1

Literary Analysis

According to a December 1990 survey on "Ethnic Images" con-

ducted by the National Opinion Research Center of the University
of Chicago, the majority of respondents—both white and non-
white—believe that "blacks are more likely [than whites] to be
lazy, violence prone, less intelligent, and less patriotic." Respon-
dents also felt that blacks, more so than whites, "prefer to live on
welfare."1 However progressive our contemporary American soci-
ety considers itself in terms of effective and open communications
and diverse life experiences, preconceived notions of African Amer-
icans persist. As narrator Esther Rolle asserts in the documentary
film Ethnic Notions: Black Images in White Minds (1987), images
of blacks being lazy, violence prone, shiftless, untrustworthy, un-
intelligible, and unintelligent are historically embodied in negative
and offensive character representations:

The mammy. . . the pickaninny. .. the coon . . . the sambo . . . the

uncle: well into the middle of the twentieth century, these were
some of the most popular depictions of black Americans. . . .
[Ijmages like these permeated American culture. These were the
images that decorated our homes, they served and amused and
made us laugh. Taken for granted, they worked their way into the
mainstream of American life. Of ethnic caricatures in America, these