When I was a kid I was a huge fan of the series Our Gang / The Little Rascals. I saw picture of Buckwheat recently and it got me to wondering what ever happened to the show. It was on every day when I was in elementary school. Over the years I’ve heard that Bill Cosby and / or Micheal Jackson purchased some of the episodes so that they could keep people from being exposed to stereotypicaly racist scenes, such as Buckwheat eating watermellon or fried chicken. There couldn’t be any truth to this, could there?:smack:
The snopes article fails to mention that King World heavily edited
the Rascals shorts (typically for racial content) for TV, and pulled some from syndication altogether (also for racial content).
Sure some of it was racist but it WAS a reflection of the times.
Buckwheats mother: “Am Buckwheat there?”
Or when Spanky is complaining about how is mother makes him take a bath because he’s dirty and he looks at Buckwheat and says “lucky you don’t have to worrry about that.” Buckwheat gives him a look as if to say “Brother you don’t knw WHAT you are talking about.”
The TIMES were racist the kids weren’t. They treated each other with as much love or cruelty as they saw fit regardless of race.
Yes. The black kids in Our Gang (Farina, Buckwheat, and Stymie) were actually pretty nonracist for their day. Though there were occasional joke on their color, they were always accepted as equal members of the gang. Often they helped the “good” kids against the bully.
It’s the Ebony White paradox – someone tries to show an enlightened portrayal of a black person in his time and it becomes a symbol or racism because it doesn’t match later expectations.