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Stereotypes in Early America

Minstrel shows in early America were a controversial form of entertainment featuring comic skits, music, and dance performed predominantly by white individuals in blackface or, later, by Black performers in blackface. These performances perpetuated harmful stereotypes, portraying Black individuals as lazy, foolish, and subservient. Prominent caricatures included the "Tom," depicting a faithful, submissive man, and the "Coon," characterized as an idle fool. These representations served to reinforce racial hierarchies and justify slavery by depicting Black people as content within their subjugation.

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Stereotypes in Early America

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  1. Stereotypes in Early America

  2. Minstrel Shows • American entertainment consisting of comic skits, variety acts, dancing, and music, performed by white people in blackface or, especially after the Civil War, black people in blackface. • Minstrel shows lampooned black people as dim-witted, lazy,buffoonish,superstitious, happy-go-lucky,and musical. • Several different types of stereotypes

  3. Toms • The Tom caricature portrays black men as faithful and happily submissive. • Used to defense slavery: how could slavery be wrong if black servantswere contented and loyal? • Smiling, wide-eyed, docile, non-threatening to whites, loyal, gently forgiving • Donald Bogle: “Always as toms are chased, harassed, hounded, flogged, enslaved, and insulted, they keep the faith, never turn against their white masters, and remain hearty, submissive, stoic, generous, selfless, and oh-so-very kind. Thus they endear themselves to white audiences and emerge as heroes of sorts” (5-6).

  4. Coon • The coon was portrayed as a lazy, chronically idle, inarticulate buffoon. • Didn’t know his place: thought he was as good as a white person and “put on airs” but… • While he often spoke in a high style, he used words/phrases incorrectly (malapropisms) that undermined his intelligence

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