Film and Radio Guide (Oct 1945-Jun 1946)

FEBRUARY, 1946 FILM AND RADIO GUIDE 15 stances of such character portrayals. What the Columbia workers found (according to American Unity, June, 1945) was a constant repetition of racial stereotypes “exaggerating and perpetuating the false and mischievous notion that ours is a, white, Protestant, Anglo-Saxon coimtry in ivhich all other racial stocks and religious faiths are of lesser dignity. . . . Nonsympathetic characters were seldom A^iglo-Saxon The be havior of these fictional c/iaracters could easily be used to ‘prove’ that the Negroes are lazy, the Jews wily, the Irish superstitious and the Italians criminal. . . . Over and over again the superior-inferior connotations repeated, themselves in stereotyped dialogue and description. . . . The evidence is clear. American short story writers have made ‘nice people’ synonymous tvith Anglo-Saxons.” Textbook Stereotypes If these facts are so overwhelmingly proved against current popular literature, to what extent may they also be true of our textbook materials, some of which are drawn from just such publications as were studied by the Columbia group? Happily enough, on a comparative basis the textbooks approved for use in our English classes appear to advantage. Because the editors of school books have been more conscious of this problem than have other editors and because selection has been exercised in establishing approved book lists, the proportion of undesirable literature on the selves of school bookrooms is slight when compared with the publications on the book counters and magazine racks of commercial dealers. But whether racial stereotypes in our textbooks are many or few, the fact remains that there should, be none. Having embraced the aim of teaching our students to live together without group tensions in a spirit of understanding, harmony, and mutual respect, we cannot permit even an occasional influence to operate in our classrooms against this objective. There are forces enough outside school walls which we cannot control. Even closer vigilance is needed to guard against the dangers of racial stereotypes in our English textbooks. From the fruit of such distorted concepts about minority groups come the seeds of hatred and disunity. Why Stereotypes Slip By What causes authors and editors to err in their handling of this problem? Why have we permitted books containing racial stereotypes to remain on our approved lists? Why do many of us, although possessing warm sympathies and sincere democratic ideals, still continue to assign to our students reading matter that is dangerous and subversive? First of all, the absence of malicious intent deceives us. The wielder of a poison-pen would arouse our indignation, but the portrayer of the stereotype fails to disturb us because he obviously has no intention of fomenting discord, of slandering or misrepresenting. He doesn’t deliberately run down the poor old lady crossing the street. He is the hitand-run driver who is entirely unaware that he has bowled over the pedestrian. Sometimes even those who are champions against intolerance follow unconsciously a distorted pattern in treating of minority peoples. In an outstanding highschool reading text, prepared by an exceptionally competent and liberal group of editors, an es say declares that Negroes sing songs of contentment with their humble lot in this life, looking to the hereafter for their sustaining hope. That is the old pattern of representation followed by those who were kindly disposed toward the Negro in the days of Harriet Beecher Stowe. It is the pattern of all the humble Uncle Toms in our literature. Articulate Negroes themselves have been telling us recently that they do not welcome for their own group any larger share of the “humble lot” than falls to the fortune of any other people. Negro spokesmen have been declaring their abhorrence of Uncle Tom, whether he exists in fact or fancy. When a musical version of Uncle Tom’s Cabin came to Bridgeport, Connecticut, not long ago, the New York Times reported that it drew protests from Negro community leaders. The pattern of the Negro contentedly lullabying his woes to sleep is hardly one to repeat in a book bearing a copyright date in these 1940’s. Nevertheless, on occasion even the alert editor or author thus allows a racial stereotype to mar his work. It slips by him, and it may slip by us who teach his book. It gets by the more readily because custom has blunted our sensitivities. The racial stereotype is such a natural feature of the literary landscape that the mind’s eye unsearchingly passes over it just as the glance absently sweeps past the familiar monument in the center of a square. In the case of the Negro, who of all minority groups is the most frequently delineated in a distorted pattern, there is an additional reason for the dullness of our perceptions. When we laugh at literature’s comic Negroes, at the Rochesters and