Ethnic Notions

During Class, I watched an interesting video called Ethnic Notions and it was all about African American culture and how white people depicted African Americans. There were many stereotypes covered in the video such as a "Sambo, The Pickaninny, Urban Coon," and "Zip Coon." There were many more and the one that stood out to me most was "Mammy." The "Mammy" was like the maid of the house and there were so many things covered by the video such as if the Master of the house would develop desire and want the "Mammy" and how this would interrupt the Mistress and her family. When talking about this in the video, I basically visualized a nanny as they now have in current times. It is true that now sometimes, the Master or father of the house starts to desire the nanny. I find it very interesting that they had a "Mammy" who is almost the same as a nanny along with the same problems such as desire.

While watching the video, I found the "The Brute" a very disturbing character. The made this black person like wild looking and crazy, basically a savage who would try and rape a virgin white girl. In the movie, they showed the black man as crazy and savagely running after the white girl. The white girl jumps over the cliff and dies just so that she doesn't get raped by "the brute." The other image that was very disturbing was the part of the video where they showed the postcards where black children are naked, unkempt, and dirty as an alligator has his mouth open waiting for the black child to fall from the tree. In the time that this movie is in, they clearly had very negative opinions of black people and didn't think very much of them. African Americans were thought to be crazy, dirty, and black.

Now we know that this isn't true because an African American is just as much of a person as white people are. It's amazing to see how much the depiction of African Americans has changed over the years.