From the beginnings of caricatures, the exaggeration and satire of the genre merged with the prejudices, stereotypes and reductionism of the colonial mindset, slavery and European colonization of Africa Caricature humor was used to serve European and North American interests given that they already published cartoons and comic strips in the newspapers. These early graphical representations, like those that followed them for decades, were made by white, European or North American artists and editors, about the colonized territories or the newly emancipated Afro-descendants; and similarly, it was the dominant white public of sufficient economic level who read them and enjoyed the ridicule.
Soon, the caricatures of the genre became racist stigmatization. During this period, graphic stereotypes were developed in which the African descendent does not have the defined and particular features of a human being but is instead reduced to a large black face with really oversized red lips, lips that are closer to those of apes than to the mouth of a human being, and huge and glazed eyes, pointing out ignorance or naivety, if not stupidity. This was not undeliberate in graphic representations but has its origin in the famous but pejorative character "Jim Crow", created by the white comedian Thomas Rice, who used to paint his face with shoe polish to exaggerate the size of his lips to play a ragged African American in a vaudeville musical comedy show that was first exhibited in 1832. The show became very popular, so much so that it was imitated globally and the name Jim Crow was used to generically name African Americans and even to give name to the segregation laws of “Separate but Equal" in the United States that were promulgated between 1876 and 1965.
The absurdity of black skin by shoe polish was repeated so often that it was even used by Afro-descendant comedians and Latin Americans as popular as Chespirito who also wore their "blackface" (the act of painting one’s face black and ridiculing Afro-descendants). In Colombia, although Jim Crow did not exist, the blackface style of humor was acquired. Álvaro Lemmon and Roberto Lozano, the creator of Soldado Micolta, are examples of this.
Thanks to the vaudeville shows, Jim Crow became part of the collective American imagination and it was passed on to literature and caricature. Bernard A. Drew in his book Black Stereotypes in Popular Series Fiction, talks about literary characters based on Jim Crow:"Jim Crow boundaries were strongly codified and ruthlessly enforced on all races in the South. For story series about blacks to have a chance, not only did they have to have carboard characters, they also had to show the blacks as little-educated, superstitious, conniving, unreliable, lustful and lazy (not necessarily all in the same story). The stories had to be “funny”. Funny, that is, to white readers. Black readers may have read them, may have tolerated them. But they found little funny in them".
Similarly, the attitudes, intellectual abilities and even the ways of speaking of African-Americans were ridiculed, fostering the idea that they were ignorant people who were lacking in education and were naive, often stupid or clever only when evading their responsibilities. These prejudices were of course from the white American population who did not understand or pretend to understand the achievements and values of the African-American population.
These representations detract from the progress of the Afro-descendant population and reduces them to bestial, primitive and infantile beings, unable to take the reins of their destiny or to play important roles in their communities and their nation. A good description of these graphics is presented by Jeet Heer in his essay Racism as a Stylistic Choice and Other Notes:"Look at the way he draws black characters, for example, with rubber-tire lips and simian features. Also the black characters are completely subservient and talk in an embarrassing minstrel dialect completely removed from any human speech".
The cartoonists continued to follow the archetype that was recognized by a society that sometimes is not aware of the racism that it implies and they repeat it without measuring its influential power or the consequences for the Afro-descendant ethnic group. Tia C. M. Tyree in the essay Contemporary representations of black females in newspaper comic strips, included in the book Black Comics, Politics of Race and Representation, tries to explain this influence in the stereotyping of Black young people: "While identifying the most popular Black stereotypes in film, Bogle included several stereotypes, which are the coon, tragic mulatto, mammy and pickaninny (…) The pikaninny is a subcategory of the coon and portrays the young Black child as harmless, pleasant and used for diversion or comic relief. The pickaninny was born from the slavery period and widely used in late nineteenth century".
Many of the caricaturists from the past and other more recent ones repeat the archetype being conscious of its negative role. Here the caricaturist ignores his responsibility as an editorialist and journalist, and becomes an agent of a sector that insults, segregates and, of course, is racist in society. These graphics are so abundant and common that we have become accustomed to them and we see them as normal, without grasping the enormous racism, reductionism and stereotyping that exists in them and that has stigmatized people of African descent since the colonial era, to such an extent that the characteristics invented by Europe displaced the cultural realities and generated strongly racist imaginaries towards Africans. These visions of the Afro-descendants inherited from colonial times are still repeated today.
It is no wonder that television and newspapers continue to proliferate the images of palenqueras, maidservants, cane cutters, fishermen or, simply, Afro-descendant laborers, perpetuating this discriminatory imagery. Even the graphics’ "positive" side, as related to music, dance and sport is also reductionist and limits the success of the Afro-descendant population to a small niche far away from the political power of the "white" class. Naturally, this imaginary has led to underground racism, never fully recognized by the mixed mestizo population or state institutions, but which permeates the spheres of the political, the economic and, even more, the cultural, despite the remarkable influence of the Afro-Colombians in the construction of the country, which reduces them even more in the collective imagination. Claudia Mosquera Rosero-Labbé, in her book Afro-reparaciones: Memorias de la esclavitud y justicia reparativa para negros, afrocolombianos y raizales says: "In the cultural dimension, discrimination is of an ethnic nature and manifests itself in cultural stigmatization, the use of pejorative language, the scarce visibility of the contributions of Afro-descendants, the low value and lack of support for their cultural and artistic expressions, ignorance of their worldview and discrimination within African ethnic groups".
We see these stereotypes as normal and they are repeated even in newspapers. The editorial cartoons, which must have a humorous focus and also reflect a critical stance against actual phenomena, often repeat those same concepts inherited from colonial times and Jim Crow, limiting Afro-Colombians to inferior roles and subhuman graphical representations.
It is possible that cartoonists and comedians are not aware of the implicit racism in their creations, especially because racism is latent and invisible in society. But graphic and televised representations have a communicative power that has been used repeatedly and openly against African-American social movements. The constant representation of stereotypes modifies the thinking of the reader and his way of perceiving Afro-descendants. To argue that the Micolta Soldier and other humorous expressions based on blackface and other stereotypes are simply harmless jokes without the burden of racism is, at a minimum, a lack of information. The debate that has been generated should lead to the elimination of blackface, the cartoons based on Jim Crow and any other humorous manifestations that have as an objective, consciously or unconsciously, the perpetuation of the racist and harmful imaginaries to the Afro-Colombian population. Of course, this action must be accompanied by effective policies to provide Afro-descendant populations with the dignified living conditions they deserve as human beings and an emphasis on education to understand the history of Africa and Afro-descendants so as to eradicate prejudices and, eventually, the racism that exists towards the Afro-descendant population.
