Bring Back the Blackface?

YouTube / <a href=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9UyJ42v-N-I&feature=related">CreditFeed</a>

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


Over at The Root, John McWhorter, a fellow at the Manhattan Institute, makes the case for re-issuing a trove of 1930s and 40s-era cartoons that are rife with racial stereotypes and outright bigotry. Warner Home Video plans to release polished-up renderings of some classic Looney Tunes offerings—minus the so-called “Censored Eleven,” which feature black characters bathed in full-on minstrelry. “Primly holding these 11 cartoons back in the vaults in 2010 makes black people look, frankly, weak,” he writes. Shorts like Coal Black and De Sebben Dwarfs and Clean Pastures (“pieces of black performance history in their way”), he argues, remain products of their tasteless time. And McWhorter compares “the lingo, butts… violence [and] gold teeth” to what you see in Dre and Snoop videos. Thanks to more diverse representations of black people on television and film, he says

—think The Cosby Show, In Living Color, Do The Right Thing, and The Wire
most people have moved on from Amos n’ Andy.

The shorts have been YouTube-able for some time. But for McWhorter, putting them out on DVD means symbolically coming to terms with an unfortunate (and inescapable) chapter of our history: 

Yes, there will be a flutter or two of protest from people who can’t take a joke even at 70 years’ remove. But the sky will not fall in, and the kerfuffle will only increase the profits on a DVD that will sell like hotcakes from minute one. And that will not be because the cartoons are racist— but because they are, in spite of themselves, one part history and one part just plain fierce.

Black people, he says, should be able to laugh away the decades-old ugliness that the cartoons represent. If something festers in the bowels of the zeitgeist long enough, McWhorter’s argument seems to go, we can just accept it as part of our embarrassing past and move on. But while the ugliness of the Censored Eleven may be seventy years old, the attitudes and carelessness that produced them persist. (Witness some of the anti-Obama placards held aloft at conservative political rallies, or tea party leader Mark Williams’ supposedly satirical screed against the NAACP.) To laugh all that away, you’ve got to have a healthy sense of irony.

No doubt, the cartoons are powerful and thought-provoking, challenging our own notions of acceptability and forcing us to relive an apsect of our past that many might prefer to forget. But let’s face it: not everyone’s ready for Goldilocks and the Jivin’ Bears. Especially racists.

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with The Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with The Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate