Now that the estate of Dr. Seuss has withdrawn 6 titles from further publication due to the appearance of non-woke characters, there have been further conversations about old cartoon characters.
NY Times opinion writer Charles Blow wrote about that issue and ignited further controversy over his criticism of Speedy Gonzales being a stereotype of Mexican culture.
link to that article:https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/03/opinion/suess-books-race-bias.html
However, many people of Mexican & other Latin American ancestries love Speedy Gonzales.
https://remezcla.com/culture/latinos-debate-speedy-gonzales-a-racist-caricature/
We don't want "woke" saviors trying to save us from cartoon characters. Our cultures emphasize having a sense of humor about ourselves. Even if the character was based on a stereotype, we don't take that stuff personal.
I was talking about this issue with my older brother, who has been to Mexico more than me, and we both agreed that Speedy Gonzales wasn't something to be offended about. We also criticized the over-reactions to other cartoon characters from the Loony Tunes and the Simpsons.
If you want to talk about stereotypes, I think realistic fiction movies like "Blood In, Blood Out" contribute to way more misunderstanding about Mexican culture than some cartoon character. Don't get wrong, we need movies like that to represent life for some Mexican-Americans in the barrios of California.
However, being in Hawaii, I noticed that the movie "Blood In, Blood Out" is popular among Pacific Islanders, but some of them have the mistaken assumption that the movie represents the culture of the average Mexican. When they find out my dad is from Mexico, they assume he would talk & dress like the characters from that movie! HELL NO! The Mexican side of my family is from Oaxaca, which is FAR from the US-Mexico border. They don't use words like "ese" or "vato", and they don't drive lowriders or wear khakis! But the funny thing is that if you tell those same Pacific Islanders that Polynesians and Micronesians are the same, they will get offended! (Don't get me wrong: I got nothing but love for the Pacific Islanders, and a lot of them have been a blessing to my life! I just got to let them know that movie isn't my family's reality!)
As for the Puerto Rican side of my family, a few months before my grandmother died, we were watching one of the TV stations that played old movies. It was one of those John Wayne's western movies. While we were watching, my grandma said she loved seeing those Latino characters in John Wayne's movies .
My mind was thinking "the woke activists of today would have a fit about the way those Latino characters are portrayed in those old films"
But the important thing is that: my grandma and her generation has been through so much struggles growing up that minor issues like the "wokeness" of fictional characters are of ZERO importance to them. Even with all the traumas my grandma has been through, she also had a sense of humor about herself and would laugh along with whatever Latin@ characters would be on TV, even if it wouldn't pass the "wokeness" test of today!
