Until recently, types of black human beings were not created in film; black people were stereotypes-mammies, shiftless servants, loyal retainers, enter-tainers. We were not given, and were not in a position to be given, individualities that projected particular ways of inhabiting a social role; we recognized only the role. Occasionally the humanity behind the role would manifest itself; and the result was a revelation not of a human individuality, but of an entire realm of humanity becoming visible. Stanley Cavelll

Over three decades ago Stanley Cavell observed that film-particularly classical Hollywood film-failed to provide fully human roles for black characters because its narratives generally lacked the dimensions required to offer such possibilities. For Cavell, the problem extended to film audiences by virtue of their inability to recognize black Americans as anything more than empty stereotypes. In his view, audiences did not have the requisite cognitive tools to rec-ognize or acknowledge full humanity in many of their fellow human beings, and thus classical Hollywood film did not generally offer black characters who pushed audiences beyond their cognitive limitations. Cavell makes his observation in the context of explaining the power of films to" create individualities"-that is, types of human beings, or the kinds of characters that certain people are, such that we could imagine ourselves as having met them or as meeting them in other circumstances. 2 In this essay, I would like to investigate two points that arise in connection with Cavell's racial indictment of film and its lack of black individualities. First, I trace how film audi-ences' incapacity to recognize and acknowledge