Andy and Amos Cartoon

This cartoon is a very ethnocentric cartoon filled with racism and fueled by the notion of white superiority, much like many of the themes we have studied so far in this class. The cartoon clearly is meant to represent African Americans and can be highly assumed that it was made by white people. The cartoon centers around all African American characters who are all very unintelligent, lazy, beast-like, and violent; all characterstics of the whites stereotypical view of blacks. The characters are shown as using bad grammar throughout the whole clip. For example, they pronounce wrestling as "rassslin" and pronounce many other words incorrectly. Laziness is also represented in the clip as the clip starts out with Andy being asleep instead of working. All of the characters are also shown as looking and behaving much more like animals than humans. The characters are depicted as walking similar to how apes do and have very large lips, also like apes. They are shows as violent as the whole plot surrounds a wrestling match and one of the wrestlers is depicted as an angry bull, again depicticting violence. While watching this cartoon, it became very clear to me that it was made by whites, in another effort to discriminate against blacks and to highlight their superiority.

In my opinion, the intented audience of this cartoon was strictly white people. The whole cartoon is spent making fun of black people and thier imagined ways of life. I think it was meant to show just how uncivilized and violent black people are in an effort to strengthen and confirm the nations feelings of white superiority. I think it was also intented to reach children as children are the primary audiences for cartoons. I think this was to instill in children the feelings of white superiority in a much less direct way.

This cartoon is clearly very racist, and is just another example of the hardships African Americans have faced since coming to America.