm!

W-W-What do you all mean, rhythm?



I'll show you what I mean.

The mammy, the pickaninny,

the coon, the sambo, the uncle.

Well into the middle of the 20th century,

these were some
of the most popular depictions

of Black Americans.

Rubbly-ub-dub!

Rubbly-ub-dub.

She rubs and rubs her knuckles
right on down to the nubs, yeah!

By 1941, when this cartoon was made,

images like these
permeated American culture.

These were the images
that decorated our homes,

that served and amused and made us laugh.

Taken for granted,



they worked their way
into the mainstream of American life.

Of ethnic caricatures in America,

these have been the most enduring.

Today there's little doubt
that these images

shaped the most gut-level
feelings about race.

When you see hundreds of them,
in all parts of the country,

persisting over
a very long period of time,

they have to have meaning.

They obviously appeal to people.

They appeal to the creator,

but they appeal also to the consumers,
those who read the car —

look at the cartoons, or read the novels,
or buy the artifacts.

It is not just that it's in the figurines,

and in the coffee pots and so on.

It is that we are seen that way,
perceived that way,

even in terms of public policy,

and that our lives are lived
under that shadow.

And sometimes we then
even come to believe it ourselves.

Blacks don't really look like that.

So why is it so appealing to people

to think they look like that
and to pretend they look like that

and to like to look at icons
that look like that?

You look at them often enough,

and Black people begin to look like that,
even though they don't.

So they've had
a great impact on our society.

They therefore tell us
both about the inner desires

of the people who create and consume them,

and also they tell us about
some of the forces that shape reality

for large portions of our population.

Well, now, chillun,

tonight ol' Uncle Tom
gonna tell you the real true story

'bout Uncle Tom's Cabin.

Now, uh, this is the...

Contained in these cultural images

is the history of our national conscience,

a conscience striving
to reconcile the paradox of racism

in a nation founded on human equality,

a conscience coping with
this profound contradiction

through caricature.

What were the consequences
of these caricatures?

How did they mold and mirror
the reality of racial tensions in America

for more than one hundred years?

♪ I got a hat on my head
Shoes on my feet ♪

♪ So what need I care ♪

♪ For I'm the luckiest coon in this town ♪

In the early 1900s,
images and songs portrayed

a simple, docile, laughing Black man —

the sambo.

This image became
one of the classic portrayals

of Black men in film.

Carefree and irresponsible,

the sambo was quick to avoid work

while reveling in the easy pleasures
of food, dance and song.

His life was one of childlike contentment.

I don't care nothing
for no Louis Armstrong.

Doggone it, can't this boy go to town!
Listen to this.

Come away from that durned box.

Well, can I help it
'cause I got a ear for music?

Yeah, that all youse got
is a ear for music

and a mouth for pork chops.

You better get a desire for work.
Don't think...

The happy sambo began
his stage life in the late 1820s

when a man named T.D. Rice brought
a new sensation to American theater.

Rice was known as an Ethiopian delineator,

a white comedian
who performed in blackface.

The name of his routine would later become
the symbol of segregation in the South.

The Jim Crow was a dance
that started on the plantations

as a result of dancing
being outlawed in 1690.

Dancing was said to be
crossing your feet by the church.

And so the slaves created a way
of shuffling and sliding

to safely glide around the laws
without crossing their feet.

The slaves had a saying
for their cunning in skirting the law.

"Wheel about, and turn about,
and jump just so.

Every time I wheel about,
I jump Jim Crow."

According to legend,
T.D. Rice saw a crippled Black man

dancing an exaggerated Jim Crow dance.

Rice took the man's tattered clothes
and that night imitated him on stage.

It was an instant success,
and America loved it,

and a bevy of imitators came about.

Literally hundreds of men
tore up their clothes,

discarded their perfect dialects
of the Black man,

and began to do
this exaggerated character dance,

which became known
as the Jim Crow character.

So here we have Jim Crow — T.D. Rice —

taking a dance,
which was altered by a law,

from a man who was crippled,

and exaggerating it again,

and he had no intention
of presenting truth.

But what was bought
by the majority of the people in Ohio,

and in the Louisiana Territory
and along the Erie Canal,

was that this was a true image.

And it was a devastating image.

People in small towns
who had never seen Blacks,

and suddenly saw Rice,

bought that as a Black image.

In 1843, a group of blackface performers

joined together to form a single troupe.

Instead of delineators,
they called themselves minstrels.

The minstrel show captivated
broad audiences, mostly in the North,

and emerged as America's first form
of national popular entertainment.

Like movies today, successful minstrels

played to the tastes and values
of their audiences.

Jim Crow, reflecting popular demand,

evolved into the singing, dancing sambo.

This lighthearted figure

became one of the most potent forces
in the politics of slavery.

The minstrelsy era
really took off at the same time

that the abolitionist movement took off.

As there were people
working to end slavery,

people working to eradicate slavery,

there were also people
increasing the exaggerated portrayals

that we find in the minstrel material.

Minstrel caricatures
mirrored the prevailing belief

that slavery was good for the slave

since it drew upon his "natural"
inferiority and willingness to serve.

Slaves were content.

The proof was often in the image
of the happy sambo.

The old plantation was presented
as a kind of paradise.

White Americans were being
constantly bombarded

with the image of happy slaves,
is what it amounted to.

So slavery must be a good institution

if the slaves were happy
and the masters were kindly.

And so, that whole cultural image

of a benign, beneficent institution
was projected constantly

in the period immediately
before the Civil War.

So blessed
with moderate work, with ample fare,

with all the good
the starving pauper needs,

the happier slave
on each plantation leads.

I am quite sure
they never could become

a happier people than I find them here.

No tribe of people have ever passed
from barbarism to civilization

whose progress has been
more secure from harm,

more genial to their character,

or better adapted
to their intellectual feebleness,

than the Negroes.

Oh, hand de banjo down to play!

We'll make it ring both night and day!

And we care not what de white folk say!

They can't get us to run away!

Time and again,
these sentiments were expressed

in the popular songs and novels
before the Civil War.

For many Americans, North and South,

the myth of Sambo resolved
both the moral and political conflict

of allowing slavery in a free society.

On the one hand, whites liked to
think of their Blacks as sambos

in the antebellum period,

but they could never have operated
plantations with sambos

and they knew that.

The slavery debate grew
more heated as the Civil War approached.

Minstrels, playing
to conservative sentiment,

turned their attention
to free Blacks in the North,

and a new character appeared
beside the Southern sambo —

Zip Coon.

Transcendentalism is dat —

dat spiritual "c-c-cognoscence"
of the psychological "irrefragibility"...

A dandy and a buffoon,
Zip Coon's attempts to imitate whites

mocked the notion of racial equality.

Together, Zip Coon and Sambo

provided a double-edged
defense of slavery —

Zip Coon, proof of Blacks'
ludicrous failure to adapt to freedom,

and Sambo, the fantasy of happy darkies
in their proper place.

♪ I got to take down de judge's clothes ♪

♪ Got to take 'em in de house, yes, Lord ♪

♪ Got to get out that old ironing board ♪

♪ Fix 'em up for de judge to wear ♪

When this film
was released in 1934,

the Black mammy had become
such a staple figure

in portraits of the Old South,

it was hard to imagine
a Southern home without her.

Praise the Lord! Mr. Jerome!
Is you here or is you ain't?

- Hi, Aunt Dilsey!
- How come you here?

Like the happy sambo,

the mammy emerged as a defense of slavery.

Plantation novels and minstrel shows
presented her as fat, pitch-black

and happily obedient
to her master and mistress.

You stay here.

Us is gonna kill
the high-steppinest rooster in the yard.

And a great big bowl
of milk gravy and grits.

And waffles?

Don't you worry none, honey.
You is home now.

♪ Mr. Jerome's home, Mr. Jerome's home ♪

She was always presented
as docile, loyal, protective

of the white house, the big house,

an indication that she understood
the value of the society.

She's presented almost
as an antithesis of the white lady,

the person who does not have
the qualities of fragility and beauty

which would make her
valued in the society.

With her hair hidden
beneath a bandana,

her ample weight, dark skin
and coarse manners,

the mammy was stripped of sexual allure.

Faithfully, she served
the master's household,

in popular fiction and theater,

but here, her presence
never evoked sexual tension.

If the mammy were to be a sexual being,

which of course in reality she was,

but if she were to be that in myth
and in fiction and so on,

she would become a threat
to the mistress of the house.

She would become a threat
to the entire system.

Because she would then be
capable of being desired

by the master of the house.

We know from reading the diaries
and the letters of slave mistresses

that this is very often the case,

and created much disruption, much friction

in this supposedly happy plantation system
the planters wanted to project.

♪ A brand new red bandana
Around Mammy's head ♪

♪ You couldn't miss the color
'Cause it surely am red ♪

♪ Come on and shake your feet ♪

♪ Oh, honey, shake your feet ♪

♪ This is Mammy Jinny's jig ♪

While happy in her subservience to whites,

the mammy was portrayed quite differently
in relations with her own family.

In your usual setup
in American society,

the person who controls is the male.

The mammy is presented as the controller.

We are indicating "how inferior we are,"

that men are weak and women are strong,

the very opposite of the way
it's supposed to be,

according to the societal norms.

So the mammy strikes
at two important concepts of gender

in antebellum society.

She is strong, asexual, and ugly

when a woman is supposed to be
beautiful, fragile, dependent.

She is a controller of her own people,

of the males in her own society,

uh, when the female should be
dependent and subordinate,

an indication, clearly,
that Black people can't make it.

Freedom brought hope
to Black Americans.

Millions of emancipated slaves
were inspired by the promise of equality.

But this promise was betrayed.

Those who wanted
to reestablish firm white control,

who wanted to maintain
white supremacy by any means possible,

used the argument
that what had happened was that Blacks,

no longer under the benign or beneficent
or kindly guidance of whites,

were reverting to savagery.

Political debate
manipulated public fears

about the so-called "Black menace."

Old stereotypes were adapted
to the new politics.

Increasingly,
Blacks were identified as brutes.

"The states and people
that favor this equality

and amalgamation
of the white and Black races,

God will exterminate.

A man cannot commit so great
an offense against his race,

against his country, against his God,

as to give his daughter
in marriage to a Negro, a beast."

This climate
of racial hysteria was seen

in every aspect of popular culture.

The best example of this

was in the writings of Thomas Dixon
in his novel The Clansman,

which then later became
a hit Broadway play

and was finally adapted
as the most successful

of early American motion pictures,
The Birth of a Nation.

Described by President Woodrow Wilson

as "history writ in lightning,"

Birth of a Nation captured on film

the classic caricature
of Blacks following Reconstruction.

Here Emancipation was viewed
as a tragic mistake.

It had ended slavery and let loose
Blacks' wildest passions.

Brute Negroes,
played by whites in blackface,

pursued white virgins.

These images were guaranteed
to incite racial violence.

But more, they justified it.

Earlier, we wouldn't have gotten
an image of a brute Negro

because this wouldn't have helped
in the defense of slavery.

Uh, to suggest earlier too much
that there were people

who were very, very rebellious

would've suggested that
the Blacks wanted to be free.

The image that they needed
was that the Blacks

were docile in antebellum times.

During Reconstruction, the Black
is a challenge to the political system,

and they have to not only then

try to justify maybe a reason
for going back to slavery,

but they also are justifying their reasons
for killing the Blacks.

Because they are saying that the Blacks
are an offense to civilization.

"These beings must be controlled,"

is what the mythology is telling us.

And at the same time,
in a very clever way,

I think because it wants —

The planters also wanted to soothe people,

wanted to make sure that they believed
that their society could continue.

They harkened back to the "good old days,"

the good old days when
everybody is happy — the happy darkie.

Um, a way of saying,
"Let's go back to those times.

Remember those good old times when..."

♪ Oh, there was an old darkie ♪

♪ And they called him Uncle Ned ♪

♪ But he died long ago, long ago ♪

♪ And he had no wool
On the top of his head ♪

♪ In the place
Where the wool ought to grow ♪

♪ Then lay down the shovel and a hoe ♪

♪ And hang up the fiddle and the bow ♪

♪ No more hard work for poor old Ned ♪

♪ He's gone where the good darkies go ♪

The older generation were
the faithful retainers of the slave era,

and the newer generation,
however, was out of control —

the Blacks who had grown up
in the period since the Civil War

and had never known
the domesticating influence of slavery.

So you have
this two-pronged attack on Blacks.

On one hand, they're reduced
to servile, harmless singing darkies

of "the good old times"
before the Civil War,

what we really want to go back to.

And you have an attack on supposedly
what they've become now —

vicious, brutal, aggressive, violent.

America at the turn of the century

experienced unprecedented race hatred.

Violence, Jim Crow segregation, mob terror

became acceptable methods
of social control.

And always, to justify such atrocity,

was the excuse
of the animalistic Black brute.

Brute caricatures of Black children,

or "pickaninnies"
as they were once called,

showed them as victims —

victims who evoked not sympathy,

but the feeling that Blacks were subhuman.

They're always on the river,
on the ground, in a tree,

partially clad, dirty, their hair unkempt.

This suggests that there was a need

to imagine Black children
as animal like, as savage.

If you do that, if you make that step
and say that these children

are really like little furry animals,

then it's much easier
to justify the threat

that's embodied in having
an alligator pursuing the child.

"Seven little niggers
playin' tag wid bricks.

One was 'it' most all de time.

Den de was but six. Six little niggers..."

One by one,
Black children disappeared,

targets of comic violence.

The symbolism
in these images was revealing.

"Five little niggers
playin' dere was war..."

Material objects tell us

that there was still a segment
of the population at large

that was very uncomfortable
with the Black presence in the New World

and needed to get rid of them,

artistically rendering a way
of removing Blacks

so that there's nothing left.

"One little nigger in de scorchin' sun.

Soon dey was a smell of smoke.

An' den dey was none."

As America crossed
into the 20th century,

these images were inherited
by vaudeville and motion pictures.

The forms were new,
but the content was unchanged.

In the minstrel tradition,

Black roles in films
were still played by whites in blackface.

When Blacks finally began
to play themselves,

they faced a tragic dilemma.

By the time Blacks came
to the minstrel stage,

they had to perform in blackface.

So you had Black men darkening
their already dark skin with soot

and widening their mouths

and portraying themselves.

Reuben Crowder
was a Black man from the Midwest

who, by the time he came
to the minstrel stage,

had to take an Irish name

because most minstrels
were Irishmen performing Black characters.

Um, what you have here

is a weird warping of the American fabric,

when a Black man takes an Irish name

and then impersonates the impersonator
impersonating himself.

So anybody who wanted to —

who was Black
and who wanted to get into theater,

would do it like Pick and Pat,
or Molasses and January.

Do what they do.

Don't come telling me you can do
Paul Laurence Dunbar's poetry,

or James Weldon Johnson's poetry,

or Georgia Douglas Johnson's poetry.

No, nobody wants that.

Give me a coon song...

and one of these jokes.

These Black actors
perceived the minstrel stage

as a doorway, a doorway out of hunger,

a doorway out of the South,

a doorway to other opportunities.

So we have an irony or a catch-22,
as the term goes,

where we have the evolution of a people
into a theatrical workforce

at the same time that we have
a perpetuation of a stereotype.

♪ I am the happy laughing coon ♪

♪ Ha ha ha ha ha ♪

♪ Go out in the valley
And I look for the moon ♪

♪ Ha ha ha ha ha ♪

Against a broad spectrum
of time-worn caricatures,

the reality of Black life
in the early 1900s

was undergoing dramatic change.

In growing numbers, Blacks were moving
from the country to the city,

from the South to the North.

Emancipation had disrupted
the social order of the South.

Now, Black migration
and competition for jobs

threatened the status quo of the North.

Racial hostilities began to brew.

New caricatures of the urban coon emerged,

reflecting the perceived threat
of an expanding Black labor force.

- ♪ Darktown is out to-night ♪
- ♪ Darktown is out to-night ♪

Yeow! Lay your money where your mouth is.

Come on and shoot! Yeow!

♪ Darktown is out to-night ♪

♪ Darktown is out to-night ♪

♪ Darktown is out to-night ♪

Wait a minute, yo! Wait a minute!
Where'd you get them red bones at?

- What kinda dice is these?
- Don't start no argument now.

♪ Darktown is out to-night ♪

Uh-oh. Cop. Beat it, beat it.

♪ And there'll be ♪

♪ Warm coons a-prancin'... ♪

Dice, gambling,
and a penchant for razor blades

became trademarks
of these urban caricatures.

♪ So bring 'long your blazers ♪

♪ Fetch out your razors ♪

♪ Darktown is out to-night ♪

It was a variation on the old theme —

Blacks could be childishly entertaining,
and at once vicious brutes.

The difference was in the instruments
of amusement and violence.

I don't suppose for a minute
that any of you coons has got a razor.

Oh, no, no!

By the way, Captain,
can I join the army, too?

Certainly. Report to Mr. Gene.

Well, if I join the army,
can we use our razors in dis war?

Dat's it, dat's it, Cap'n!
Can we use our razors?

Well, I don't know.
I'll see about it. Giddyap.

♪ If dey let us use our razors
In dis war ♪

♪ We'd certainly carve
Them Germans to de core ♪

'Deed we will!

♪ We ain't no advertisers ♪

♪ But there'll be no doggone Kaisers ♪

♪ If they let us use our razors
In dis war ♪

I think World War I
was a watershed for Blacks.

A lot of Blacks went into that war
with great hopes.

They had been told for so long
that if they played the game by the rules,

that if they showed the white society
what they were all about,

if they made it up the hill
by their own bootstraps,

society would say, "Hey, welcome, join."

But the service and self-esteem
of Black war veterans

was undercut with caricature.

Symbolically, these images
reinforced white supremacy

by fitting Blacks within acceptable roles

as servants and entertainers.

The reality of Black servicemen
who now bore arms

and demanded the freedom
and opportunity at home

they had fought for abroad,

this reality inflamed many whites.

Race riots swept the North
each summer from 1919 to 1921.

It was a period of overt
and casual racism.

It was perfectly polite
for whites in the North,

educated college types,

to write in high-toned journals

like Harper's and The Atlantic
and Scribner's

to use words like "nigger"
and "coon" and "darkie."

♪ Eeny, meeny, miny, moe ♪

♪ Catch a nigger by the toe ♪

♪ If he won't work, then let him go ♪

♪ Skidum, skidee, skidoodle-oodle-oodle ♪

♪ But when you get money
Your little bride... ♪

♪ It's hard, it's hard ♪

♪ It's hard to be
A nigger, nigger, nigger ♪

♪ But it's hard, it's hard ♪

♪ For you can't get your money
When it's due ♪

♪ It's hard, it's hard ♪

♪ It's hard to be
A nigger, nigger, nigger... ♪

Within these distorted molds
of Black behavior,

Black entertainers necessarily had to fit

to win acceptance
from mainstream audiences.

Over time, Black performers brought
elements of humanity to the caricatures.

Still, popular entertainment
remained double-edged in its rewards,

creating personal suffering
and a cultural stigma

as the price of success.

Perhaps no more poignant example exists
than in the life of Bert Williams.

♪ When life seems
Full of clouds and rain ♪

♪ And I am full of nothin' and pain ♪

♪ Who soothes
My thumpin', bumpin' brain? ♪

♪ Nobody ♪

A tall dignified man
who spoke precise English,

Bert Williams stooped his shoulders
and learned to talk

in the minstrel imitation of Black speech.

With the final touch of blackface,

he became America's preeminent
blackface artist.

♪ Nobody ♪

Oh, I know what you're thinking.

I mean, I have heard
all the rumors myself.

It seems that this blackface makeup,
my white gloves and my comic gait

ain't the only thing
I'm becoming famous for.

Or is it infamous?

I have been trying
to finish Bert's show for him.

And, uh, my eulogy to Bert

will be to finish the finale,
you know, on his life

by elevating him to the class
of a folk artist and a folk hero

that I think that he deserves.

Well, now,
you take last night, for example.

I had just finished my show

and I was about to step out
for my evening constitution

when I came upon what appeared to be
a perfectly delightful watering hole.

So I stepped up to the bar
and I asked the man for a bourbon.

Well...

the fella didn't take too kindly
to serving a Negro.

And so, to impress his friends, he said,

"That will be $50."

Hell, I didn't bat an eye.

I just stepped up to the bar,
reached down in my pocket,

whipped out a $500 bill and said,

"I'll take ten."

You know...

it ain't really that funny.

I mean, every critic in town agrees

that I am at the height of my career.

Ziegfeld pays me $6,500 a week
here at the Follies,

and that's top pay.

But do I get top billing?

Hell, I can play before
the crowned heads of Europe,

but I can't even get a drink
in my neighborhood pub.

You know...

they got this rule at the press club

that says a Black man can't even enter

without a white host
who is willing to sign

that he'll be responsible
for the Black man's actions.

Ain't I a responsible human being?

There ain't a night that passes
that somebody don't knock on that door

and invite me over
to the press club for a drink.

Well, in case you didn't remember, buddy,
this ain't exactly my regular skin tone

and it takes considerably longer
to remove blackface than you can imagine.

So unless somebody waits around...

I wait around.

That's right.

I wait around outside the press club,

just shifting my weight
from one foot to the next

until somebody comes by and escorts me in.

All the time I'm just hoping and praying

that nobody comes out
and mistakes me for the doorman

and tips me a quarter.

You know...

it's no disgrace being a Black man,

but it's terribly inconvenient.

♪ But I ain't never do nothin' ♪

♪ To nobody ♪

♪ I ain't never done nothin' ♪

♪ To nobody, no time ♪

Toward the end of his life,
Bert Williams managed to remove

most of the offensively racist material
from his routines.

But long after his death,
the blackface tradition continued,

its dark mask now transferred
to talking movies.

I am privileged to say a few words to you

in this most modern and novel manner.

Privileged, because it's the first living
Vitaphone announcement ever made,

announcing the coming
of one of the year's outstanding pictures.

What is the picture?

Well, of course, you've guessed
that I'm referring to

Warner Bros.' supreme triumph,

Al Jolson in The Jazz Singer.

When Al Jolson made
his film debut in The Jazz Singer,

Hollywood had emerged
as the dominant force

in popular entertainment.

By 1927, more than 26 million Americans
were going to the movies each week.

What they saw reaffirmed
the tradition of blackface entertainment

that had prevailed since slavery.

Why should hundreds of thousands,
perhaps millions over the years,

of white people
in all parts of the country

have gone to theaters and watched
white men pretend they were Black?

I think in part, what they were watching
was more complicated

than merely whites
masking themselves as Blacks.

They were watching whites...
release themselves as Blacks.

♪ Mammy ♪

♪ Mammy ♪

Suddenly these whites,
who were just like them,

could dance and sing
and show emotions openly

and cry and laugh.

I think there was a kind
of cathartic about this.

And I think Blacks have played
that role in this society.

They have been a kind of surrogate.

Mammy, I'm comin'!

Oh, God, I hope I'm not late!

Mammy, don't you know me?

It's your little baby!

♪ I'd walk a million miles
For one of your smiles ♪

♪ For my ma... ♪

♪ Mammy ♪

From the '20s
through World War II,

blackface permeated motion pictures.

When this mask was abandoned,

its imprint still warped
film images of Blacks,

even when Blacks played themselves.

Take this dime, now,
and hurry on back to town

and get me that beef liver.

- All right, sir.
- Hurry up, now.

All right. I'm practically runnin' now.

You gonna put your shoes on?

Well, I'm savin' 'em
in case my feet wear out.

And then I'll have 'em.

It's all gone!

Of all media, cartoons provided
the best form of racial caricature.

Just when I get misery in my feet!

In this fantasy world,

physical distortion and violence
were comical.

Before you die,
you can make one last wish.

Yeah? Well, uh, let's see now.

I wish, um...

I wish, um...

♪ I wish I was in Dixie, hooray, hooray ♪

♪ Oh, Camptown ladies sing this song
Doo-dah, doo-dah ♪

♪ The Camptown racetrack five mile long ♪

Fantastic, isn't it!

♪ Gwine to run all night
Gwine to run all day ♪

♪ I'll bet my money on a bobtailed nag ♪

♪ Somebody bet on the bay ♪

♪ Oh, tiger ♪

♪ Let's do that jungle dance ♪

Together songs,
books like Little Black Sambo,

and moving pictures captivated the young.

But more, they shaped impressionable minds

to view stereotypes
as not only acceptable, but funny.

And Big Black Jumbo,
coming home from his work

with a brass kettle
under his arm for Black Mumbo,

saw what was left of the tigers and said:

"What elegant melted butter."

And when Black Mumbo saw
the melted butter, she said:

"Now we'll all have
pancakes for supper."

I'm Little Black Sambo
and it's my birthday,

and I'm gonna eat 169 pancakes.

♪ There's gonna be pancakes today ♪

Businesses, too, profited from
the public's affection for these images.

Pancakes, beans, syrup,

tobacco, oysters —

Blacks appeared on these and more

in product labels
and household knickknacks.

The cumulative effect of these images

produced over and over again,
seen over and over again,

images that are notions in the home,
merely amusing notions,

become really destructive stereotypes,
notions of the mind.

How did these images
shape enduring attitudes

toward Black culture,
behavior, appearance?

Her cheek, her chin, her neck, her nose.

This was a lily, that was a rose.

Her bosom, sleek as Paris plaster,

her upturned bowls of alabaster.

This was the standard of beauty
once heralded in America,

a standard inherited from Europe.

Against this image of perfection,

Africans and African-Americans
were compared.

Historically, these images
reinforce the psychology

that Black is ugly.

To be natural, or to be yourself,

or be the way you were presented
in this world, is ugly.

My lips don't look like
large pieces of liver.

My eyes aren't snow white

or bulging in a frightening appearance.

I wear my hair natural,
but it isn't standing all over my head

as though I'm wearing a fright wig.

It's a total distortion
of the Black image.

In these images,
a subliminal message is clear.

We can see how the portrayal
of distinctive physical features of Blacks

become not only laughable but grotesque.

Cartoons like this popularized the belief

that Black Americans
had descended from savages.

To use the 19th-century cliché
which prevailed almost up to our own time,

Africa was "the dark continent."

It was the place where civilization
had made the least progress.

Indeed, it was the center
of anti-civilization,

or primitivism of all — of all kinds.

According to myth,
slavery, then segregation

had managed
to domesticate Black Americans.

But without white control,
Blacks reverted to savagery.

In the 1920s and '30s,

the savage stereotype
acquired a new dimension.

Look here, white man. I comes and I goes.

- And that's my business.
- Oh!

Not afraid to stand up to your betters
and tell 'em what's what, eh?

There was a lot of talk
about "the new Negro" during the 1920s,

of Blacks being able to assert
their manhood and their independence.

But at the same time, there was a strain
of the older ideas that persisted,

the idea of reversion to savagery,

except that savagery was now redefined.

Fire again! Empty your guns!

Don't you all knows I've got a charm?

Takes a silver bullet
to kill Brutus Jones.

A very good example of this
would be The Emperor Jones,

the sort of notion that if Blacks
were true to themselves,

they would be noble savages, perhaps,
but still savages.

So again you're dealing with a stereotype,

except you're taking
the stereotype of the Black savage

and you're kind of giving it
a more positive evaluation.

Oh, Lord, Lord! Yes, sir!

The more comforting images
of the mammy, sambo and uncle

posed no threat.

Happily they entertained and served.

Through this romantic fantasy,

generations of Americans
from the Civil War to this day

escaped concern
or responsibility for racism.

Now it's way down south in Dixie,

where dancing is
a natural heritage of the Negro.

From the beginning,

popular entertainment was dominated
by dancing, singing darkies.

Take your partners for the cakewalk!

First couple, promenade!

From the cakewalk to the jitterbug,

an image was forged that Blacks,
with inborn rhythm and musical talent,

were indifferent to poverty,
subservience, segregation.

As slaves, they danced
even at their own auction block.

Blacks' greatest joy, however,
came in providing services to whites.

Even their clothing revealed
delight in their inferiority.

They are only portrayed in full clothing

that's neat and attractive to look at

if they're wearing a uniform of some type,

and a part of the uniform is a big smile.

The smile says to the person
looking at the object,

"This man's happy to carry my bags.

This woman is happy to make my pancakes.

These people are happy to spend
their lives serving the white population.

They're happy to be confined in this way,

and never devote any energy

to thinking about themselves
as oppressed."

♪ Darkies never dream ♪

♪ They must laugh and sing all day ♪

The civil rights movement
brought deep contradictions in America

to a head.

Restrictive molds,
cast before the Civil War,

finally began to crumble,
one hundred years later.

♪ When you're reaching for a star ♪

♪ Darkies never cry ♪

♪ Who would ever hear our sad lament? ♪

In the end,
Ethel Waters' melancholy song

yielded to a more triumphant call.

And so this afternoon, I have a dream.

It is a dream deeply rooted
in the American dream. I have a dream.

♪ Darkies never dream ♪

The sons of former slaves
and the sons of former slave owners

will be able to live together as brothers.

I have a dream this afternoon.

♪ Gabriel will redeem ♪

♪ On ♪

♪ That judgment day ♪

They will be judged on the basis
of the content of their character,

not the color of their skin.

I have a dream this afternoon!

♪ That's why darkies ♪

♪ Never ♪

♪ Dream ♪

I have a dream this evening

that one day we will recognize
the words of Jefferson

that all men are created equal,
that they are endowed by their creator...

By the mid '60s,
world attention was focused

on the brutal reality of American racism.

In this climate of national embarrassment
and gradual reform,

happy images of the past rang hollow.

Slowly, popular culture adapted
to the new tide in politics and attitudes.

♪ Turn me around, turn me around ♪

♪ Ain't gonna let nobody turn me around ♪

♪ Keep on a-walkin' ♪

♪ Keep on a-talkin' ♪

♪ Marching up to freedom land ♪

- ♪ Freedom, freedom ♪
- ♪ Freedom, freedom ♪

By the late '60s,
the more extreme caricatures

had begun a slow death.

But did this mean an end to the more
subtle forms of racial stereotyping?

The images of the past, I think,
are still with us.

They may be altered in some ways
and used in different ways.

One example of this would be the figure
that might be called the Black Rambo.

This is the Black cop,

or the Black detective,

or the Black sidekick of
the white detective, whatever it might be,

who is engaged in fighting
the forces of evil.

The reason I say that this goes
back to the old stereotype

is that there's an emphasis
on violence and brutality.

It's as if these characters,

as opposed to at least
some of the white characters,

are given a license to be
even more violent than the white heroes,

that the filmmaker
or the maker of the TV program

is sort of capitalizing
on a stereotype of Blacks

as being violent and brutal,
even though now they're on the right side.

When I look at the material
from the 1970s and 1980s,

I basically see the same thing
I see in the earlier materials.

I see greeting cards
with big, heavy mammies on them.

I see TV programs

with a mammy figure in the household.

I see Black comedians

playing the role of the minstrel
or the buffoon in movies and so forth.

I have students, both Black and white,
who believe these images

because it has become a thread

throughout the major fiction, film,
popular culture, the songs,

even the jokes Black people
make about themselves.

It has become a part of our psyche.

It's a real indication that
one of the best ways

of maintaining a system of oppression

has to do with
the psychological control of people.

Mammy.

Sambo.

Pickaninny.

Coon.

Uncle.

The great-grandparents
of many modern images of Blacks,

these caricatures did
as much harm as any lynch mob.

True, their hurt was often indirect.

Yet because of this,
they left wounds that have proved

far more difficult to heal.

These are their descendants.

As we turn to contemporary culture,
how will we judge?

What do these images reveal
about our innermost fears,

our hopes, our most enduring fantasies?

There is nothing wrong with tap dancing.

There is nothing wrong
with using your voice

and your body as a musical instrument.

It is the laughter and the music
and the dancing

at the exclusion of dramatic images,

of realistic images,

which is at fault.

And it's this exclusion
which we hope to dissolve.