Racism is not entertainment

I have a 5 year old daughter. I love Halloween, and Fall. I love spices and cool breezes and dead leaves. So this year I've been looking for some fun, age appropriate cartoons or shows for my daughter to watch that are Halloween based.

I found a collection of classic cartoons on Amazon prime, there was a picture of Casper the friendly ghost, so I started it. There are some problematic things with some older cartoons, mostly sexism, but those are things that I address in all of the shows that she currently watches as well.

We sat through a Casper cartoon and a Popeye cartoon, and I wandered off to another room and left her to it.

A few minutes later, I heard it. I heard the loud stereotypical voice of a black woman coming from the TV, I caught a couple of phrases and rushed right into the living room to see my daughter watching 'Butterscotch and Soda', and an incredibly racist caricature of a black woman.

I rushed to turn it off and explained that she couldn't watch anymore because it was racist, but.. she'd seen it. I don't believe in sheltering children from racism. But I do want to choose, as best I can, what she absorbs and when.

This was in a cartoon. A MILD cartoon. A cartoon for children, where everything is lighthearted and nothing is scary. Except black people.



This isn't something teaching a lesson, this is a depiction of black people as 'less than', in the most casual consumption available. This is showing children, CHILDREN, that black people are exagerated, greedy, lazy, incapable of behaving better than children, and, basically, like talking pets.

It's two thousand fucking seventeen. I should not have to try and shield my child from mammy images. She's got a black mom. As pale as she is, she's got YEARS to learn that this is still how some people will see her, that this is how some people see me. She has years to discover how badly blacks have been treated in this country, without images that show black people, black women, as laughable and incompetent.

This is not a 'classic' cartoon. This, like many, many other things, does not belong in anything that is labeled for children. Keep it, by all means, do not hide it and do not erase it. But put it where it belongs, in a museum, or a collection with that fawn from Fantasia that made it out of the VHS copy I owned as a child.

These things are important reminders of our history. And as such, belong there. This is not entertainment. This is not appropriate 'entertainment' for any age.