“Ethnic Notions” And The Censorship Of The Black Image

Ethnic Notions (1986) offers a crash course on African American history, shedding light on the influence of censorship on the dissemination and production of the distorted Black image. The documentary also exposes the profound impact of these images on the perception of Black Americans, portraying them as animalistic or abnormal and reinforcing stereotypes of laziness or barbarism.

To illustrate this, the film presents a wide range of examples, including poems, films, cartoons, illustrations, and performance art from the 1800s onwards. One notable example explored in the documentary is the creation of the Mammy figure. Described as a fat, sexually undesirable, dark-skinned woman who covers her hair, Mammy is depicted as blissfully submissive to her White slave masters while exerting dominance over her Black family.

The documentary uses a scene from the film Judge Priest (1934) to support this definition. The scene features Hattie McDaniel as the maid. In her meager work dress, she happily sings about ironing clothes as she collects the master’s laundry and immediately bursts into her boisterous excitement as she welcomes home the son of her master. She is content to engage in niceties with the master’s son. Notably, she wears an unflattering work dress while the master’s son gets to wear a suit.

This portrayal serves two purposes: firstly, it perpetuates the notion that Black women were content in their bondage, and secondly, it degrades the “natural” gender roles by placing Black women in a position of authority within the family, subsuming the “birthright” of the man. This portrayal insinuates that Black people need White people to correct this failure of personhood.

However, it is important to recognize that this distorted image of the Black woman encourages the public to imagine Black women as aggressive, oversimplifies the complexities of human nature, and fails to acknowledge the diverse range of personalities that deviate from this narrow framework. By examining these examples, viewers gain insight into the method employed to morph the image of African Americans negatively.