Ethnic Notions

The film, Ethnic Notions, portrays how cultural representation affects society. Images and ideas may surround a “race” or group and may identify with them, but these are pretend and usually do not actually represent the individuals of a group or the group as a whole.

The images meant to represent blacks that began decades ago seem to be the most enduring images of representation. Only blacks, an oppressed race are represented in these pretend images that are most often caricatures over-exaggerating certain physical features or other features. Once these caricatures are put in the minds of people, they start to affect how they view society, or more specifically blacks. If viewers of these image representations did not perceive blacks in a similar fashion before viewing, then they are more likely to perceive them in this way after viewing the images. In older films, black men were shown as childlike characters that could not compare to the male whites that were far more mature and grown up. Blacks and slaves were often seen as happy, singing, and dancing. Several different models were used to represent blacks through the ages. These included Happy Sambo, Zip Coon, and Mammy. Since so many people saw slaves as a happy group of people they were misguided in thinking that slavery as an institution was okay then. However, slavery was anything but okay and the “happy slaves” were not happy working under the harsh conditions that they had to work under. Images such as ones displaying happiness showed a defense against slavery, while many showed racial inequality as well. With the images used blacks were seen as a “menace,” as brutes or beasts. Not proper representation or perceiving a group as inferior would lead to racial violence. Blacks were even considered sub-human, animals, or savages. Any freedoms that blacks received led to whites being angered, resulting in the before mentioned racial violence. White supremacy or privilege is a key reason for the images that described their black counter parts in a negative way. Whites also defined blacks in ways such as: “Black is ugly,” Blacks are savage,” “Blacks are happy servants.” One black man described life as “terribly inconvenient being a black man.” He also said he had no shame in what color he was.

Should our society not use images that can be directly related to any social group that might lead to a cultural representation of that group? It would be very difficult or near impossible to completely avoid using such images. Sometimes we even unconsciously use such images, and with television, the internet, and technology still on the increase there are too many ways images can be shown to society.

I think that some of the older images used to describe blacks were rather ridiculous because of the drastic exaggerations that were made to over-emphasize certain aspects of blacks and their characters. Once again though, everything is based on perception and how others perceive everyone around them. Wrong images do affect people’s views so it would be best to reduce the wrongful imaging as much as possible.