Were Just Racist Cartoons

Much of our childhood is shaped through what we see in our environment early on. A big part of that is television and cartoons. However cartoons weren’t always as good-natured as they have tried to be today. From the earliest cartoons to as far as the 60s, many cartoons have used racist stereotypes and racial slurs. Should we look to these old cartoons as a good source of insight or accept that they were just racist cartoons? Cartoons are just like art in that they paint a picture of what society was like at the time of its creation. Albeit racist and crass, these old cartoons tell a very convincing narrative of American sentiment in the 1900s. Many Americans were racist, and these cartoons produced by companies like Disney and Warner Bros. displays how widespread this sentiment was.
Another valuable detail involves how these cartoons were used. To rouse the American population in World War II, Disney produced many cartoons that ridiculed the Nazis and the Japanese. A famous example would be a cartoon depicting Donald Duck going to fight the Japanese and wiping their entire base out. Although this cartoon would be largely irrelevant today, it marks an important moment in history and reflects the use of propaganda by the US. Old racist cartoons lack any value to children of today, but to historians and anthropologists, they can be a valuable source of information about America’s cultural landscape in the