performance animation Anti-Bias: The Next Step Forward in Children’s Programming OPINION by Bill Weber and Paige Desjardins
“Did you ever stop to think that you can’t leave for your job in the morning without being dependent on most of the world? You go to the bathroom and reach for the sponge, and that’s handed to you by a Pacific islander. You go into the kitchen to drink your coffee, and that’s poured into your cup by a South American. Or maybe you’re desirous of having cocoa, and that’s poured by a West African. And then you reach over for your toast, and that’s given to you at the hands of an English-speaking farmer. Before you finish eating breakfast, you’ve depended on more than half the world. We aren’t going to have peace on Earth until we recognize this basic fact.” – Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. A Christmas Sermon on Peace December 24, 1967 Ebenezer Baptist Church Atlanta, Georgia
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r. King’s words are still relevant today, 51 years after he said them, because xenophobia, bigotry, religious intolerance, and hate crimes are back on the rise worldwide. We believe it is time for children’s media to push back with programming that teaches children to not just celebrate world diversity, but to recognize bias. Programming that helps children form confident self and group identities, supports critical thinking and empathy, and honors the diverse contributions of an interconnected world. As storytellers, we open windows into this diversity. Dora the Explorer introduces kids to Mexican
culture and the Spanish language. Doki and his friends travel to the wonders of the world. Justin Time takes kids through time to historical settings like the pyramids and Viking ships. Nina's World shows the world through a six-year old Latina's eyes. These shows, along with major movies like Moana and Coco, turn young children into tourists, making them feel more at home in the world. (We do have to be careful; the tourist approach only offers children a limited perspective of individual cultures that can be over-generalized.) But as families travel, intermarry, and/or immigrate, what is tourism to one child is home to another. With the global reach of our programming, it is now just as likely that a child viewer will identify with the subject of the lesson continued on next page
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