Ethnic Notions

The movie that we watched in class mainly focused on the evolution of African Americans in America. The time frame started to back when America was first founded as a nation and how African Americans were viewed as inferior to white, Europeans who were settling the land. The African Americans were used as slaves to do work under harsh conditions. Then it moved on to the pre Civil War era and how African Americans were viewed during that time. They continued this trend of how African Americans are viewed up until modern day.
Another aspect of the movie was how culturally, we as Americans (black and white) have viewed African Americans in different popular culture aspects, such as in music and cartoons, and even in advertising on food products, such as Aunt Jamiema maple syrup. Specific examples that the movie talked about were in the 1940’s ethnic cartoons gave African Americans big lips and a representation that they were all the same. During the time of slavery, an image that represented African Americans was the “Happy Sans Bo”, an image of a slave that was always well happy. He wore torn up clothes and did hard work, but he never seemed to dislike what he did. He was always singing and smiling as he worked. This image was shown throughout the north before the Civil War and gave the image that African Americans liked slavery and were very content with how things were. The idea was passed around that to change slavery would hinder African Americans and would actually put them into a worse spot then they were in. The reasoning behind that idea was that without slavery that African Americans would not be able to support themselves let alone their families. The movie led on that all these ideas of the Happy Sans Bo and later the minstrels and Zip Coon gave whites in the north the misconception that slaves were happy with slavery.
The real ideals of slavery must have been kept secrete to most of the northerners, for how could they possible believe that the African Americans were happy with slavery. Also, how could they believe that they would not be able to support their families and themselves. The only idea that I could think of in why they wouldn’t be able to support themselves is that at the time, racist was so strong that for a white employer to hire a black employee might not be done. However, I don’t really see how this view was thought of back then before slavery was abolished. For me to see any glimpse of reasoning for that is really a long shot.
Looking back to some of the old cartoons I used to watch when I was a child, I do remember seeing the Jim Crow Character, Happy Sans Bo, and the minstrels. At the time I never really thought anything of it and in fact I never did like those cartoons anyways, I saw them as too make believe in the fact that no one ever really acted the way that they did in the cartoon. I never saw them as racist when I was younger however. I just saw them as a cartoonist conception of how someone looked. Also, I didn’t just think it was the African Americans in the cartoons that looked make believe, I felt it was really the whole set of characters that were draw out too far fetched to be any type of realistic entertainment.
The rest of the movie classified the specific time periods and what happened in detail during those time periods. Also there were specific examples of different African American entertainers at the time, such as Bert Williams. Bert Williams learned how to speak non proper English so that he could play the part of an African American to amuse white crowds. He also had to darken his face to make it appear even blacker then it already was. The finally makeup effect that he had to do was to whiten his mouth to make it appear bigger then it was. He had to do all these things just to follow the conception of African Americans at the time.