Intro to Media Production

The movie “Ethnic Notions” starts off with how they molded the characteristics of Black Americans. Blacks were conformed names such as “the mammy”, “the pick ninny”, “the coon”, “the sambo” and “the uncle”. The mammy was the caregiver and ruler to her kids, the pick ninny which just meant dark-skinned children, the coon was another word for nigger, the sambo was the laughing and irresponsible ma and lastly the uncle was the trustworthy one and not a threat to whites. All these names that were conformed of the Black American community, as a whole is what created black prejudice. This movie stereotype of Blacks influence how whites perceive Blacks

The different types of stereotypes highlighted was shown throughout the entertaining T.V. shows portraying Blacks as naïve and ignorant. They also portrayed Blacks as servile and lazy. Women were the house servants and were perceived to be the controller. Women weakened black males of America society. The narrator indicated how inferior they were. With those shows and advertisements, they gruesomely mimicked blacks with big lips and protruding eyes, enjoying serving whites. Lastly, a stereotype highlighted was that Blacks were brutes and a challenge to the political system and were an offense to civilization. Blacks were viewed as subhuman, animal like and savage.

A stereotype that is shown in the movie is the blacks attending whites with a great servitude. Based on this movie, it portrayed Blacks to be simpleminded and unsophisticated. These characteristics that were stereotypes related to how slaveholders perceived them to be. Whites thought “slavery must be a good institution if the slaves were happy and the masters were kindly.” This relates to the movie The Butler, in this movie the actor, Forest Whitaker gets a job as a butler at the White House. He was proud to serve whites in the White House and thought this job was a once in a lifetime job. His performance at work got him many promotions, he was happy to...