Racist Stereotype in Vintage Betty Boop Cartoon

Cartoons made in the 30s often depict African-American characters in a typical racist stereotypes: extremely dark skin, gigantic red blood lips, messy hair, raggedly clothes, and watermelon eaters. David Pilgrim, from the Jim Crow Museum, wrote: "the association of Blacks with watermelons is, at its root, a mean-spirited attempt to insult and mock Blacks. Why worry about persistent patterns of institutional racism and racial economic and health disparities when you can just eat a watermelon."

One of the Betty Boop cartoon episode entitled "Making Stars" clearly illustrates these stereotypes. Betty calls talent search contest participants consisting of a trio of African-American babies onto the stage, and then introduces them to the audience as "the colorful three". Also shown how a black mother soothe her crying baby by simply giving him a slice of watermelon.

Most of the racist cartoons, however, were intended to be funny, not hurtful. They just represent a period of American history where views were very different than today. In the real world that kind of racism still occurs in some cases, but in the mainstream entertainments there have been many drastic changes, in which the popular media is consciously avoid racial stereotyping depiction.