1946 Post-War Racial Issue Cartoon-Brotherhood of Man-1 of 2

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Brotherhood of Man (1946)
Part 1 of 2

SPONSOR: United Auto Workers
PRODUCTION CO.: United Productions of America
DIRECTOR: Robert Cannon
WRITERS: Ring Lardner Jr., Maurice Rapf, Phil Eastman
MUSIC: Paul Smith
ANIMATION: John Hubley

Today it's just a forgotten cartoon... but Brotherhood of Man, in 1946, received critical praise, especially concerning its social commentary. The film received an Academy Award nomination for Best Cartoon Short Subject of 1946. The cartoon based its content upon a pamphlet, Races of Mankind, written in 1943 by Gene Weltfish and Ruth Benedict, anthropologists at the Columbia University. The United Automobile Workers-CIO commissioned this film to ease ethnic tensions at the union's integrated southern branches and, according to UPA animator Bill Hurtz, approved the film's storyboard. The story focused on a group of men of different ethnicities who discovered that they suddenly lived in the same neighborhood. Each man had an alter ego who mentioned ethnic stereotypes to convince him to avoid making contact with his neighbors, and an off-screen narrator provided arguments to counter the ignorance of the alter egos.
The novelty of Brotherhood of Man lay in its arguments, many of which focused on dispelling myths about black people. The cartoon's narrator noted, "It's only color and a few other 'frills' that distinguish our three races, the Caucasian, the Negroid, and the Mongoloid. There is no difference in physical strength." He also deemed the difference in ethnic groups' average brain sizes irrelevant because "it isn't the size of a brain that counts. ... It's what it can do." He stated that the level of a people's civilization depended upon their environment instead of their ethnicity. He concluded, "We have to see to it that there's equal opportunity for everyone from the very beginning... an equal start in life ... equal chance for health and medical care ... and a good education ... an equal chance for a job. Then we can all go forward together"...

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Film & Animation

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• Racism
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