Minstrel Era The Image Above Captures The Minstrel

Minstrel EraThe image above captures the Minstrel era in the sense it shows, how white actors imitated the black people. The image is a musical performance, where a white actor, Dartmouth Thomas, who has blacken himself with burnt cork. The performance captures a slave from the Southern plantation given the nature of dress code. The southern plantation slaves were considered as uncivilized, naïve, and dressed in tattered clothes. The minstrel era was characterized by racial undertones that misrepresented black people. The era portrayed black people as lazy, stupid, and happy (Saxton 10).The image of black people being portrayed as pleasure lovers to white audience was the cornerstone of minstrel era. In the image above the slave is shown dancing, and the nature of his dress code not only depicts him as unsophisticated but also naïve. There was nothing interesting and praiseworthy about being a slave. Therefore, the habit of portraying happiness among the black slaves is the distortion in the image. The slaves loved singing when working in the white people’s plantation because it was the only option they had to forget their sorrows and daily miseries. Therefore, showing slaves in happy mood was not a true picture of a