Everything I learned...I learned from Racist Cartoons!

For many years Hollywood has been in the business of making historically racist films. It is more common for people to be able to identify racial stereotypes in movies than anywhere else.

Something to be considered is the fact that in history it was not only in film has there been a great deal of stereotypical racism. Cartoons have been a source of racism just as long as films have been. Two of the major motion picture companies that produce and put out animated cartoons are also some of the largest releasers of racial stereotypes.

I have been able to find racial stereotypes in animated cartoons from Warner Brothers and Disney that stereotype African Americans, Arabs, Native Americans, and Asian Americans.

It is only too easy if you really stop to think about it that a majority of Disney animated films have a great deal of racism tied into its works.

Wonderful World of Racism
For all Disney's contributions to American culture, Disney children's films are not without fault. Widely accused of sexism and poor ethics, several Disney movies also express and romanticize racism, one of the ugliest traits seen throughout American history.

While it could be argued that racism can be seen to some degree or another in nearly every Disney film, some of the corporation's movies illustrate racism to a deeper or more offensive degree than others.

Released long after most of the other overtly racist Disney films, Aladdin received heat even from its first release. Perhaps the most controversial aspect of the film was a set of lines in the opening song "Arabian Nights", which is a pure example of Orientalism. The song described the Middle East as a land, "Were they cut off your ear/if they don't like your face/ It's barbaric, but hey, it's home." The line was altered slightly in the more recent releases of the film.



The film could also be considered racist in that it portrays Arab culture as deeply oppressive of women and brutally violent. Princess Jasmine is trapped mercilessly inside her palace home, and the palace guards threaten to cut off her hand at one point in the film. It might also be noted that the villains in the film look distinctly more "ethnic" than Aladdin and Jasmine, who both appear Caucasian. The message to kids: good guys are white, bad guys are not.

Disney's racism hits an unprecedented peak in Peter Pan, in which the protagonists encounter a tribe of fairy tale Native Americans. The Indians (or "Injuns" as it is pronounced) are all essentially mute except for the chief, himself a crass, inaccurate stereotype, and communicate like animals in a variety of crude grunts and mumbles. They have bright red skin, are portrayed as patriarchal and oppressive, and are very ugly.

The worst aspect of this racist portrayal is the Eurocentric song "What Makes a Red Man Red", which is sung by the chief in broken, primitive English. The song explains that "Injuns" say "Ugg" --because, according to Disney, they communicate only in grunts -- because of an occurrence when the "first brave married squaw". It gives a similar explanation for why "the red man is red", as if to imply that the default skin color is white and all variations require explanation.



Warner "Brutha's"?
“Coal Black and de Sebben Dwarfs” (1943) is an American cartoon, Warner Brothers’ answer to Disney’s “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” (1937). It is seven-minute long, set to jazz music and has an all-black cast.

Some say it is one of the best cartoons ever made, yet Cartoon Network, which owns the rights, never shows it. It was pulled from American television in 1968 and became one of the “Censored 11″.

While it is clear that it is well made and that you are supposed to be laughing your head off, it is shocking stuff. It keeps hitting you over the head with image after image of blacks as being little better than monkey men, as creatures with huge lips and big eyes. The main story teller is that of the mammy character who sits by the fire and tells the tale of So White. (This became apparent to me upon further review when I discovered...her name is MAMMY!)

The only character who looks like a black person in a cartoon and not some creature is So White, the main character (called Coal Black in the title to avoid trouble with Disney). She is an attractive character. But even she is a stereotype: she shows way more flesh than Snow White and sleeps with her would-be killers, the stereotypical jezebel stereotype.

The evil queen is a big, ugly black woman who sounds like a man. Another stereotype.
Prince Chawmin, who is the classic example of the "coon", wears a zoot suit, drives a big car and has gold teeth. As for the Sebben Dwarfs they are something less than human. The cartoon shows how far we have come in 65+ years, but also how little.

So what went wrong? Except for So White, all the black characters are drawn in blackface. No black person looks like that. Since when do they have big white lips? But for over a hundred years whites had been watching blackface entertainers - white men with black faces who “acted black” to get laughs. It became how whites saw blacks.



These portrayals may be easily dismissed as unimportant in the overall development of society's psyches. However, they have major effects on the overall perspective that people have regarding other races and their own. Many white people will retain the belief that Indians have bright red skin and don't know how to talk, and many black people may subconsciously associate African American language patterns with the lazy crows in Dumbo or the almost-human apes in The Jungle Book.