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They’re just trolling us now…

Despite everything going on in the world today, the second most read article at the BBC News website when I checked the news this morning was this one: Tom and Jerry cartoons carry racism warning. It’s from Amazon’s streaming service (formerly LoveFilm) and the warning on Volume 2 is:

“Tom and Jerry shorts may depict some ethnic and racial prejudices that were once commonplace in American society. Such depictions were wrong then and are wrong today.”

Emphasis mine, because of the staggering presumption of “wrong then.”

The problem, not surprising, is the character the Wikipedia article refers to as “Mammy two shoes” — presumably because she looks like the classic 19th C mammy character, and all you usually ever see are her legs.

I’m going to cry foul on anyone who calls her “the maid character” though. I’m sure I’ve seen every Tom and Jerry ever, and I recall *no* evidence she was not in her own home and mistress thereof. Thomas is clearly her cat, she’s dressed in the sort slobbing-around-the-house clothes I seriously doubt she’d wear to work. I think she makes herself a sandwich in one episode.

So this is racist because…she’s fat like Mammy? Because she talks like an American black person? Because she’s wearing slobbing-around-the-house clothes? Really, I think we have a right to insist class warriors tell us specifically what parts of this character are offensive. Because I think the answer would be far more racist than the question.

Oh, insult to injury — and I honestly don’t know if they’re flat-out trolling — this from the Telegraph today.

How the hell did we get to the point that a cartoon Siamese cat with chopsticks is some kind of deadly racist stereotype?

October 1, 2014 — 7:05 pm
Comments: 18