Blog post #3: Racisms

In my last History of Animation course (or our last should you be in my class, and I mean... who else would be reading this but ya'll?) I saw something that didn't surprise me, racism in old cartoons. I forget the title of the cartoon, but it was a small white boy and a small black boy and there was a fair amount of racism in how the black child was portrayed, how he talked, and how he was treated. Back then this blatant racism was accepted and commonplace. But to what extent is this racism and to what extent is it caricature?  Where is the fine line between racist and simply emphasizing the traits of a person?
As a society we are sensitive to calling out anyone based on their social, racial or cultural characteristics because we don't want to risk a confrontation or conflict. Whether this is too sensitive is not the point of this article, what I would like to point out is how caricature, although sometimes bordering on racism, is still alive and well in todays cartoons and is not necessarily a bad thing.
Todays cartoons do something that has been going on since the smurfs, removing the human element from the characters. Who is to tell if Wilt from forsters home for imaginary friends is black or white (Because he's red) even though sterotypically he shares many common traits with the stereotypes of a black person. Todays society casts a wide net over what is racism, and if you were to turn all of the characters in Foster's home for imaginary friends, my little pony friendship is magic, transformers, chowder and the like into human counterparts you would certainly hear many cries of "racist". But I beg to differ. These characters are not picking out cultural and racial traits in order to draw distinction of which race is better, which is what the definition of racism is, but are instead drawing on them to show the differences in the characters so that they are relatable in their own sense.
In the end I think old cartoons did have a racist element, always putting whites on top of blacks, and while todays cartoons also take from the same cultural, social, and racial pools they do not fall under racism because of clever uses of non human characters as well as no ill will towards any of the ones they create.