Stereotypes of African Americans

Stereotypes and generalizations about African Americans and their culture have evolved within American society dating back to the colonial years of settlement, particularly after slavery became a racial institution that was heritable. A comprehensive examination of the restrictions imposed upon African-Americans in the United States of America through culture is examined by art historian Guy C. McElroy in the catalog to the exhibit "Facing History: The Black Image in American Art 1710-1940." According to McElroy, the artistic convention of representing African-Americans as less than fully realized humans began with Justus Engelhardt Kühn's colonial era painting Henry Darnall III as a child. Although Kühn's work existed "simultaneously with a radically different tradition in colonial America" as indicated by the work of portraitists such as Charles (or Carolus) Zechel, (see Portrait of a Negro Girl and Portrait of a Negro boy) the market demand for such work reflected the attitudes and economic status of their audience.

From the colonial era through the American Revolution ideas about African-Americans were variously used in propaganda either for or against the issue of slavery. Paintings like John Singleton Copley's Watson and the Shark (1778) and Samuel Jennnings' Liberty Displaying the Arts and Sciences (1792) are early examples of the debate underway at that time as to the role of Black people in America. Watson represents an historical event, while Liberty is indicative of abolitionist sentiments expressed in Philadelphia's post revolutionary intellectual community. Nevertheless, Jennings' painting represents African-Americans as passive, submissive beneficiaries of not only slavery's abolition, but knowledge, which liberty has graciously bestowed upon them.

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