Pedro Cerrano, played by the respected Dennis Haysbert in the film Major League (1989), was a Latin player with a bad accent who used the wicked stereotype of using voodoo to heal his batting problems and worshipping a doll named Jobu. He wanted to sacrifice a chicken in one scene, smoking plants in another and posturing the entire movie as the “angry Black man.” Not a good look.
Song of the South (1946) is an early Disney film that was so offensive and racist that it was banned from DVD production. In it, Uncle Remus — not a good name to start — is a gentle, old, African-American man who believes that everything in life is just fine … despite the fact that slavery had recently existed not too long before he told the tale of “Brer Rabbit and the Tar Baby.” Set in the strangely tranquil post-Civil War Deep South, this film glosses over the horrors of slavery so much it’s embarrassing.

