Project Synopsis

This paper looks at how black people were perceived in Europe through advertisement, entertainment, and art during the late nineteenth to early twentieth centuries. Africans throughout European history were treated as a lesser people, based entirely on their skin color. White Europeans saw themselves and pure and enlightened, while they viewed Africans as unpure and barbaric. Europeans justified their views and harsh treatment against Africans based on religion, and those views were apparent through the media. “Christianity influenced Europe’s perception of blacks more than any other contributing factor” (Archer-Straw, p23). According to many historians, including Archer-Straw, Europeans justified their harsh treatment of Africans based on the biblical stories of the children of Ham. According to the stories, Ham and his future generations were cursed forever into roles of subordination and servitude. One school of thought proposes that the European abolitionists were a contradiction in themselves. The very symbol of the abolition movement, the seal designed for the Slave Emancipation Society of 1786, is an image of a black man with the words, “Am I not a man and a brother?” This emblem depicts the man on one knee, pleading. Many abolitionists were dedicated Christians and advocates of new sciences that pioneered racial studies. According to Archer-Straw, “It was in their interest in race as a natural, scientific and cultural phenomenon that led them to an abhorrence of slavery, not a belief in the fundamental equality of blacks and whites” (p25). Through examples of advertisement, entertainment, and the arts, we are shown that although the black race was no longer seen as slaves, they were still thought of as a lesser ethnic group. Since the abolishment of slavery, white Europeans maintained their superiority over blacks by using them to sell exotic products, dressing them up for their amusement, or portraying them in art as barbaric to justify their own actions. Sadly, many of these examples are still apparent in today’s world. This paper will show through various images of advertisements, the role of blacks in the entertainment industry, and examples of art, that although the African race in Europe was viewed differently since slavery, it was still very much a negative view.
“The extensive influence of colonial and scientific thinking in the second half of the nineteenth century is reflected in the advertisement of the period” (Archer-Straw, p35). Black people were often used to advertise exotic products, such as coffee, tobacco, spices, and rum that came from places thought of as new and different. For example, the advertisement for Café des amateurs coffee in Paris, 1875 portrays a black man bare-chested and barefoot with the coffee. The advertisement for La Negrita rum shows a black woman, also barefoot, serving glasses of the drink and dressed as the European equivalent to America’s “Aunt Jemima”. Africans were used to promote the difference and newness of the exotic products, but by the twentieth century they were being packaged in yet another way. Europe began to be obsessive about cleanliness, and used the black image to show contrast. Soap, toothpaste, and shoe-polish companies jumped on the bandwagon to use black people in their ads. One in particular for the Sodex washing soda in 1910 depicts a black man emerging from a tub with the slogan, “Washing a nigger white”. “It was only by presenting them as different and exotic, by showing them as slaves, servants, entertainers and humorous characters related to animals, that their racial inferiority could be communicated” (Archer-Straw, p38). By representing blacks as these characters, white Europeans maintained their superiority and degraded Africans at the same time.
Black images were extremely present throughout the entertainment industry in Europe, especially through minstrel performances. “It provided white audiences with pseudo-black entertainment using white actors; it allowed whites a form of show that ventured their ambivalences about themselves, as well as those about the blacks in their midst; and it expressed their mixed feelings about slavery at a time when the abolition debate was at its height” (Archer-Straw, p41). The Blackface Clown, for example, was a mask many white minstrels wore to portray their idea of a black man. “For the white English men who performed in minstrelsy, the ‘nigger’ mask remained its single constant component, regardless of performer, persona, costume, or setting, allowing them to be what, formally, they were not” (Pickering, p159). Blacks also played a role in European entertainment. Whites shipped African tribesmen to Europe to re-enact exotic battles to theater-goers. Whites were once again able to justify their past actions by portraying the Africans as barbaric and uncivilized cannibals, like in the poster promoting Les Zoulous at the Follies-Bergere in 1878. The poster depicts the barbaric African half-naked with spears and performing a warrior dance. The French soldiers, on the other hand, were portrayed as orderly and sophisticated victors. Another example of blacks negatively portrayed in the entertainment industry is in children’s books. “At times they can appear contradictory and perhaps confusing, as the lessons of Sunday school meet the new adventure fiction” (Castle, p145). Many of these youth books and magazines had Christian connotations, and once again justified the negative behavior towards the black race. White children were taught that they were superior over African adults simply by skin color. In the entertainment industry, blacks were dressed up for the benefit of white people. Their African features were exaggerated, and they were either portrayed as the effeminate yet humble minstrel singing degrading songs or the barbaric African warrior. Either way they were depicted as the lesser race for the benefit of the white European.
Because of the slave trade between Europe and the Caribbean, the black image became quite popular in eighteenth century art. Blacks were used in art for many purposes. First of all, it demonstrated the skill of the painter. If the image was portrayed by an adorning and submissive servant, the painting reflected the master’s status and wealth. According to Archer-Straw, “The inclusion of black people in paintings summarized all the subliminal fears and phobias that posed a threat to nineteenth-century Western society” (p27). Artists used symbolism to further link dark skin with sexual deviancy, ignorance, and sin. Much like the theater, artists re-enacted battle scenes in their paintings and sculptures to justify their past actions towards blacks. Museums, exhibitions, and world fairs used this black image to celebrate imperialism.
I believe that both my primary sources and my secondary sources fully paint the picture of how black Europeans were depicted as a lesser race. Although slavery had ended, the white race was still superior in the eyes of Europeans, and that view is shown through advertising, entertainment, and the arts. Europeans justified their past and present actions through this media, depicting black Europeans and Africans as lesser beings. Whites were afraid to grant equality to black people, in my opinion they were afraid of them. White Europeans were depicted as sophisticated and superior in every way, yet black people seemed to be an important role in defining themselves.