Sick Sad World

As you could guess from the name, “Mammy Two Shoes” was an antiblack caricature that was often Tom’s owner (?) or a personal nanny (?) in some Tom and Jerry episodes. We hardly saw her face, so all we got from her is that she was loud, big, mean, and practically had literal paws for hands 🫤.

This seemed to be common amongst other cartoons that featured minstrels (Looney Tunes, Disney). When caricatures weren’t wearing those bright white gloves as they did in live minstrel shows (often to contrast against the pitch black skin), the animators would have these Black characters’ palms be extremely lighter than the rest of the body’s skintone. Which yknow, can happen to an extent, but it’s the way they are drawn with the hard cut of the two colors that bothered me (Like how Two Shoes’ looks. There’s no blend!). Anime also did this a lot (See Mr. Popo). I’m sure it still does.

Black artists have made plenty of tutorials on how to properly color in Black people’s hands, but idk, it just never seemed right when I do it 😔🤙🏾. I do wonder if it’s cuz I’m still on my art journey, and as of now my style is more on the cartoony end. I did notice some of y’all mentioned if it’s a simplistic or cartoon style, you avoid doing so. I hardly draw the wrinkles and folds of the hands in my art, so maybe my brain is unconsciously associating that with Two Shoes’ paw hands 😒.

Still, it’s that same trauma these cartoons be projecting that have us struggling to give our characters red lipstick, toothgaps, or even certain Black hairstyles. And with the way folks treated Annie from Sinners and that statue of the fat Black woman, that trauma if left unchecked can turn into internalized bigotry real quick.

I‘ll get there eventually, but I think I gotta become more confident in my shading and highlights if I hope to get a better sense of the way I color my characters.

Not all art styles necessarily need these traits if their white and nonblack characters are hardly detailed either. Needless to say, animators and artists still gotta be vigilant in this stuff. Like even in the comic, I get yucks with the Steven Universe lips style, cuz it often can easily become donut lips from what I’ve seen. Which, I mean -