Watching the film Ethnic Notions makes you realize how prevalent racial stereotypes were in the Antebellum and Reconstruction periods. This film opens up the eyes of many people, showing that racial stereotypes were prevalent through television, radio, news, cartoons, and all over society. One example of how socially accepted racism was is that there was a Hollywood blockbuster centered around black people going berserk and killing whites. Since we live in this time where there is much more racial equality, many people feel comfortable when people talk about racism because it isn’t so much in our faces today. However, in watching this film shows how deeply rooted racism is, and that we still have a ways to go in eliminating it. After the Civil War, most people would think that supporters of racial stereotypes such as the Jim Crow acts were in the minority, but instead the majority of the populace believed in white superiority, just because it had been shoved in their faces their whole lives. This is extremely tragic in how so many people could believe in this inequality. Not only misinformed people believed in racism, but it was the majority of the entire population because racism was all over the place. People didn’t bat an eye at awful things such as the lynchings and the Jim Crow laws. Because of how prevalent and socially accepted racism was, possibly even people of today could become brainwashed by the bombardment of stereotypes in movies, cartoons, the news, and all other sources of media. Many people even thought that the slave system was good because of misconceptions that it “rescued” the poor brutes and they were happy being subservient. The film Ethnic Notions looks at how commonplace racial stereotypes were in the past, and fosters more understanding of how people could believe in racism in the past and how much work we still have today to get rid of stereotypes for good.
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