[Kevin Rainbow]

There's no proof that such depictions are in any way harmful or racist in nature and motive or even suggestion, especially in the context of people who are least likely to try to read such things into them - children. Cartoonish depictions are by nature meant to exaggerate things, including physical features, which inevitably extends to race and culture - since all of us have race and cultural mannerisms. Race and culture aren't "God"; you can touch them. Merely depicting them in a playful way doesn't qualify as harmful and hateful.

When you reduce racism to benign exaggerations of physical features in the context of merely having fun and telling a story, you have really given people a reason not to think "racism" is all that serious an issue anymore. "The boy who cried wolf" is crying "racism". There's an elephant in the room, but people are pointing at a fly instead and calling it the elephant instead. Those calling the fly an elephant begin to think a fly is an elephant and those seeing a fly called an elephant more and more expect a fly when they hear "elephant". When you arrive at the scene, instead of finding real racism, what you find is merely the label slapped on some toyish thing , surrounded by mobs specially self-trained to be hypersensitive snobs engaged in politically correct nitpicking and others who pretend to be offended under peer pressure because it seems the right thing to do, and authors and creators caving under the threat to their public image. The crap on TV is fine, violent video games and movies, sleazy music, an internet flooded with porn. Let's target cartoonish depictions for, well, being cartoonish depictions including features of race and culture..

We all know it is not real racism. There's no real racist nature or motive here, and no one's brain is made prone to racism by merely viewing some cartoonish exaggerations or distortions in the context of everything else being exaggerated and distorted as well by the fact of it naturally being part of the art and medium it is in. Children can tell the difference between cartoonish depictions and real life. They don't think rabbits talk simply because they watched bugs bunny, or think humans and dinosaurs coexist because they watched flintstones.

Such superficializations of "racism" are an insult to and distractions from fighting against real racism.