FROM RACISM TO TOKENISM THE CHANGING FACE OF BLACKS IN NEW YORKER CARTOONS

Cartoons published in the weekly magazine New Yorker during the years 1946-87 were analyzed to determine how often blacks appeared as characters and whether the proportion of blacks portrayed had changed over time. Cartoons were further examined for possible changes in the styles of characterization of U.S. blacks since the post-Word War II period. Although black characters were extremely rare throughout the 42 years, the relative numbers of blacks depicted decreased with the passage of each time period. Styles of portraying black characters also changed markedly over the years, in keeping with the changing status of blacks in the United States. All cartoons from the earliest period presented U.S. blacks in stereotypic occupational roles, cartoons in the late 1960s and early 1970s were dominated by racial themes, and blacks appeared in "token" roles in the majority of cartoons from the most recent period investigated. In the entire 42 years, only a single U.S. black appeared as a main character in a cartoon in which race was completely irrelevant. "Laughter is a weapon against bigotry," Gordon Allport wrote in his classic 1954 treatment of prejudice. "It too often lies rusty while reformers grow unnecessarily solemn and heavy-handed" (Allport, 1954:509). Yet humor can cut both ways: used insensitively or in the form of racial or ethnic put-downs of one group by another, it often serves to solidify in-group ties and harden hostile attitudes toward outgroup members (Burma, 1946; Martineau, 1972). Given its doubleedged nature, humor must be handled judiciously by those wishing to heal rather than deepen existing racial wounds. RUTH THIBODEAU is a Ph.D. candidate in Social Psychology at the University of California, Santa Cruz. The author is indebted to Elliot Aronson and Thomas F. Pettigrew for their valuable suggestions on earlier drafts of this article. Special thanks are also due to Richard Gendron, who helped with data collection, and Alysia Parker and Tim Tumlin, who served as coders. Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Ruth Thibodeau, Psychology Board of Studies, Adlai E. Stevenson College, University of California, Santa Cruz, CA 95064. Public Opinion Quarterly Volume 53:482-494 ?) 1989 by the American Association for Public Opinion Research Published by The University of Chicago Press / 0033-362X/89/0053-04/$2.50 This content downloaded from 157.55.39.45 on Wed, 05 Oct 2016 05:28:27 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms Blacks in New Yorker Cartoons 483 Apparently mindful of such problems, mainstream cartoonists who wished to bring blacks into their work in the late 1960s voiced concern about how their attempt to make a positive social statement would be greeted. For example, Charles Schulz, creator of the "Peanuts" comic strip, introduced the black character "Franklin" in 1968, only after considerable soul-searching and self-doubt: "Up until now I had always come to the conclusion that I wasn't capable of doing this thing properly. I had always thought that Negro people might feel I was doing it in a patronizing or condescending manner. Then, I received two letters from Negro fathers asking that Peanuts be integrated. That was the turning point" (Newsweek, 1968:67). Given the turbulent social climate of the late 1960s and early 1970s, signs of concern by mainstream cartoonists over how best to treat racial themes, or merely black faces, in their work seems hardly surprising. Now that much of the furor of those years has quieted down, how have blacks been handled in cartoon humor in the wake of the civil rights movement? Or, for that matter, how were blacks depicted in cartoons prior to this eventful period in U.S. black-white relations? Finally, have black characters appeared with increasing frequency over the years, particularly in publications known for sophisticated, liberal editorial policies? Given the increased representation of blacks on television since the 1960s (Baptista-Fernandez and Greenberg, 1980), one might expect to find few black characters in cartoons published during the pre-civil rights years, followed by a sharp increase in the late 1960s and early 1970s, with this increase perhaps leveling off in subsequent years up to the present. On closer scrutiny, however, these predictions seem less plausible. In the first place, prior to the civil rights movement, a cartoonist could probably portray blacks in an openly stereotypic or derogatory fashion with relative impunity. In particular, the depiction of blacks in subservient roles, under conditions of segregation, or as "savages" in jungle settings would have raised few eyebrows among white viewers in the 1940s and early 1950s. On the other hand, antiracist norms (particularly, prohibitions against stereotyping blacks) that grew out of the civil rights and black militancy movements clearly made some cartoonists (e.g., Charles Schulz) more self-conscious about how blacks and racial issues should be treated in their work. If racial issues were tough to tackle in the volatile 1960s and early 1970s-when the times virtually cried out for their inclusion in all forms of media-there is little reason to expect more blacks to appear in cartoons in the years following the civil rights movement, now that the issue of the condition of blacks in America has, by all outward signs, taken a back seat to other concerns. Finally, without pressing racial issues serving as a strong motivation This content downloaded from 157.55.39.45 on Wed, 05 Oct 2016 05:28:27 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms