The black brute caricature is a stereotype originating around the time of the Reconstruction Era of the United States, which depicts African American men as inherently violent, savage, and immoral beings.
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Following the declaration of the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863 , society in the America began to fundamentally change in its structure, and debates about expanding suffrage once again came to the forefront. Radical Reconstruction began in 1867 with the passage of the 14th and 15th Amendments to the United States Constitution, granting citizenship and due process to African Americans and protecting their right to vote. Democrats and white supremacists in the South began a political response to Radical Reconstruction, claiming that freed slaves would steal jobs after migrating North, create an economic burden on whites, and threaten white society with their purported savagery and barbarism.[1] While before the American Civil War, black slaves had been depicted as childlike and inferior beings, happy in their captivity, white supremacists now insisted that freedom would drive blacks towards crimes of theft, murder, and the rape of white women.[2][3] To support these claims, newspapers would publish articles bolstering the image of black brutality to frighten and reinforce racist assumptions in white Southerners.[4]
In 1864, two white supremacists wrote a pamphlet called “Miscegenation: The Theory of the Blending of the Races, Applied to the American White Man and Negro,” hoping to frame the Republicans as attempting to bring about the mixing of the two races.[5] As a result of Emancipation and the Confederate defeat, black men, innately savage when not under the supervision of whites, would rape white women. These caricatures, among others, were used to perpetuate fear and outrage against radical Northerners, carpetbaggers, scalawags, and freedmen, but also to validate the justness of Southern racial society.
Once the Civil War ended, and the North had won, Reconstruction began. The ideas of black suffrage and black equality were raised by freemen and Radical Republicans, as a means to completely restructure the social and political society of the South. In the South, whites claimed that the Reconstruction Acts would disenfranchise the white political elite, giving blacks and poor whites control of the state governments. Whites feared that blacks would control every aspect of Southern political and social culture and society.[6]
An even greater fear, however, was the fear of black brutality. Claims of an impending race war and unsubstantiated rumors of increasing black violence served to fuel the anger and unease in the South. Riots occurred, including the New Orleans Riot of 1866, where whites – claiming that the attack was justified – attacked, wounded, and killed hundreds of blacks and their white supporters.[7] The sensationalized stereotypes of black masculinity, were continually used by white conservative journalists and politicians to display the failures of Reconstruction. In his article "Racist Reporting During Reconstruction" Cal Logue details how stereotypes of black politicians were used to delegitimize the constitutional conventions of 1867: "Reporters emphasized how blacks would "chuckle and grin," thereby exploiting the racist assumption of many whites that blacks were mere fun-loving, animal-like creatures who had to be protected from themselves. When R.H. Cain, black delegate from Charleston, spoke, writers told how his "violent and blatherskite appeal to the passions and prejudices of the ignorant raised a howl of delight within the menagerie which proved but too truly the revengeful and bloodthirsty instincts of some animals" (Mercury: Jan. 24, 1868). When white orators achieved such a rhetorical response, newsmen call it eloquence."[8]
In the news and papers, blacks continued to be portrayed as animals and brutes, committing terrible crimes against white people. Beginning in 1867, white writers claimed that without slavery to control them, blacks were becoming merciless criminals.[9] Substantiating the idea of black brutes was the idea of black men’s sexual powers. In the South, racist whites sanctified white women to the point that they were regarded as a cornerstone around which any racist act could be justified as long as it was protecting the innocence and purity of their women. They hated the idea of white women falling prey to a black man’s advances, and they even believed that white women would be unable to resist the sexual prowess of a black man.[10] Although white men frequently raped or had sexual relations with black women, which in turn created mulatto children, this only served to emphasize the idea of white womanhood, which meant that since white women had to maintain the purity of the white race, they had to be protected at all costs against the black rapist brutes.[11]
Lurid anti-black propaganda tales of blacks raping and murdering innocent white women spread like wildfire in the South, although few stories were actually substantiated. This, however, didn’t seem to matter to whites. Any black accused of rape was quickly lynched. Those tales, found everywhere from novels to scientific journals, created the impression that there was such a pandemic of black men raping white women that the lynching of blacks could only be justified.[12]
From the time of Reconstruction up to World War II, nearly 4,000 blacks were lynched. These lynchings occurred usually in or around the Southern states of America. Many of these blacks received no fair trial and were also tortured before their deaths. These lynchings also created an even darker public image for blacks. Because these lynchings were so incredibly violent and vicious, this required that black people be seen as even more violent and vicious in order to justify such violence on the account of white people.[13] That need for justification created an outpouring of literary and scientific writings depicting black men as sex-crazed and criminal.[14]
In 1900, a man named Charles Carroll wrote a book called The Negro: A Beast or in the Image of God, claiming that black people were not human, but rather animals.[15] This was not the end of men using science to substantiate claims that black people were subhuman, bestial, and criminal. In 1854, George Fitzhugh wrote that slavery had saved black men from their own brutal and degenerate nature.[16] Using Charles Darwin’s theory of “natural selection”, the so-called men of science of their time “proved” that black people were inferior to white people. The chief statistician in the U.S. Census Bureau claimed that blacks were more likely to commit crimes than whites, while in Germany, Dr. Frank Hoffman claimed that immorality was part of the racial makeup of black people.[17] High-ranking people and respected scientists in both the North and South continued to perpetuate a dark and disturbing image of black people, especially black men.
In 1898, two years before Charles Carroll’s book was published, Thomas Nelson Page wrote the novel Red Rock, which took place in the era of Reconstruction. This book introduced one of the first black brute caricatures in literature. The main antagonist was a black man who attempted to rape a white woman, and was later lynched for his crimes.[18]
In 1905, however, Thomas Nelson Page was completely outdone by Thomas Dixon, Jr., who wrote the novel The Clansman. The novel depicted black men as evil, bestial brutes who were incapable of controlling their slightest impulses, and the only group of people capable of saving and protecting white America from these black brutes was the Ku Klux Klan. He claimed the book was historically accurate, and when shown on Broadway, it became a huge hit for white audiences.[19]
Most early appearances of blacks in film were stereotypical of the old Southern caricatures.[20] Blacks played basically five different types of characters in film: Tom, the coon, Mammy, the tragic mulatto, and lastly, the black brute.[21] The black brute did not come into film until after the Civil War and Reconstruction.[22]
The black brute first made his appearance in film in the film Birth of a Nation, a film based on the earlier novel The Clansman by Thomas Dixon, Jr. Directed by filmmaker D. W. Griffith, Birth of a Nation demonstrated the bestial nature of the black man, whose violence is an outlet for his sexual frustration[23] Birth of a Nation helped to set in stone these characteristics of black people in film, a characterization of black people that has continued to modern day times.[24] Despite protests from the NAACP and black leaders nationwide, D. W. Griffith turned the movie into a national hit, a hit welcomed even at the White House. These black stereotypes appeared in other movies such as: Interrupted Crap Game, Prize Fight in Coon Town, and Chicken Thieves. In catalogs, these disturbing stereotypes were internalized as realistic depictions of African Americans.[25]
Following the publication of The Clansman, over one black person was murdered or tortured every week in the United States that year. Almost a decade later, after the release of Birth of a Nation in 1915, that statistic remained the same.[26]
Although many African Americans were lynched for specious causes rarely related to rape, and were extra-legally (illegally) lynched without criminal charges or due process[27], politicians, the press, and certain films perpetuated the imagery of the black rapist, and that lynching remained a just and justifiable means to protecting their women.[28]
The black brute caricature gained prominence during Reconstruction, the Jim Crow Era, and the Gilded Age, or whenever African Americans were making strides for equality. It was used both to justify lynchings and as a scare tactic to scare away black people from breaking the status quo or from asking for racial equality in the States.[29]
Starting around the 1960s to the 1970s, a new style of film arose, called Blaxploitation.[30] Blaxploitation films first attempted to present the black experience for black film viewers through the eyes of black heroes. Despite the possibility of representing blacks in a more positive way, these films only furthered the black brute stereotype, possibly due to the use of stereotypes and the social atmosphere of the time.[31]
Blaxploitation films such as Melvin Van Peeble’s Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song presented a black anti-white protagonist. The character of Sweet uses violence to assault white police officers and rape a woman.[32] White audiences were frightened, but black audiences flocked to see it. In the time of the Nationalist movements, black people enjoyed seeing a black man rebel against the white system, and not only that, but also use violence against whites to win against them and get away with it.[33]
Blaxploitation films portrayed black antiheroes that would be rejected in white society, either because they were pimps, drug dealers, etc. White directors used the unexpected success of Sweet Sweetback’s Badaaass Song to create their own movies. But their low-budget movies and formulaic plots only created stronger foundations for previous prejudices and stereotypes against black people.[34]
In 1980, American Gigolo was a film that had the character of a sadistic and violent black pimp who used violence against white people. In The Color Purple, released in 1985, the husband is a savage wife abuser. [Pilgrim 2000.] In Superfly, the main character was also a pimp, and in Shaft, the main character was a highly over-sexed and unfaithful man. In all these blaxploitation films, black men were shown as hyper-sexual and aggressive beings with minimum character development. Similar to how black men in Birth of a Nation were portrayed, the black men in blaxploitation films were violent and sexually aggressive[35] – in essence, they were black brutes. These violent characteristics became generalizations for the black men of the 1970s, and the black brute stereotype continued into modern-day times.
In the 1980s and 1990s, most black brutes were portrayed as violent movie props. They did not get a lot of screen time; rather, they were used to further to plot or to assault innocents. Sometimes he was a robber, other times, he was a gangbanger. Used in television shows and modern films today, the modern-day cinematic black brute was always violent and always merciless. They were used in TV shows such as Law and Order, NYPD Blue, Deadline, as well as many others. They were used in movies such as 1993’s What’s Love Got to Do With It? Black brutes in the 1980s and 1990s only served to solidify the notion in the public mind that black people, particularly black men, were by nature violent and brutish.[36] The celebrated character of Jules Winnfield, played by Samuel L. Jackson in the 1994 film Pulp Fiction, begins the movie as a murderous, foul-mouthed, Old Testament-quoting mobster, but after a near-death experience he begins to mellow and reconsider his previously brutal lifestyle.[37]
From Reconstruction to modern-day times, the media has always been ready to portray and sensationalize black brutes. In the early 1900s, before World War II, newspapers mocked blacks as Sambos and brutes. They portrayed blacks as lazy and degenerates and were always quick to make jokes and cartoons about them. Whenever a crime was committed, if a black person was involved in any way, newspapers would always mention the connection, regardless of the involvement[38]
After the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s, blacks were shown in the media being beaten and arrested by white police officers. This led whites to see black people more as victims than as brutes. Lynchings decreased, and were now held in private.[39] Legal segregation was finally allowed. However, racism, prejudices, and stereotyping of black people were not over. Presidents Harry Truman and Dwight Eisenhower, while publicly supporting racial desegregation, were privately racist towards blacks and did not approve of desegregation in schools. Presidents Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan used loaded words to speak about black people in public addresses. They denounced blacks, black criminals and ghettos to be immoral and dangerous.[40]
Following this time, newspapers were quick to fill their pages with pictures of black criminals and tales of violent black brutes. A murder in Boston sparked a public uprising and a search citywide for the so-called black perpetrator. The people of Boston easily believed the word of a white man that a black man would kill without mercy or remorse. In truth, however, the white man had been the one to pull the trigger and to frame an innocent black man. Newsweek called it “the great hoax.”[41]
In the past, the press has been quick to play the race card. They have fanned the fires of hatred and racism before, and have a tendency to focus on crimes committed by blacks. In addition, the media has paid special attention to ghetto crime, black gangs, drugs and drug dealers, perhaps in order to get the attention of the public. The media only needs to talk about the brutality of black people in ghettos, rather than trying to figure out the causes of such reported brutality.[42]
In 1993, in one month, five of the biggest newspapers and media giants were reviewed for their daily coverage of black news. While there were over 20 articles on crime surveyed, five articles on welfare and poverty, and one article covering AIDS, there was not a single article on black achievement in any of these five American newspapers.[43]
Even in modern times, the press and mass media have yet to disagree or discount the racial prejudices of the past, portraying black men as sexual and degenerate.[44] Even today, black people are regarded as potentially dangerous, and the media of today tries to contain black people into categories in their existing value systems, by reviewing the racial past, or by normalizing black people only as spectacles or in the case of exceptional athletes[45]
In fact, these brutish and violent portrayals of blacks are encouraged both by black entertainers who get money from their portrayals as well as the media. Young black men are buying into the idea that real blacks are thugs and gangsters, and studious blacks aren’t true African-Americans.[46]
In Boston, in 1989[47] when Charles Stuart accused a black man of murdering his wife, the media ran dozens of scare stories and the police used brutality and scare tactics to interrogate black men before Charles Stuart picked Willie Bennett, an ex-convict who was the perfect scapegoat. A relative who knew that Charles Stuart was the real murderer began to confess, and Charles Stuart committed suicide. In Boston with its racial tensions, the use of the black brute caricature was another example of how racism still exists in America.[48]
Additionally, in 1994, a South Carolinian woman named Susan Smith claimed that a black man had carjacked her car with her two sons still inside. However, 9 days later, Susan Smith confessed that she herself had drowned her two sons. She was guilty but she understood that the black brute caricature and stereotype remained as a stubborn representation of black people in American minds, and a culpable scapegoat.[49]