African American Stereotyping Social Sciences Essay (Essay Sample)

African American Stereotyping
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African American Stereotyping
A significant number of the imagery work on African Americans created by white natives in the United States during the 19th century brought into play specific stereotypes. Such stereotypes included but not limited to racial stereotyping targeting African Americans due to their color. This essay offers a concise discussion of how such stereotypes promoted various ideas about African Americans in addition to various realities not addressed by such stereotypes about the same group.
The imagery stereotyping portrayed in the early American history had a major purpose in influencing the perceptions of African Americans back then. Black people were depicted and ridiculed in stereotypical images defining them as superstitious, lazy, ignorant, musical, and buffoonish. The white actors also masquerading as black people used shoe polish and greasepaint in exaggerating their lips and darkening their skin color, while wearing tail coats, gloves, wooly wigs or ragged clothing to achieve complete transformation. The key images which remain quite alive today, even though a bit powerless, include the savage, Jim Crow, Sambo, Aunt Jemimah, Mammy, Jezebell and sapphire (Green).