![]() Of course, such “artistry” is excused, explained or ignored as keepin’-it-real story-telling. Yes, the N-word has been re-introduced, wholesale (but especially retail) by black gangsta rappers who exploit and cash in on every self-enslaving habit of black-urban life. The recent Twain decision is so easy to bash that there’s no sport in it, like shooting carp in a pail. In one episode he says, “My pappy must be in jail he didn’t come home last night.” I don’t know how that played in 1935, but in 2011 it’s heartbreaking. Then there are Stymie’s laments that seem no less familiar to African-American “culture” in the 1930s as they do in 2011. Who looked bad in 1935 after that exchange? Not Stymie, not Dickie. When Dickie protests her plans for him that day, claiming he’d wanted to play with his best friend, Stymie, Dickie’s mom is horrified: “Do you mean that little colored boy!?” In one episode, his best pal, Dickie, the local rich kid in this bit, is smothered by his over-protective and bejeweled mother. Much of the most race-based moments attached to Stymie seemed designed to boost him as a sympathetic character and, at other times, to present him as a symbol of integration. presidencies and headstones.Īnd that Stymie’s best pals were white kids, and that he sat front and center among white kids in a classroom make for recurring, can’t-miss scenes, now more than 75 years old. ![]() Stymie’s “I don’t know where we’re goin’ but we’re on our way” remains suitable for stitching onto throw pillows, class mottos, U.S. from 1930-35, we found more than a leader we found an adventurer, a wit and a side-street philosopher. ![]() In the beloved, still-quoted character Stymie, played by Matthew Beard, Jr. ![]() And certainly they include many race-ugly, stereotypical portrayals of American blacks, including Stepin Fetchit cooks, “Mammy” maids and eyes-a-poppin’ kids.īut lost, too, to this political correctness was that the lead characters of the “Little Rascals” often were black kids. Those shorts years ago disappeared from commercial TV, having been condemned as racist. The same time the story hit that the “N-word” will be removed from a new edition of Mark Twain’s “Huck Finn” - a well-intended-but-wrong-headed desecration of both American literature and history - Turner Movie Classics presented 24 hours of Hal Roach’s “Our Gang/Little Rascals” shorts, filmed during the 1920s and 1930s. ![]()
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