New Disney Cartoon on Slavery May be the Wokest Thing I've Ever Seen

While Disney gains its monetary success on the backs of widely viewed shows like The Mandalorian, the company continues to spin those profits into politically charged children’s programming.

As RedState reported last year, leaked videos of an all-hands-on-deck meeting showed executive producer Latoya Raveneau bragging about how she has a “not-at-all-secret gay agenda,” adding “queerness” to shows for kids.

That came in response to a Florida law that banned the sexualization of young children by teachers and administrators in schools. Why did that represent an existential crisis for Disney? One can only conclude that the once revered children’s network has changed its primary mission to injecting wokeness into future generations, not providing quality entertainment.

Given that context, it’s not surprising that the reboot of “The Proud Family,” a children’s show from the early 2000s, would push the envelope. But truly, this may be the wokest thing I’ve ever seen.

You’ll be less than shocked to learn that this is another show produced by Raveneau and to get the full effect, you really have the watch the clip. I say that because it would be easy to just assume people are calling this Critical Race Theory because it merely mentions slavery. That’s not it at all, though. Sure, one might question whether such a topic is suitable for a show aimed at children aged in the single digits, but if that were all this is, it would be a mundane disagreement.

Rather, this takes wokeness in children’s programming not just to another planet, but well into another universe. Jarring cuts with various questionable claims are interspersed with black children raising their fists and shouting “slaves built this country” over and over. That is then parlayed into a demand for financial reparations.

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 a systemic predjudice, racism, and white supremacy that America was founded with and still has not atoned for.

Slaves built this country.

In another section, it is asserted that Abraham Lincoln did not free the slaves and that “Emancipation is not freedom.” Other generalized claims include the idea that slavery made “your families” rich, a statement pointed at all white Americans, and that slavery built the banking and shipping industries.

There are several problems here, beginning with the fact that it’s just incredibly divisive and harmful to teach children eight generations removed from slavery that they are oppressed victims due to the suffering of their ancestors. Anyone who watches that clip and is impressionable is going to walk away thinking they have a right to be angry at and punish those that don’t look like them. Personally, I think that’s a pretty screwed-up thing to teach children.

It’s not just the top-level result of such content that is the issue, though. It’s also that many of the claims being made are just flatly untrue. It is a grossly inaccurate simplification of American history to teach kids that “slaves built this country.” Slavery contributed to parts of the early economy in the United States, but it did not build the country into what it is today (or even what it was a hundred years ago).

Why? Because slavery is an evil, atrophying institution that stunts the growth of a nation instead of accelerating it. In the case of the United States, it locked generations of slaves and non-slaves alike in abject poverty. Slaves were obviously not paid while their forced labor then crushed the market for the labor of non-slaves. Compounding the situation, because most slaves weren’t allowed to be educated and the vast majority of non-slaves at the time were so poor they couldn’t afford to be, generations of advancement were lost across the board.

Slavery was not good. It had no redeeming qualities. It did not “build this country.” Instead, those who perpetrated it mired the country in place for decades for the benefit of a very select few. It wasn’t until after the Civil War and the abolition of slavery that the United States actually began its march to global dominance beginning with the industrial revolution.

Lastly, even if one wants to ignore everything I’ve just written, the “slaves built this country” line also suffers from a math problem. There were a little over three million slaves in the United States in 1850 (the last pre-war census taken). In comparison. there were 23 million Americans in total. Non-slave-owning adults made up the vast majority of that number and almost all of them worked hard labor jobs in relative squaller, with the largest populations of people residing in non-slave states. In other words, they also “built this country,” and it does not downplay slavery to admit that context.

It is cut-and-paste Critical Race Theory, straight out of the ridiculous and false 1619 Project, to teach children that slavery was the deciding factor in America’s success and that because of that, those who had no part in it are actually part of a systemic conspiracy of oppression. It is a cynical attempt at personal gain by some in modern society that actually ends up glorifying a grotesque institution. If that’s what Disney wants to promote, then parents should vote with their wallets. Letting kids be kids is apparently not a priority for The Mouse.