Did Our Gang/Little Rascals take place in a specific city, like L.A.? Or was it just generic urban America?
It was filmed in Culver City California, an LA suburb which back then still had some rural areas but now is all developed.
I consider myself a minor Our Gang historian and have read alot about the series. To add to the discussion:
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It’s not only black but they also included a few asian kids.
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They used the term “piccadelly” (although I dont know the actual spelling and cant find anything online), like we would say “negro” today. I remember one time a white Dad talking about his sons friend Stymie “you mean the little piccadilly boy”?. Not in a racist manner but only matter of fact.
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The black characters were so popular they considered creating a whole new series around them called “The Piccadilly’s”.
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I remember one short where Farina was getting a job out of the local paper and the ad called for “Colored boys needed” and the other kids pointing out that only kids like Farina could qualify.
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If anything the slam was against rich people which was understandable during the depression.
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Many of the kids went by nicknames like Froggy, Porky, Butch, Chubby, and Spanky.
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The gender of “Buckwheat” was hard to figure out because sometimes he/she was a girl, sometimes we arent sure, and sometimes it was a boy.
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The character “Stymie” wore a bowler hat. Where did he get that? He was friends with Stan Laurel from “Laurel and Hardy” which was also filmed in Culver studios who gave it to him.
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The actor that played “Spanky” was pretty sheltered and said he was 8 when he realized not all children were being raised on a movie set.
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While the depiction of black children tended to be pretty equal, black adult actors were stereotyped such as women being maids and looking like Aunt Jemima and the men never being in a position of authority but playing lower characters like janitors.
I may be mistaken, but I think the term you’re thinking of there is “pickaninny.”
Pickaninny is the racial slur. Piccadilly is the street in London.
Possibly the most racist Our Gang episode was The Kid from Borneo (1933), featuring a carnival sideshow performer portrayed by a black man supposedly with a mental age of seven. (The original Wild Men from Borneo were two white American dwarfs alleged to be from the island. When we kids would act up my parents would tell us to “Stop acting like the Wild Man from Borneo”).
While the Wild Man is certainly a racist stereotype, he is not shown to have any connection to Stymie, who appears prominently in the episode. To my surprise, on re-watching the episode it turns out that the kids mistakenly believe the Wild Man is Spanky and his siblings’ Uncle George, not Stymie’s uncle (as I had remembered it). And Stymie is the one who compares him to a gorilla, not the white kids. The kids, black and white, are essentially color-blind with regard to Uncle George.
Oops, your right.
In spite of having seen the explanation for the OP’s username multiple times, my brain still always reads it as “Wookie in a pub”
Here’s a pretty good article about a book that was written about the racial history of Our Gang.
Was that “yum yum eat 'em up”?
Yes. I must confess that my family still uses that phrase when indulging in acts of gluttony. 
That makes me giggle. I can picture Chewie holding a big ol’ beer mug 
Thank God ------- I thought it was just me and the brain damage from my last stroke. :smack:
You are not alone.
Did the character who played Buckwheat think it was racist?
Children’s author Dav Pilkey had the Talking Toilets say that in Captain Underpants and the Attack of the Talking Toilets. He also gave George and Harold, the main characters, the last names Beard and Hutchins (the last names of Stymie and Wheezer, respectively). Their school was Jerome Horwitz Elementary.
Every indication is no; and his son (I believe) named a scholarship fund for the character after his death. I believe most of the cast remained proud of the shows but Billie Thomas (Buckwheat) and Spanky MacFarland seemed the most vocal about it. Billie died kinda young so you could argue that more time may have changed his opinion but somehow I doubt it.
Presumably the Junior High was named after Larry and the High School after Moe.
Interesting aside: soon after this topic was posted I was reading the Wikipedia page for Our Gang when I noticed that Stepin Fetchit was a guest star in one film. I was then reading his page when I discovered that his son was an early spree killer.
There’s room for a whole 'nother thread here about things that parents said that would be considered racist today, but weren’t meant to be so.
Maybe I’ll start that thread on another day when I’m not five minutes from falling asleep.
For me, it would be a couple of things my mother used to say when we were acting up (for context, she was the child, and I am the grandson, of immigrants from Ireland):
Again, for context, the term “tinker” is stil controversial in Ireland.
Okay, sorry about the hijack. It just struck me as I was reading.