Ourselves and “Others”

In the post-Civil War era, many Americans prospered as the inheritors of a promising and expanding land of opportunity. These opportunities, however, were unequally distributed. Trade card images frequently reflected America’s inequalities, prejudices, and injustices. Slavery had ended, but African-Americans continued to face oppression and discrimination. Native peoples were the targets of sanctioned violence and dislocation. Waves of newly arrived immigrant communities— Germans, Irish, Chinese, Italians, and others—were viewed by generations of earlier immigrants as foreign intruders. Because trade cards often pandered to popular taste, they sometimes amplified broadly held prejudices. Caricature is a common tool in trade card art, used to deride those who are not perceived as white, American, or middle-class. These stereotypes were frequently presented as humor, disguising the cruelty of the portrayals as “harmless” fun.

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