This is a good example of how a society can use childhood favorites to send messages to little kids. Today i was stumbling (on StumbleUpon), and found this which reminded me of class.
"Published in 1948, this mostly forgotten children's book from Disney contains an extremely racist African caricature that comes to live with Mickey Mouse who is amused and angered by the lad's "silly and primitive ways."
It shows a black character showing up through a crate of banana's labeled "West African Bananas." I assume this was used to express a very common stereotype to express children the danger of African Americans, during the time of severe racism in the United States.
http://www.slightlywarped.com/crapfactory/curiosities/2010/racist_mickey_mous_book.htm
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I read about this a while back. However, that isn't necessarily assimilating children through education, considering it was in a children's book, and to my knowledge few copies exist. The stereotypical character was not necessarily hostile, he was innocent but made many mistakes. While not necessarily prejudice, it does generalize the character as the innocent savage stereotype, burdening Mickey by his constant mistakes. Also, the character's name (Thursday) is an obvious reference to Defoe's character Friday in his novel Robinson Crusoe, where a similar situation occurs in which the main character meets a "savage" and proceeds to Westernize him. While it is still racist, it is still rather tolerant for a book from 1940. The message of the story isn't, "They're useless savages!", it's, "They just don't know any better."
Ha this got me thinking and i decided to look up other instances in which Disney appeared "racist." In this article, it shows that top 9 most racist Disney characters. Number 3 is the Native Americans from Peter Pan. There is a clip from Peter Pan of the "Red Man" character explaining his people's history and culture. Here's the link...
http://www.cracked.com/article_15677_the-9-most-racist-disney-characters.html
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