The creator of Disney+ show The Proud Family: Louder and Prouder said he is thrilled by the backlash against the cartoon – which has been branded 'anti-white propaganda'.
Disney was slammed for going woke yet again after the cartoon featured black children rapping about reparations and saying: 'Slaves built this country.'
'Republicans are losing their minds, calling on Americans to Boycott Disney because of this scene from a Disney cartoon The Proud Family,' the tweet said.
'They are literally mad that kids are learning that slaves helped build our nation. What the hell are they afraid of?'
Smith also liked a comment which said: 'Everyone so surprised that Proud family did this.
'Y'all forget the original had episodes about segregation, discrimination post 9/11 of middle eastern folks and an episode about the F slur/bullying gay kids?
'C'mon now. Proud family isn't "suddenly woke" now.'
Smith first joined Disney in 1988 and worked as an animator on Who Framed Roger Rabbit before co-directing the Warner Bros live-action and animated movie Space Jam.
He returned to Disney after Space Jam to supervise the animation of Tarzan and the Emperor’s New Groove.
Smith then supervised animation of The Princess and the Frog, Winnie the Pooh and was the lead animator on Tangled Ever After – a Disney short.
Smith, who co-directed Space Jam, tweeted: 'Why the fear? We're thrilled to have the opportunity to stoke the conversation.'
He then retweeted a comment on a video showing the kids in the show peacefully protesting when cops in riot gear show up.
Smith also won the Annie Awards Winsor McCay Award for career contributions to animation in 2021, and is currently signed to an overall deal with Walt Disney Television Animation with Proud Family executive producer Ralph Farquhar.
The episode which sparked outrage shows characters discovering that their town was built by slaves and then giving a presentation to their school.
As part of the rap, which as been branded 'blatant anti-white propaganda', a white character is seen standing on a stage with a poster that says 'still not atoned.'
The scene is echoing the current situation in California, where a board is insisting that every long-term black resident gets $5million in reparations.
During the episode, the characters, who are predominantly black, rule that Abraham Lincoln had no desire to end slavery – and so stage a petition to get his statue removed.
It’s important to note that nowhere in the clip is BLM mentioned by name. The clip instead shows series protagonist Penny Proud helping to protest the statue of a former slave owner outside her school. Penny’s opinion that someone who literally owned another living, breathing person shouldn’t be celebrated is apparently not a universal one.
The tweet follows one posted by @EndWokness on February 4 where the account decried the new Proud Family as “Blatant anti-white propaganda” above a clip of a song from the same episode detailing the history of black labor exploitation in America.
During a performance reminiscent of a beatnik poetry slam, several of the main characters proclaim together, “And we the descendants of slaves in America have earned reparations for their suffering and continue to earn reparations every moment we spend submerged in the systemic prejudice, racism, and white supremacy that America was founded with and still has not atoned for.” The characters go on to assert that Abraham Lincoln did not actually free slaves and insinuate that he has been falsely lionized in American history. “Emancipation is not freedom,” they contend, followed by a litany of ways that African Americans have supposedly remained slaves. All of this is accompanied by the repeated drumbeat trope of “Slaves built this country!”
Rhetoric of this sort has also been found in the infamous work of The 1619 Project and is linked to Critical Race Theory, all of which has been scrutinized by historians as not being truthful or based in fact. Despite the pushback, activists instead employ subtle brainwashing tactics. If you repeat a lie enough, people will believe it. What’s more, if you teach children to repeat your lie, the adults will believe it.
The Proud Family was originally broadcast on the Disney Channel in the early 2000s and remained politically neutral for the most part. They covered child appropriate topics such as friendships, family tensions, and school bullying. When Disney asked the original creators about launching the reboot a decade later, it seemed as if they were angling for a more woke version.
According to the series creator Bruce Smith in an interview with Entertainment Weekly, Disney asked him and his colleague Ralph Farquhar, “So how do you guys feel about if we decided to do The Proud Family again? What would you do?” Farquhar stated that their main changes would involve a blatant political and cultural agenda: “Well, we knew from 2001, when we first started doing the show, that maybe the two biggest things that we could see that changed, especially as it related to young people, was the emergence of social media and gender and identity issues — the LGBTQ community rising in prominence and demanding its rightful recognition if you will. And so that’s where we knew we had to take the show.”
Furthering that sentiment, Smith added, “We didn’t want to place that aside in telling our stories, we want to integrate those stories because, at the end of the day, our show really is the pinnacle of diversity and inclusion. And we wanted to make sure that this show looks like when you walk outside of your door and get together with all your peers and your friends, this is what the world looks like.”
Smith’s final statement really says it all. “This is what the world looks like.” An animated television show with a majority non-white band of characters is what the United States looks like? From the scene depicted above alone, one sees almost exclusively black characters, and the one white character performing on the stage is silent, most assuredly on purpose. This is not what the world looks like, but it might be what Smith and Farquhar WANT the world to look like.
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