Stereotyping has been a part of society for longer than anyone would care to admit. The idea of making a judgement of a person based off their ethnicity, sexual orientation, religion or other characteristic is rooted deep within human society. In the first few chapters of Playwrights of Color, several examples of how mainstream media has maintained and amplified different racial stereotypes are given. It is clear that stereotypes are quick and easy ways to spread ignorance and prejudice, develop discrimination and cause emotional damage and scapegoating.
Minstrel shows over the last two hundred years not only portrayed African Americans in a negative light, but, in the early 19th century, depicted slavery in a positive light. While slavery was socially accepted in the early 1800’s, clearly mainstream media was not helping the oncoming emancipation. It’s pretty troubling to think that something as harmless as entertainment can help to sustain the degradation and enslavement of an entire group of people. However, it is undeniable that theater in the 19th century perpetuated stereotyping and developed racial profiling as a social norm.
Two major African American stereotypes were given in Playwrights, both of which contributed to white America’s perception on African Americans. Jim Crow, the first developed stereotype from minstrel theater, portrayed African Americans as smiling, slow and simple people that lived a care-free life on a plantation. Zip Coon, another stereotype, was shown to be either a free African American during slavery or after slavery, an urban black person. Zip Coon retained the lazy and good for nothing tendencies of Jim Crow, but thought of himself an intellectual equal to the white population.
A step forward for equality? Not quite.
Zip Coon constantly fell short intellectually and made a fool out of himself, continued to portray black people as less intelligent and proved himself to be useless and inferior when compared to his white counterparts.
Obviously, stereotypes were not confined to African Americans as Latino people were hit hard as well. The Mexican Bandito portrayed Mexican people as angry, law-breaking dangerous individuals. Whether it be in hollywood or a simple cartoon advertisement, showing Mexicans as ill-tempered or culturally diminished, the bandito did very little for the credibility of hispanic people in society. The ChaCha Spitfire was a female stereotype which showed Latina women to be promiscuous, impulsive and extremely sexual.
Native Americans were also heavily stereotyped in media. Stories like Pocahontas portray Native American women as exotic creatures that idolize white males. While these scantily clad, American loving ladies were sure to please the largely white male audience of the theater, they also brought about a disrespect and prejudice about Native Americans. As this theater continued, Native American men were viewed as either animalistic, savage and fierce warriors or frivolous and stupid ‘Tonto’ sidekicks.
Asian Americans were unable to escape stereotyping as well. The Charlie Chan and Fu Manchu characters embodied much of the Asian American portrayal in media. Charlie Chan was a happy, hard working and quick-witted. Fu Manchu was diabolical and twisted with a hate for white Americans. Fu Manchu helped to establish a concern over the idea that Asian people wanted to take over the world, which lead to prejudice and fear that had many affects, such as the Chinese Exclusion Act.
Clearly, racial stereotypes have hurt the relationships between many different groups of people. As American media was dominated by white people over the last several hundred years, stereotypes have been targeting several different ethnicities. These stereotypes have fueled racism and discrimination that have dominated American society. While these stereotypes have certainly diminished in recent years, they are still all too present in everyday life. As the population continues to learn more about stereotypes in media, hopefully they can see how this has affected their views on different groups of people. Being more aware of how stereotypes are placed in media can help society to consciously avoid developing opinions about people based off of skin color which, I think we can all agree, would be a good thing.
It’s true that the humor at the expense of others shouldn’t be entertaining to us but maybe it’s just human nature. I don’t know why humans have the need to make other people feel different. Religion is something that we make others feel different about also along with skin color and culture.
ReplyDeleteIt was bad of the minstrel shows to show slavery in a positive light and I’m glad it was kind of phased out eventually. No matter what, it is not right to have slaves if the shoe would have been on the other foot, and white people were the slaves they would be equally as offended.
When you talk about the the stereotypes put in place for women of Latino and Native American, there almost seems to be somewhat of a trend there, being that both of the stereotypes created for the women are as them being these only sexual beings. They both were portrayed, it seems, as objects that were only interested in white men, as if white men were these perfect beings that everyone wanted to be with.
ReplyDeleteI feel like the fact that these stereotypes have continued to have an impact on people today even with media's attempt at becoming more conscious and trying to get rid of stereotypes is a testament to just how much media has affected us and how much it still does.