LET’S CHAT ABOUT IT
First and foremost, happy Valentine’s Day! I hope you were able to show your loved ones how much you love them today in one way or another. Personally, I got myself Chipotle for lunch — self love is the most important kind of love after all!
Now onto more important things. It is quite a well-known fact that cultural appropriation is rampant in pop culture and often used for comedic purposes. I think that we as people in general rely on and have faith in adults to notice when this happens and hope we can learn from it, or at least not repeat it and behave in that way ourselves. Unfortunately, content for young kids is no exception to the utilization of cultural appropriation for laughs.
Above is the type of valentine card that’s popular on social media — these funny valentines are my favorite part of Valentine’s Day — from an episode of Drake and Josh. A banger of a show, no question about it, but the episode in which this was taken from includes a gag about Drake buying a “Mexican robot” that only says “Por favor.” Yikes! Doesn’t really get more culturally appropriated than that.
It is things like this joke, and this valentine that came from it, that allow cultural appropriation to continue. We are okay with it because it’s funny… and that isn’t okay. Kids are being exposed to such “comedy” at a young age which, in my opinion, can open a path towards racism, whether overt or covert. Offensive jokes are often thought of as the funniest kinds of jokes — but why?
Let today remind us that love isn’t just romantic: love is appreciation, love is respect.
(Love is also tacos!)
We Stan Tacos 