Stanley Elkins and His Sambo

In Stanley Elkins's article "Personality Types and Stereotypes" he describes the slave stereotype of Sambo. "Sambo, the typical plantation slave, was docile but irresponsible, loyal but lazy, humble but chronically given to lying and stealing; his behavior was full of infantile silliness and his talk inflated with childish exaggeration." (pg82). Elkins grants slaves relatively positive qualities such as being docile, loyal and humble. But in the same statement he removes their humanity by saying that slaves were lazy, irresponsible and childish. He says the slaves "relationship with his master was on of utter dependence with childlike attachment." (pg82). Elkins sees the slave as being infantilized, unable to exist without his maser and completely dependant for everything. But even without this dependence on a master, Elkins is not able to see a slave as an adult human being. "They were most sensitized in short, not to sophistication or complexity, but rather to crudity, depravity, and primitivism." (pg92). Elkins views the infantilization of Africans as their salvation. Because of their primitivism Elkins believes that they could become nothing more then a child to the slave master.

"Something very profound, therefore, would have had to intervene in order to obliterate all this and to produce, on the American plantation, a society of helpless dependants." (pg98)

In popular culture, at the beginning of this century, Sambo was viewed as an entertainer. Not for his clever wit, but because "Sambo was an overgrown child at heart."(pg13). Even after the emancipation, slaves were not freed of their expected dependence on their oppressor. The freed slaves were still viewed as children "and as children are given to impetuous play, humorous antics, docile energies, and uninhibited expressiveness, so too one could locate in Sambo identical traits."(pg13). Elkins believed there was a "psychological problem" (pg14) with in the slave that made them behave in such a manner. Because the slave was so institutionalized and infantilized, they did not know any better behavior.

Page numbers refer to:

1. Elkins, Stanley M. Slavery: A Problem in American Institutional and Intelectual Life. The University of Chicago Press. Chicago,IL: 1976
2. Boskin, Joseph. Sambo: The Rise and Demise of an American Jester. Oxford University Press. New York, NY: 1986