Except cartoons have also been incredibly racist at times, there are old cartoons where the whole thing is based around nothing but horribly offensive racist caricatures. Just because something can't be taken seriously doesn't mean it can't be offensive, if anything comedic racism is probably more offensive than more serious stuff, since it tends to be focused entirely around making fun of the targeted group.
Well, some of that was more innocent, just people unquestioningly accepting the stereotypes they'd been raised with, or seeing them as divorced from their racial roots. Sometimes characters presented as extreme racial stereotypes were quite beloved by (white) audiences, such as the radio sitcom couple
Fibber McGee & Molly's wisecracking maid Beulah (who was played by a white man), or were portrayed as positive characters by their creators, such as
The Spirit's sidekick Ebony White. There was definitely unconscious racism involved, but the white creators and audiences didn't see it and didn't have any malicious intent. (Kinda like how I used to feel about
The Dukes of Hazzard. I always found it very wholesome and fun and harmless at the time, but now I can't get past the fact that the heroes' car had a flag of hate emblazoned on its roof, or that the guy who played Cooter is now leading pro-Confederate flag rallies down South.)
Heck, even Mickey Mouse is basically a caricature of the standard makeup and costuming of minstrel show blackface performers, as were other early cartoon stars like Warner Bros.' Bosko and Honey. It was just seen as a standard clown makeup at the time, and so white creators and audiences didn't even necessarily think of it in racial terms (although there is obvious racial condescension in the idea of equating black people with objects of laughter and ridicule). Indeed, there were cartoons and comic strips that coded Mickey Mouse as essentially white when he interacted with characters such as native tribesmen who
were blatantly racist caricatures.
On the other hand, some people at the time were more enlightened. Jack Benny, for instance, adamantly refused to let his fictional valet Rochester (played by a genuine black actor, Eddie Anderson) ever be written as the butt of racial humor or stereotypes, and when traveling in the South would refuse to stay in hotels that wouldn't admit Anderson. Rochester was in a traditionally subservient role, since there were few opportunities at the time for anything more, but he was always written as smart, funny, and dignified in his way, and Benny was usually the butt of his jokes rather than the other way around. It's hard for me to watch Eddie Anderson in movies where he wasn't playing Rochester, because in those he
was the butt of traditional racial stereotype humor (for instance, being portrayed as comically cowardly in
Topper Returns), and it's sad to see the contrast.
