11 Incredibly Racist Warner Bros Cartoons

Every single one of these would be a total career-destroyer if they were released today.

Warner Bros.Warner Bros.Early cartoons used to be racist€like really, really racist. We all know this thanks to characters that proudly displayed offensive traits that are guaranteed to cause a riot in today€™s world. If you need an example, look no further than the crows in the Disney's classic Dumbo, however you can still get a copy of this if you wanted, whereas the ones featured here are something else entirely. With that in mind, here is a group of cartoon shorts made by Warner Bros. that have been banned and withdrawn from syndication - unofficially dubbed the Censored Eleven. All of these were made in the 30s and 40s and the last time any one of them was seen on TV was 1968. For a long time they were forgotten, but new media has made it easy for people who found one such gem on an old VHS tape to share it with the world. Warner€™s tried to play it cool, even holding a promotional viewing in 2010 and announcing that these cartoons will come out on DVD sometime in the future. But, after all, how bad can they be?

11. Hittin€™ The Train For Hallelujah Land

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=giJBiwAuug0 Apparently, pretty bad. Coming out in 1931, this was only the second cartoon created under the iconic Merrie Melodies banner and is also the oldest of the Censored Eleven. There€™s a minimal plot going on involving the protagonist saving his damsel in distress, but that€™s beside the point. The characters that get all of the attention are the blackface caricatures. Of course, showing characters in blackface was not at all uncommon during cartoons of that period. Tom & Jerry, Bugs Bunny, they all did it. However, most other cartoons can be fixed with a few well-placed cuts. In this case, the racism is apparently integral to the plot and you couldn€™t eliminate it without turning the cartoon into a nonsensical sequence of images€which is why it is part of the Censored Eleven.
 
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Radu recently left a boring job and now writes stuff on the internet. When he's not here he's probably writing for GeeKiez. He's into wrestling, video games and a ton of TV shows, as well as all things weird or science-y. Feel free to talk to him about this stuff on Twitter.