Censoring Racial Ridicule: Irish, Jewish, and African American Struggles over Race and Representation, 1890–1930 by M. Alison Kibler (review)

Censoring Racial Ridicule reviews a period between 1890 and 1930 when American city, state and federal governments often regulated speech and expression through censorship and when ethnic and racial minorities mounted frequent challenges to group representation on the popular stage and screen that they considered insulting, defamatory, racist or inflammatory. This story is usually told as a prequel to the adoption of the Hays Production Code that from 1930 to the early 1950s subjected the American commercial film industry to stringent (self) regulation with respect to standards of morality and decency. Most narratives view this history through the lens of the effort of a Protestant, Anglo-Saxon elite to Americanize and culturally discipline working class and immigrant popular audiences. This book reframes this history as a “multiracial moral dilemma” and explores tensions between freedom of expression and equality, and between individual and group rights, that continue to have a strong resonance in contemporary debates (9).

Kibler’s meticulously researched book recounts the ways in which the Protestant emphasis on moral uplift and the Progressives’ support for state intervention in pursuit of the “public good” provided a framework for the contestation of ethnic and racial popular stereotypes. The merits of this book, which discusses Irish, Jewish and African American efforts to control their popular image, lie in its comparative focus. While in some cases relationships between these groups were characterized by racial hostility and competition, at times their interests ran parallel or intersected, leading to inter-racial alliances.

Ethnic and racial caricature was a staple of American popular entertainment, in particular in two key theatrical traditions: the minstrel show and the musical comedy melee. Both traditions were adapted for the early twentieth-century vaudeville stage, on which blackface, “Hebrew,” Irish and “Dago” comedians, among others, jostled for the spotlight. So-called “racial” comedy demonstrated that, although legally white, on the scale of the American racial taxonomy Irish and Jewish immigrants were identified as racially in-between.

The protests against these often crude and racist representations were spearheaded by nation-wide fraternal organizations (such as the Ancient Order of Hibernians, Knights of Columbus, and B’nai B’rith) as well as self defense and civil rights organizations (such as the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and the Anti-Defamation League). The emphasis on race pride and respectability characteristic of emerging nationalist movements among minority groups meanwhile led to a widespread refutation of the assimilationist ideologies of Anglo conformity and the melting pot and reinforced demands for a pluralist American culture.

While the Irish frequently resorted to direct action and theater riots in their efforts to ban offensive theatrical productions, the omnipresent threat of racial violence and lynching constrained African American activism largely to peaceful protests and legal action. Kibler explores these different strategies when comparing Irish protests against The Playboy of the Western World, a play deemed offensive to Irish womanhood, and African American protests against Thomas Dixon’s The Clansman. The primary reason that African American campaigns were more successful was the threat of race riots. The fact that it was unruly blacks rather than white vigilante violence who were cited as the main causes for concern underscores the often conservative motivations informing censorship decisions.

The following chapters shift the focus to race-based movie censorship. In 1907, Chicago became the first American city requiring motion picture exhibitors to obtain a permit prior to showing a film. The law, upheld by the Illinois Supreme Court, included a provision that cited insults to any race or religion as a basis for censorship. The film industry responded with feeble attempts at self-regulation. But because submission of films for review was voluntary, self-regulation failed to gain nationwide recognition. Battles over censorship continued to play out primarily at the municipal and state level. The book presents a detailed portrait of the fragmented...