true. but. tangent.
the Hays Code was incredibly regressive--a set of compulsory censorship rules for film to promote a one-sided "moral" perspective on the "correct standards of life". On the face of it, this was promoting the white nuclear family (and so white supremacy, heterosexuality, and classism), Christian piety, rule of law (as in crime must always be punished and the police/state is virtuous), and not to mention extremely traditional gender roles. As you can imagine, this also came down hard on sympathetic, honest depictions of people of color, homosexuality, independent women... and pretty much anything that did not square with the conservative status quo.
the deeper motivations behind the Hays Code was politics--to keep the "dangers" of communism at bay (even before the McCarthy Red Scare this was a concern). How best to do that than to impose extreme censorship on filmmakers and muzzle independent thought in a new art form rapidly gaining popularity?
So yes, while pre-code film has some incredibly racist content--1915's Birth of a Nation is the big one; there's a few Buster Keaton films that are unfortunately blemished with blackface, and there's undoubtedly many more. And undoubtedly, the 1910s-1920s were some of the most horrifyingly, violently racist years in American history--it's no wonder that some of this would be reflected in the films of white filmmakers of the time.
But code-era film is also rife with blackface, overt racism, Confederate sympathizing (Gone with the Wind, anybody?), often in contexts that are subtler but similarly horrifying, because they are presented in insidious veneers of respectability, upholding racist, conservative values more effectively, I'd wager. The ones holding the reins got smarter, that's all.
This is a long-winded way to say there's nothing rosy about the Hays Code, only that it preached "respectability" and conformity. Not to say that code-era films regurgitated its values--some of the best films of all time come from this era, when filmmakers tried to find loopholes in the code (like the kissing scene in Hitchcock's Notorious, for example). It's a testament to the strength of film as a medium that enough boundary-pushing happened to kill it entirely (thank you, Some Like It Hot, for putting the final nail in its coffin!)
Don't sleep on pre-code film, though--for all the uglier depictions and content that may arise, there is, in many films, a sense of independence and experimental spirit that is absent in many code-era films--especially in silent films.
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