First of all, it's a fallacy to believe that anyone who is a part of the majority can make any kind of reasonable assumptions as to what is questionable to the group or groups that may be targeted. I hate it when people do that. The next fault is the attempt to give authority to the stance by the claiming of minority friend, as if they could presume to be a representative of what that persons view may be.
I'm not a brony, but I've been watching some of the marathon currently on to see what the hubbub was about, and the first thing that struck me was just how incredibly and unnecessarily Eurocentric the show is. Especially since it's made in Canada and aimed at US audiences, two supposed bastions of diversity. Much of the problem may not be intentioned out and out racism, and a lot of it is subtextual, but it is there. The ponies to me are without a doubt representational of white folks, and with the cultural associated norms as a baseline, while the various non-pony equines, and bison, being the varied other peoples. The shows creators, for some strange reason, decided to place the pony pov in a past allegorical time when the west was superficially innocent but actually highly homogenous, highly ignorant about and exclusionary to people of color. It makes for some interesting first encounters within the context of the show, but the rapping backwoods Zebra, wild stampeding Bison, passive Donkeys and ugly Mules are never really thusly included, and are treated as alien stereotyped 'others', to be tolerated after simply being plot devices that were the source of scorn, derision, suspicion or trouble making, that became one off lessons, only to then be tossed aside like used tokens. The historical whitewashing of the Natives American story is also particularly troubling. The effect of these treatments in shows and toys like this on impressionable minority youth has been practically lab tested and proven, and MLP is much broader in scope of these negative aspects than almost any show I've ever seen. Much of this carelessness and insensitivity could have been avoided if there were any people of color with proper representation on Hasbro's or Studio B' s board, or on the MLP creative team.
First of all, it's a fallacy to believe that anyone who is a part of the majority can make any kind of reasonable assumptions as to what is questionable to the group or groups that may be targeted. I hate it when people do that. The next fault is the attempt to give authority to the stance by the claiming of minority friend, as if they could presume to be a representative of what that persons view may be. I'm not a brony, but I've been watching some of the marathon currently on to see what the hubbub was about, and the first thing that struck me was just how incredibly and unnecessarily Eurocentric the show is. Especially since it's made in Canada and aimed at US audiences, two supposed bastions of diversity. Much of the problem may not be intentioned out and out racism, and a lot of it is subtextual, but it is there. The ponies to me are without a doubt representational of white folks, and with the cultural associated norms as a baseline, while the various non-pony equines, and bison, being the varied other peoples. The shows creators, for some strange reason, decided to place the pony pov in a past allegorical time when the west was superficially innocent but actually highly homogenous, highly ignorant about and exclusionary to people of color. It makes for some interesting first encounters within the context of the show, but the rapping backwoods Zebra, wild stampeding Bison, passive Donkeys and ugly Mules are never really thusly included, and are treated as alien stereotyped 'others', to be tolerated after simply being plot devices that were the source of scorn, derision, suspicion or trouble making, that became one off lessons, only to then be tossed aside like used tokens. The historical whitewashing of the Natives American story is also particularly troubling. The effect of these treatments in shows and toys like this on impressionable minority youth has been practically lab tested and proven, and MLP is much broader in scope of these negative aspects than almost any show I've ever seen. Much of this carelessness and insensitivity could have been avoided if there were any people of color with proper representation on Hasbro's or Studio B' s board, or on the MLP creative team.