You’re sitting around with your white friends, drinking some low-grade, fancy microbrewed beer, and the Dead Baby jokes come out. Your friend- let’s call her, Jenny- comes out with a really good one. It’s gross plus perverted plus hilarious. And then your other friend- um, he can be called… Jeff- tells a joke. But it’s not a Dead Baby joke… it’s a racist joke. How he went from dead babies to racism, you don’t know. Jeff has never really been socially well-adjusted.
But this isn’t even the worst part. The worst part is that all your white friends are laughing. Some a little more awkwardly than others, but still. You look around at all their smiling faces, and you notice Jenny gearing up to tell that joke about the black people on the bus that she’s told a million times and always follows with, ‘My dad told me that! MY DAD! Can you believe that?’, and you realize…
You are fucking appalled.
Holy shit, your white, college-educated, weekend pot smoking friends are racist!
For the rest of the night, you try and sit with them, but the entire time, all you can think about is how you ever became such good friends with people who might as well all be grand dragons in the klu klux klan.
The next 2 weeks, every time anyone says the words ‘black’, ‘rice’, or ‘taquitos‘, you flip out. You give up your seat to every Person of Colour you encounter on public transit, even when they clearly don’t need it. Eventually, you stay up for 48 hours trying to watch every episode of What’s Happenin’? and What’s Happenin’ Now? because you’re really ashamed white America didn’t embrace that show the way they did the Cosby franchise.
I won’t even go into your trip to the African-American museum, when you stood up on a table in the commissary and shouted, ‘BROTHERS AND SISTERS! RISE UP! RISE UP BEFORE WHITEY BEATS YOU DOWN!’, because, while I respect your passion, I also know how shatteringly embarrassing it can be to be dragged from a place of culture by some rent-a-cops while demanding to be allowed back in to get the US State Quarters Collector’s book you purchased at the gift store.
Ahhh… 3rd grade.
But this, my electronic friends, is exactly why racist cartoons as so awesome.
For those of us who are anti-racist, it’s incredibly difficult to witness firsthand racism of any kind. In our little precious world, even despite all we know, racism just can’t be as bad as it was back then.
And then Scenario A above happens, and we’re made to question all of humanity, and no amount of PBR and Father Ted marathons will ever make it better.
But with racist cartoons, you can witness racism firsthand, but remain distanced from it. You’re reminded of how horrible racism can be, but you don’t have to get rid of all your friends to do it.
Also, quite a few of the more famous racist cartoons have amazing soundtracks, which is a megabonus if you’re into old school swing and jazz music (for the record, plenty of non-racist cartoons have this, too).
And of course, if you’re white, there’s precious bragging rights with your white friends. Sure, Yvonne went to that ‘diversity seminar’ at her work and told the presenter off in front of everyone because the seminar was inherently racist since only white people attended, and then everyone in your group of friends applauded her when she recounted the story.
But YOU…. well, wait, actually, that was pretty cool what Yvonne did. She’s always the best at telling people off. Remember when that waiter was rubbing against the side of her boob at that diner in midtown, trying to make it all seem like an accident, and she told him AND the manager off, and got them to comp her mozzarella sticks?
I mean, but that’s it, isn’t it? Yvonne’s ALWAYS doing that shit. Why should she get all the attention for being outspoken and passionate all the time? I mean, you went out and bought racist cartoons on DVD, *and* you read some stuff about them on Wikipedia. And if you were still in college or taking a night course in something, you would totally write a paper about racist cartoons, even if that had nothing to do with what you were studying.
God, Yvonne is such a bitch.
Anyway.
YOU… you know what the racism of our forefathers was like. You know that the joke Jenny’s dad whispered to her while they were setting up the grill in the backyard for a pool party with their neighbours isn’t the way it used to be. You know that people used to get together in large groups and laugh together about this stuff. They used to pop juju bees and malted milk balls while watching garish, decades-old depictions of different 
races, and then go home in their boat-sized Cadillacs and call up their best friends at KLONDIKE-5 and retell those terrifically horrible bits and let it spin in their heads that maybe- just maybe- there was actually a kernel of truth to it.
You also have a better understanding of the film Far From Heaven, which is cool because you love Julianne Moore. Sure, it’s a little weird when she doesn’t open her mouth all the way, but she’s still pretty awesome.
Of course, there’s also the very serious reason- racist cartoons remind you of how far you’ve come, at least as an individual. Somehow, even after all these years, watermelons and huge front teeth and sombreros are still considered funny. But you know that’s unacceptable. When you press play and Whoopi Goldberg starts her introduction, you get a little fire in your heart. Next time you’re hanging out with your white friends, and their racism starts to show, you know you’re going to call them on it, even at the risk of Jeff saying something like, ‘God, it was just a JOKE, man! Lighten the fuck up and drink your IPA!’ (even minus the racism, I’m still not really clear on why you hang out with that guy; he’s such a dick), or Jenny bringing up her 1/8th ‘Cherokee’ heritage. Seriously… those kids need to know.
And THAT’S why I like racist cartoons!
If you’d like to know more about racist cartoons, here are some resources:
The Censored 11-
- http://looney.goldenagecartoons.com/ltcuts/ltcuts11.html
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censored_Eleven
- http://www.milkandcookies.com/tag/censored11/
And since there definitely were more than 11 racist cartoons-
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Looney_Tunes#Stereotypes
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bosko
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scrub_Me_Mama_with_a_Boogie_Beat
My fav kicker, racism in cartoons has definitely not disappeared-
- http://www.mediaed.org/videos/CommercialismPoliticsAndMedia/MickeyMouseMonopoly
- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=byaMd_PNyIY
And, just cos we’re here-
Don’t say I never gave ya nothin’.
