Engine Room

Cartoon portrays an African American dressed as Santa; however, the text has him shouting that the money is for the “love of Allah,” much to the surprise of the white women walking past. The joke of the cartoon relies on the stereotyping of African Americans as Muslims.

Cartoon depicts an officer wearing an African nose ring with a surprised officer questioning if the natives learned any Western culture. This cartoon highlights the white man's fear of the risk of going native, in which a white sailor became Asian or African in behavior and appearance because he had been stationed overseas too long.

Cartoon shows dark skinned locals bringing offerings to a large statue that a sailor had erected of himself. The cartoon lays out that not only was this sailor able to assert himself as a god to these simple minded peoples but that he can likely do it again because there are more uncivilized indigenous peoples around the world to exploit.

The majority of racial cartoons dealt with the sailors’ interactions with those they encountered while sailing around the world. Most of the cartoons directed their racial jokes against groups outside of the Navy with a few that commented on African American racial stereotypes. The common theme expressed in these drawings was that the local people the Navy was stationed with were uncivilized and unintelligent.

These cartoons while not numerous still reveal a dark underside to the sailors’ worldviews and interactions with those they encountered during their service. Thus part of the Navy’s culture of the Cold War was built around a hyper Anglo-Saxon masculinity that looked down on people of color.