Monday, February 19, 2007

Ethnic Nations

In the film Ethnic Nations videos are shown of racism both before and after the civil war. Before the civil war films and cartoons stereotyped blacks with certain characters and characteristics. The mammy was pictured as a large woman who was always willing and wanting to serve her masters. Aunts and Uncles frequently had no teeth, enjoyed dancing around, and loved to laugh loudly and for long amounts of time. The Zambo was a stereotyped black man who was extremely lazy and only wishes to listen to music and laugh. This was followed by a theater act in which a white man covered his face black, wore tattered clothes, and exaggerated a black dance and his name was called Jim Crow.
The main difference between before and after the civil war and the freeing of slaves was that before the civil war blacks were shown as docile, happy, and content to serve their master in slavery. After the civil war the slaves were free so whites altered the stereotype to a brutal savage figure. In films like The Birth of a Nation scenes of white men painted to be black can be seen assaulting white girls to show their savage nature. Black children where continually shown as animals in the wild pictured with alligators and tigers. Older blacks were shown to dislike freedom and long for the “good ole days” of slavery.
The way blacks were shown in films was a way of propaganda for white privilege. Whites used their control of the media to force
Stereotypes on those who may not come into contact blacks. Many
People in the north during this period were not use to blacks as well as never saw them. That is outside the context of these films. The fact that this northerner where put under the impression that blacks where happy in slavery as well as savages out of it is wrong.
So why would whites want to portray blacks in these ways? By showing blacks as content in slavery helped persuade those who thought slavery was wrong that it was for their own good. When slavery was ended blacks were shown as savages to show that they could not live in a society with whites, and if they did all that would come from it is assaults on whites.

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