Is this supposed to be racist?

[deleted]

In response to your comments on racism...It sounds more like your lot in life rather than the creaters of the Amos'n Andy Show. During the time, many white entertainers used the genre of "black face" to enhance their schtick. Al Jolson seems to be the person of most notariety. There were even black entertainers who wore the paint for effect. It was popular then and still is today, to portray characters in black face. Only now, it is not politicaly correct to wear the mask. Now you just need to have a sound or a move or an outfit or speak a vernacular to portray a perception of a people.
I would agree that the radio portrayal of these characters had racial overtones though the actors may have been blinded by $$$$. Once the show changed medias and real blacks were cast in the roles, they portrayed the characters with much class and pride. The public was treated to a sitcom about productive, positive and literate citizens. Each episode displayed comic relief. An opportunity for America to see herself through humor. We all know and have befriended the same characters in our own lives. It was a funny and positive show. No one cursed in the scripts. The women were respected (save for an occational mother-in-law barb). Everyone lived in nice neighborhoods. They all believed in God. Nobody was an outcast. Aside from the cigar, I don't remember anyone smoking cigarettes or drinking liquor. It was a show the entire family could watch and enjoy.
It was just ahead of the times.
You say you found an episode on youtube? Well, instead of searching for the "black bitches"...(canines can be found at the SPCA), watch the show again and learn something. LOL

This show when originally created was to show that Black people could to lead rolls in comedy shows just as good as white people but members of the NAACP mistook things and have condemed this great show and other shows that have black people in it. I am a white man and i like this show and I feel that one of the problems we have now got in the United States still over this racial division between the Black and White people are the following- When a White producer makes certain tv shows and movies that have black people in it they are aimed at trying to show that Black people can be just as good as White people are. That is what i found out was the main idea of the Amos and Andy show because it was to show that two black men could do a comedy show just as good as white people could but the people who were in charge of the NAACP misunderstood things and condemed this show thinking that it was badmouthing the black people when it was really trying to show that Black people are equal to the white people involving acting in comedies. I beleve if this show had not came along in the 1950's then future shows like Sanford and Son would not have been thought of. I have to say that with what i have noticed lately in the last 7 years is one of the problems that is going on now involving this racial dividing is lately it has been caused by the black people musunderstanding things and taking things the wrong way. For example on this website in the message board for that new movie Transformers there have been a bunch of black people condeming it because of how a black man played the voice of the autobot Jazz. Well Scatman Crothers who is a black man was the original voice of Jazz on the 1984-1987 Transformers cartoon but sadly after the start of the third season Scatman died and Jazz had to be removed completely from the show because nobody could match his voice. Well in this new live action Transformers movie the autobot Jazz dies before the end of the movie and many black people shaking thier fists at that but the main idea of that is to respect Scatman Crothers who died before the original tv series ended. So you see right there shows how over the last 60 years members of the NAACP and other black people have been passing judgement on tv shows and movies causing some good ones like Song of the South to be banned from the store shelves in the United States just because someone misunderstands the main idea of the black actors and passes judgement on things before finding out the true main idea. So you see The Amos and Andy show's main idea was to show that back in the 1950's that black actors could play lead rolls in comedies just as good as the white actors. The movie "Song of the south" was based on events around the civil war times so the one white woman was hard on that black man because back in those times of the late 1800s it was like that but by the end of the movie when that woman's son wants to see that black man she has no choice but to apologize to him for how she treated him. I do belive also if Amos and Andy had not been put on tv later on black comideans like Flip Wilson, Redd Foxx, Whitman Mayo, Lawanda Page, Scatman Crothers,Antonio Fargas, Eddie Murphy, and the man who plays the FBI agent on Big Momma's House would not have been able to do as well because i believe that Amos and Andy where all those famous Black Actor's roll models to show that the Black actors could do just as well and sometimes better than the white actors could on tv. No white man will ever beat Redd Foxx's famous Sanford Heart Attacks. No white man would be able to do those Big Momma's house movies as good. Plus I do not know of a white comedian that could match Eddie Murphy on his movies that he has made in the last 15 years. Also Antonio Fargas is really the only true Huggy Bear. So what i am saying is other Black people should carefully watch the movies and tv shows to get the main idea of the shows instead of passing judgement on a minor thing that has a good explination.

There is no greater re-writer of history than a group of victims who become powerful. The militantcy of the NAACP from the Fifties, through the Nineties, re-wrote so much of what popular enatertainment meant previous to THEIR generation when only portrayals of blacks that were acceptable were if they were portrayed as angry, or victims, or suffering in some such manner. It created an air of victimhood that other groups latched onto and finally, it became "fasionable" to be a victim, instead of a hero, which the first black activists, e.g. Frederick Douglass, asked blacks to be.

With that, they revised the meaning of such things as Al Jolson's use of blackface (which had NOTHING to do with minstrelsy or the degredation of the black race); Bill "I am the artbiter of truth" Cosby, who purchases the rights to "The Little Rascals" and forbids it's being shown; or, the vilification of Tim Moore, a brilliant, professional comedic actor, beloved by thousands of Americans as the great "Kingfish." Besides, they taught, blacks before 1950 were all "Uncle Tom's" and had no courage, at least notlike THEY did. Bull***t. Ask the thousands of blacks who protested in the 1890's when the play, "The Klansmen" was presented. How much courage did it take Jackie Robinson to endure what he did? Plenty, I'd bet a lot more than anyone on the Board of NAACP today has endured. Yet he and people like Sammy Davis Jr. are, believe it or not, the object of derision. Incredible.

They couldn't (or refused) to see that "Amos 'n Andy" was just the black version of "The Honeymooners." This format, the oafish, overblown, skeemer with a heart of gold, is an old one. It pervades Western European culture. It is not and never was intended to "stereotype" blacks, but PEOPLE.

Check the bio of Clarence Muse on IMBD and read what HE says about Amos 'n Andy. It is what all of us thought back then.

Unfortunately, our society has become so stupid, almost child-like, in it's knee-jerk, silly, politically correctness.