This paper is an examination of ethnic stereotypes in American films and the psychological impact that those stereotypes have on audiences of all ethnicities. Mainstream films perpetuate in-group perceptions about out-group members, both consciously and unconsciously, even when trying to be liberal-minded. By making specific casting decisions, filmmakers designate the ethnicity of characters that either reinforce the audience's opinions of the ethnicity represented or provide individual exceptions to the accepted stereotypes. Such representations can have a powerful effect on audiences of all races. Stereotypes in some form are almost impossible to avoid, whether they are examples of institutionalized racism (intentional or inadvertent) or attempts to counteract prejudice. Some of the most recent mainstream films demonstrate the difficulties in trying to avoiding stereotyping and the impact it has on viewers of all backgrounds.
Lincoln Theodore Monroe Andrew Perry was the first black actor to receive featured billing in mainstream American movies, earning more than two million dollars in the 1920s and 1930s, owning 16 cars at once, and living the life of a Hollywood star. A 1929 New York Post review called him the "best actor that the talking movie have produced" (Euell, 1997, Winter, p. 672). He was the first to establish a familiar black face in front of white audiences, and he has claimed a prominent place in cinema history. Under the pseudonym Stepin Fetchit, he has come to be recognized as among the most offensive racial stereotypes ever committed to film, a "persona [he created that was] calculated to play into the limited perceptions of blacks held by most whites of the era" (Euell, 1997, Winter, p. 672). Fetchit's character was a shuffling, lazy, amiably stupid depiction that came to personify mainstream American cinema's view of the black man. He allowed white viewers to see black men as inoffensive, laughable c...