Title: Negative Racial Stereotypes and Their Effect on Attitudes Toward African-Americans  - Scholarly Essays - Jim Crow Museum - Ferris State University
Headings: Negative Racial Stereotypes and Their Effect on Attitudes Toward African-Americans
Negative Racial Stereotypes and Their Effect on Attitudes Toward African-Americans
Stereotypes:
Negative Racial Stereotypes and Their Effect on Attitudes Toward African-Americans
by Laura Green
Virginia Commonwealth University
Description of the Problem
Sambo
Jim Crow
The Savage
The Mammy
Aunt Jemimah
Sapphire
Jezebelle
Stereotypes today
Conclusion and Implications
References
VCU links

Content: However, it was not only slave owners  who adopted the Sambo stereotype (Boskin, 1989). Although Sambo was born out of a  defense for slavery, it extended far beyond these bounds. It is essential to realize  the vast scope of this stereotype. It was transmitted through music titles and lyrics,  folk sayings, literature, children's stories and games, postcards, restaurant names  and menus, and thousands of artifacts (Goings, 1994). White women, men and children  across the country embraced the image of the fat, wide-eyed, grinning black man. It  was perpetuated over and over, shaping enduring attitudes toward African-Americans  for centuries. In fact, "a stereotype may be so consistently and authoritatively transmitted  in each generation from parent to child that it seems almost a biological fact" (Boskin,  1986, p. 12). Jim Crow
The stereotyping of African-Americans was brought to the theatrical stage with the  advent of the blackface minstrel (Engle, 1978). Beginning in the early 19th century,  white performers darkened their faces with burnt cork, painted grotesquely exaggerated  white mouths over their own, donned woolly black wigs and took the stage to entertain  society. The character they created was Jim Crow.