KIPP:STAR - Critical of Caricatures lyrics

It was January and I was in Best Buy with my mom. The manager was smiling, filled with joy. She was also a white woman. My mom and I were at customer services waiting for her a**istance. When it finally came our turn, her smile turned instantly into a frown. She became rude and told us to go home and eat watermelon. In her mind, all blacks eat watermelon because that's what we ratchet blacks do, right? WRONG! This was very disrespectful and it shows that black stereotypes from the past still exist today through the media. The mammy caricature was caricature was crafted to show that African women were basically useless. This caricature implied the black women only knew how to do one sk**, which was cleaning and working. According to the mammy stories, African women “were only fit to be domestic workers,” (Pilgrim). Modern movies also help the theories from the mammy. In the movie, “The Help”, the black women/workers were dressed in rags with a hair net, just like how the mammy was dressed. If mammy portrays the idea that black women's only use is for working and serving others, the then the media shows things today that help support this. Although the Mammy disrespects African women, there are other caricatures that insult other ages of Africans Americans. The Pickaninny caricature created black children were in poor condition. The text says that “Pickannies had bright eyes, unkept hair, red lips, and wide mouths.” Movies today also support the Pickaninny. There are alot of movies with black children with black children who have harder lives than whites and dress more tacky than whites. The Pickaninny caricature portrays how blacks looked “sloppy”. Like the pickaninny, the pickaninny, there is another caricature that shows bad characteristics for blacks. The Coon made it look like black men had poor characteristics. This caricature had many unpleasant features. This made blacks look “...unreliable, crazy, lazy, shooting crap”. Modern T.V. shows support for the coon. These shows make blacks look like they always find the easy way out something. The coon portrays blacks as dumb people who know nothing about life. This caricature insulted black men, but there were other caricatures that insulted blacks in other ways. The Uncle Tom helped support slavery. It helped show how slavery helped blacks for the better. The text states, “Slavery was incongruent with christianity.” Modern movies also support Uncle Tom. The black men in the movie “White Chicks” act a whole different way when they became white girls.. Uncle Tom made it look like blacks were more elegant and smarter because of slavery. Imagine blacks and whites living on different sides of the street. Blacks and whites shopping at different malls that say “Black Only Shopping Plaza” and vise versa. Roads blocked off and can only be used for a certain race. Do you want to live in this kind of world? Heck no! This is why we have to put a stop to on coming stereotypes in our world or we will live in the disgusting world we don't want to live in.