The c00n caricature is one of the most insulting of all anti-black caricatures. The name itself, an abbreviation of racc00n, is dehumanizing. As with Sambo, the c00n was portrayed as a lazy, easily frightened, chronically idle, inarticulate, buffoon. The c00n differed from the Sambo in subtle but important ways. Sambo was depicted as a perpetual child, not capable of living as an independent adult. The c00n acted childish, but he was an adult; albeit a good-for-little adult. Sambo was portrayed as a loyal and contented servant. Indeed, Sambo was offered as a defense for slavery and segregation. How bad could these institutions have been, asked the racialists, if blacks were contented, even happy, being servants? The c00n, although he often worked as a servant, was not happy with his status. He was, simply, too lazy or too cynical to attempt to change his lowly position. Also, by the 1900s, Sambo was identified with older, docile blacks who accepted Jim Crow laws and etiquette; whereas c00ns were increasingly identified with young, urban blacks who disrespected whites. Stated differently, the c00n was a Sambo gone bad.
The prototypical movie c00n was Stepin Fetchit, the slow-talking, slow-walking, self-demeaning nitwit. It took his character almost a minute to say: "I'se be catchin' ma feets nah, Boss." Donald Bogle (1994), a cinema historian, lambasted the c00n, as played by Stepin Fetchit and others:
Before its death, the c00n developed into the most blatantly degrading of all black stereotypes. The pure c00ns emerged as no-account ******s, those unreliable, crazy, lazy, subhuman creatures good for nothing more than eating watermelons, stealing chickens, shooting crap, or butchering the English language. (p. 8)
The c00n caricature was born during American slavery. Slave masters and overseers often described slaves as "slow," "lazy," "wants pushing," "an eye servant," and "trifling."1 The master and the slave operated with different motives: the master desired to obtain from the slave the greatest labor, by any means; the slave desired to do the least labor while avoiding punishment. The slave registered his protest against slavery by running away, and, when that was not possible, by slowing work, doing shoddy work, destroying work tools, and faking illness. Slave masters attributed the slaves' poor work performance to shiftlessness, stupidity, desire for freedom, and genetic deficiencies.
http://www.ferris.edu/htmls/news/jimcrow/c00n/lazy.jpg The amount of work done by a typical slave depended upon the demands of individual slave owners and their ability to extract labor. Typically, slaves worked from dawn to dusk. They were sometimes granted "leisure time" on Saturday or Sunday evenings; however, this time was spent planting or harvesting their own gardens, washing clothes, cooking, and cleaning. A slave owner wrote: "I always give them half of each Saturday, and often the whole day, at which time...the women do their household work; therefore they are never idle" (Stampp, 1956, pp. 79-80)
Slave owners complained about the laziness of their workers, but the records show that slaves were often worked hard -- and brutally so. Overseers were routinely paid commissions, which encouraged them to overwork the slaves. On a North Carolina plantation an overseer claimed that he was a "'hole hog man rain or shine," and boasted that the slaves had been worked "like horses." He added, "I'd ruther be dead than be a ****** on one of these big plantations" (Stampp, 1956, p. 85). After the closing of the African slave trade, the price of slaves went up, thereby causing some slave owners and their hired overseers to be more careful in their use of slaves. "The time had been," wrote one slave owner, "that the farmer could kill up and wear out one Negro to buy another; but it is not so now. Negroes are too high in proportion to the price of cotton, and it behooves those who own them to make them last as long as possible" (Stampp, 1956, p. 81).
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To gain what?
character “Coach c00n” instead of Coach Boone
