Symbolic Slavery: Black Representations in Popular Culture

In this paper, I examine popular culture items that represent blacks in degrading, stereotyped ways, and objectify former sets of work roles and social relations. These material objects were most popular from approximately 1890 to the 1950s, and they symbolically reflected the social control mechanisms underlying majority-minority relations during that period. In addition, they helped to allay status anxiety and promoted a sense of social solidarity and superiority among whites. The production of these objects declined only after the challenge of an alternative development in the cultural sphere—the ascendence of a black self-consciousness during the Civil Rights Movement. My research calls attention to an additional symbolic way social control is extended and the structure of society is maintained and reproduced in a relatively stable manner.