Just a quick post on two Warner Brothers cartoons from the forties and their reception today. They’re from the 1940s, and both present black people in ways that would be unacceptable today. One is much worse than the other, but it’s the less nasty one that takes all the heat.
“Coal Black and de Sebben Dwarfs” is a spoof of Snow White with all-black characters. This isn’t a problem in itself, or we’d have to protest against The Wiz. The difficulty is that WB cartoons always drew characters as caricatures, and the ones in this cartoon draw on minstrel-show blackface. It wasn’t done to be offensive; it’s just what the Termite Terrace cartoonists did whenever they drew people. “So White” is quite sexy, and the jazz music makes for a lively short. The dwarfs are “in the Army now.” In a twist ending, it’s a dwarf rather than the prince who awakens So White with his kiss, insisting that how he did it is a “military secret.”
The US armed forces were still segregated in World War II, but black people got to participate in combat roles more than in any previous war. In World War I many blacks were conscripted, but they were mostly put into supporting rather than combat roles — literal slave labor. This cartoon made a positive point by reminding the audience of black soldiers’ contribution to the war. While the caricatures are offensive, the protagonists are likable, and I like the cartoon. I couldn’t find a full version of it on YouTube, except for one with dreadful picture quality.
There is one racist bit in the cartoon, but it’s not directed at blacks. “Murder, Inc.” advertises that it kills “Japs FREE.” Granted, this was during the war, but the offer doesn’t cover Germans or Italians. America put US citizens from Japanese families into concentration camps.
The other cartoon is “All This and Rabbit Stew,” which is more offensive yet generally gets a pass. I found it on a “Cartoons for Kids” channel on YouTube! Bugs Bunny is up against a black hunter who’s like Elmer Fudd, only even slower-witted. Bugs calls him “Sambo” (a point which most of the discussions I’ve seen on the Web avoid mentioning); that’s cut from the YouTube version I saw. At the end, Bugs gets the hunter to gamble away his clothes, playing on the “Little Black Sambo” story and the stereotype of black people as gambling addicts. It’s a lot worse than anything in “Coal Black.” Warner Brothers has pulled it from circulation, but it doesn’t get the same intensity of reactions as the other cartoon. A lot of people are more concerned with appearance than content, I guess.
It’s been a long time since I’ve seen these cartoons in their unredacted form; apologies for any lapses of memory.