When I was a little kid, one of my favorite cartoons was Tom and Jerry.? Me and my peers thought little of the violence and sometimes racial overtones. But times have changed.
Social media venues iTunes and Amazon Prime offer the classic cat and mouse cartoon. But they have put on a warning label saying Tom and Jerry can be potentially racist and offensive, claiming some scenes may contain, “racial and ethnic prejudice”. Keep in mind most of these cartoons were done in the 1940s. One Tom and Jerry character in the center of the controversy is Mammy Two Shoes. The black mammy with the thick southern accent and incorrect grammar was one of the most used stereotypes in entertainment at the time. The last time Tom and Jerry put out a DVD, actress, comedian, and co-host of The View Whoopi Goldberg put on a disclaimer about the cartoon’s potential stereotyping. But she also says eliminating or censoring Manny Two Shoes and other controversial subjects would be like pretending they never existed.
I agree with Goldberg on this one, and I’m glad Amazon Prime and iTunes are taking the high road. Censorship does nobody any good here. But you do need to respect people’s sensitivity. I think this is the perfect call on their part of Amazon and iTunes. Besides, if we? censored every entertainment venue between the 1920s-1950s that contain ethnic stereotypes (and I don’t want to encourage them) then half of what came out during that period would be gone. Isn’t it bad enough there’s a school in Missouri that’s trying to censor US history? I think we need to see Mammy Two Shoes and other Tom and Jerry cartoons. These shows can start a great dialogue of ethnic portrayals in decades past and what we can learn from it today, and how far we’ve come. Or have we come so far?