Colonel-Knight-Rider #racist #dunning-kruger

Colonel-Knight-Rider #racist #dunning-kruger deviantart.com

I heard PBS published this new Web-exclusive pro-BLM short starring characters from that old kiddie show Arthur (yes, it's still a thing—it's well past its prime, and hardly anyone talks about it anymore, but it's still a thing). Clearly, creator Marc Brown wants to keep his exhausted show culturally relevant in an ever-changing world and represents the current common celebrity and corporate attitude of taking responsibility for a crime in which no corporation or celebrity played any part.

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Wow. It's terrible to have a cartoon teach kids to not be racist! Instead we should teach kids to not be racist! (Hey Robert, do you even read what you're typing?)

The way I see it, if we could simply teach kids to love and accept everyone regardless of skin color from an early age

I thought that was the idea, no?

Colonel Knight Rider: “Hey, instead of trying to fix Problem A, you should try to fix Problem A!”

Gerry Anderson 'Retrometabolised' his late 1960s show "Captain Scarlet" using CGI: yet kept it culturally relevant.

He kept with the times. Time for you to do the same, Bobby.

The way I see it, if we could simply teach kids to love and accept everyone regardless of skin color from an early age, we could prevent racism in future generations, ending the problems we have today instead of continuing them and negating the need for videos like "Arthur on Racism."
I’m pretty sure that’s already what’s going on with the new Arthur cartoons, but did you mean that parents should be teaching their own kids to not be racist rather than content creators? What’s the problem if content creators do put anti-racism messages out, as Marc Brown clearly has, here?

Also, if a child’s parents are the only people who teach them moral messages, they never get to learn what 'the other' is like. A set of parents represents a maximum of two people. There's a lot to be said for learning other ways of being from prodigal aunts and uncles, teachers, mum's coffee-morning friend, your older sibling's mum or dad, etc.

The child gets to see that there are other ways of seeing things. That in turn encourages them to compare and contrast different approaches to the same issue and to think for themselves. And I know how much you like to encourage thinking for oneself, Robert ;)

This is malignantly naive.

The problem is that racism extends beyond the scope of the individual. Marginalised people are marginalised not only due to discrimination they face individually, but also and especially due to worse starting positions in life due to the cumulative discrimination their families have been facing over the course of many generations.

Additionally, “don’t be racist” is easier said than done - bias is usually unconscious, requiring critical thinking, including towards oneself. The human brain is incredibly good at self-deception, after all. Furthermore, smart bigots/bigots competent at demagogy exist, and so do powerful and amoral people who may (may!) not be bigots, but benefit from societal injustices - they may craft policies and narratives that, while not overtly racist, effectively harm certain ethnic groups more than other and perpetuate old bigotry under a new disguise.

Finally, people do not always follow what they are told to believe. This is a good thing - after all, without it, there would be no new ideas nor anyone to stand up against tyranny and societal injustice. But it also means that there will always be bad people who need to be opposed actively.

Empty virtue signaling against other empty virtue signaling, part 1 zillion.

Colonel-Knight-Rider #racist #dunning-kruger deviantart.com

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Confused?