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> Any Tom and Jerry episode involving Mammy Two Shoes Since I watched Tom and Jerry cartoons many, many times, I just looked up who this is (although I kinda h

> Any Tom and Jerry episode involving Mammy Two Shoes Since I watched Tom and Jerry cartoons many, many times, I just looked up who this is (although I kinda had inferred it, there aren't that many characters in Tom and Jerry :)) and why she's a problem. Curiously, I always thought she was the owner of the house, so any racist undertones were totally lost on me (note that I'm not American). (I did get that they were quite sexist, no man doing housework ever). I don't deny the racist intent, but it's funny how one needs the cultural context to get that. I hope in a few decades it will be lost on every kid.

jterrys 4y ago
Mammy was lost on pretty much every kid, even in America. Her relevance resurfaced when 'problematic' became part of the common nomenclature to describe such caricatures. If she was, as we say, problematic, there would've been a helluva lot more racist kids running around, probably.
- hef19898 4y ago
  >> If she was, as we say, problematic, there would've been a helluva lot more racist kids running around, probably. That's not how those things work. And from the outside looking in, there seem to be quite a few racists in the age group that crew up with Tom and Jerry...
  - dsfyu404ed 4y ago
    Oh please. Pretty much all these old tropes that we today consider stereotypes about who is at what station in life, and what what kinds of businesses and activities various races and nationalities engage in are completely and totally irrelevant in an age where the help may be any color, the laundromat could be run by anybody, the banker's religion is a toss up and the immigrant tradesman could be from almost any corner of the earth. Without the day to day reality of a living in a mostly racially/ethnically segregated (by law or by cultural norm, doesn't really matter) for these tropes to reinforce they are meaningless as stereotypes. Their only use is for people like you to earn a few quick social credit points taking a stand against.
  - Gordonjcp 4y ago
    If Mammy Two Shoes is a racist stereotype and the cone-hatted slitty-eyed "Ching Chong Chinaman" is a racist stereotype (they are, at that) then so are all the bagpipe-playing violent ginger Scotsmen, and all the slow-witted straw-chewing Irishmen, or indeed the "dumb Southerner" stereotypes.
  - jterrys 4y ago
    I mean here's the problem: You don't actually even really see her. Mammy appears for like 5-10 seconds in a handful of episodes and all she does is hit Tom or tell him to catch that mouse. At best, as a kid, you could inference that she's mean to Tom and hits him for not catching Jerry. That's literally it. If that's enough to cause people to go into a tirade of unabashed racism, them yeah, America is absolutely fucked and throttled. But racism today is so much more constrained and things are so much better now that the fact that you think this is problem today is quite frankly offensive.
fatnoah 4y ago
> Curiously, I always thought she was the owner of the house... Same here. I always thought she was the "mom" of the house. It wasn't until I was an adult that I had enough context to understand the undertones.

jterrys 4y ago

Mammy was lost on pretty much every kid, even in America. Her relevance resurfaced when 'problematic' became part of the common nomenclature to describe such caricatures. If she was, as we say, problematic, there would've been a helluva lot more racist kids running around, probably.

hef19898 4y ago
>> If she was, as we say, problematic, there would've been a helluva lot more racist kids running around, probably. That's not how those things work. And from the outside looking in, there seem to be quite a few racists in the age group that crew up with Tom and Jerry...
- dsfyu404ed 4y ago
  Oh please. Pretty much all these old tropes that we today consider stereotypes about who is at what station in life, and what what kinds of businesses and activities various races and nationalities engage in are completely and totally irrelevant in an age where the help may be any color, the laundromat could be run by anybody, the banker's religion is a toss up and the immigrant tradesman could be from almost any corner of the earth. Without the day to day reality of a living in a mostly racially/ethnically segregated (by law or by cultural norm, doesn't really matter) for these tropes to reinforce they are meaningless as stereotypes. Their only use is for people like you to earn a few quick social credit points taking a stand against.
- Gordonjcp 4y ago
  If Mammy Two Shoes is a racist stereotype and the cone-hatted slitty-eyed "Ching Chong Chinaman" is a racist stereotype (they are, at that) then so are all the bagpipe-playing violent ginger Scotsmen, and all the slow-witted straw-chewing Irishmen, or indeed the "dumb Southerner" stereotypes.
- jterrys 4y ago
  I mean here's the problem: You don't actually even really see her. Mammy appears for like 5-10 seconds in a handful of episodes and all she does is hit Tom or tell him to catch that mouse. At best, as a kid, you could inference that she's mean to Tom and hits him for not catching Jerry. That's literally it. If that's enough to cause people to go into a tirade of unabashed racism, them yeah, America is absolutely fucked and throttled. But racism today is so much more constrained and things are so much better now that the fact that you think this is problem today is quite frankly offensive.

fatnoah 4y ago

> Curiously, I always thought she was the owner of the house... Same here. I always thought she was the "mom" of the house. It wasn't until I was an adult that I had enough context to understand the undertones.