[78-L] Racial Stereotyping.

[Donna Halper]

At 08:04 PM 1/23/2009, Earl wrote:

>Are you sure that American art forms were ALWAYS INTENDING to depict
>Black Americans in a demeaning way? Was it any different from the
>stereotyping of Jews, Swedes, Germans...whatever, in songs of the day?
>
>Yes, it WAS a racial society back then, but we must always be careful
>not to see things through OUR eyes. Some of these songs, though
>painting stereotypes, could be quite affectionate.

Earl is right, I believe.  As a media educator and historian, I have 
to warn my students not to retroactively apply 2009 horror at racism 
or sexism or any other -ism to an era when these subjects were rarely 
analyzed.  Today, we have the bloggers, and the opinion columnists, 
and the TV and radio commentators, and when they see something 
offensive, they can raise a ruckus.  But in the 1910s-40s, that 
didn't happen, for a number of reasons.  The culture was segregated, 
and in some parts of the US, it was possible to spend one's entire 
life without ever asking what a black person or a Jew or an Asian 
thought about how he or she was portrayed on the air.  Based on what 
I've read in the magazines and newspapers of that time, it seems most 
American whites just didn't think about it that much-- they had heard 
for so many years that certain traits were "natural" to certain 
ethnic groups.  In an era with little media criticism yet, and even 
less effort to understand the roots of prejudice, it's not surprising 
that white people saw no problem using the N word or talking about 
"somebody jewed me out of my money."  This was NOT an era where 
critical thinking was popular.  You learned what you were told, you 
tried to pass the test, you moved on. I just gave a talk about how 
some of those stereotypes were even enshrined in the textbooks and 
the schools and the radio educational programs -- I used some 1936 
lesson plans from the award-winning "American School of the Air"-- 
which actually had music lessons which explained about how the 
Negroes had happily worked on the plantations, singing all day, and 
had a geography lesson where one city in Africa was called 
'primitive'  because of how the native population acted, while 
another was praised because it was "the most European city in 
Africa."   I am not making this up.

And the media were often segregated too -- yes, racism was attacked 
and complained about, but mainly in the black newspapers like the 
Chicago Defender or Pittsburgh Courier and occasionally a few 
left-wing magazines like the Nation.  I can cite newspaper reporting 
from some of the best newspapers which took no stand on lynching, or 
even seemed to think it was okay under some circumstances!  The 
Boston Globe (!) praised the realism and intelligence and accuracy of 
Birth of A Nation!!!  And at the risk of seeming to generalize, 
stories about black criminals always made the white/mainstream 
newspapers; stories about black scientists or doctors or lawyers 
tended to end up only in the ethnic media.  Black entertainers and 
comics were okay, as long as they fit within the place assigned to 
them.  Okay fine, some of these performers made lots of money, but if 
they tried to speak out against racism the way Paul Robeson finally 
did, you know what happened to their careers.

Jews too had the same dilemma.  Yes, there were Jewish comedians, and 
yes some of them like Eddie Cantor took very public stands on 
issues.  But many Jews knew enough not to act "too Jewish"-- they 
changed their name, they downplayed their religious background, they 
hoped for the best, but they still ran into quotas at universities, 
in many occupations, etc, and not many mainstream newspapers defended 
them against discrimination-- only the Jewish papers did that.  Also, 
the average Jew didn't hear much reporting about European 
anti-Semitism-- Jewish community leaders in the 30s were very upset 
at the lack of media interest in the early to middle stages of 
Hitler's "final solution"  -- but their fear and worry and their 
hopes that the US would do something appeared mainly in Jewish 
newspapers.  (Yes, a few exceptions occurred-- an occasional Dorothy 
Thompson or Edward R.Murrow commentary-- but by and large, the 
mainstream media came very late to reporting in detail on the 
Holocaust, and I have lots of journal articles that today admit 
that-- but back then, even the NY Times put stories abour the murder 
of Jews on page 28.)  The public culture, and the public conversation 
was dominated by elites, who tended to have a white, male, 
upper-class, pro-business, conservative, and yes, Christian ideal as 
the norm.  So, stereotypic representations of "the other" were 
common, and with few people to overtly critique them, they were just 
accepted as part of the public discourse.  Occasionally, "the other" 
could speak, like on a public affairs show, but for the most part, 
there is a lot of evidence that the radio networks intentionally 
avoided (or even banned) such discussions-- read Ruth Brindze's 
wonderful 1937 book "Not to Be Broadcast"-- it gives a long and very 
detailed look at how the networks banned certain subjects and even 
certain words (race riots, birth control, etc) from the 
airwaves.  Sponsors disliked controversy, nobody wanted to offend the 
southern affiliates, etc.  Even newscasts were censored if the topic 
was deemed too inflammatory.

Bottom line, and I know this has been said before during this thread, 
it was in many ways a very liberating time where people heard music 
by performers of all different races and creeds, but it was also a 
very bigoted time and the bigotry was still underground and not 
usually discussed in public forums.