10 Extremely Uncomfortable Moments In Classic Movies

2. Dumbo - The Crows Are Not The Only Racist Thing About This Classic...

Sorry kids, but that beloved movie with the adorable baby elephant who struggles against a cruel world before ultimately prevailing, is kinda racist. Actually scratch that – it’s incredibly racist.

You’ve probably already read about the covert racism of the scene with the crows, where they sing perhaps the centrepiece of the whole film, When I See An Elephant Fly. The lead crow is actually called Jim Crow – yeah, Disney, in all its wisdom, named one of the film's more important characters after a set of laws that enforced institutional segregation for a hundred years in the USA.

To make matters worse, Jim and his mates are black stereotypes. They dress and pose like minstrels, and sing in an exaggerated, vernacular that was common in minstrel shows.

But unbelievably, that’s not the worst example of racism in Dumbo. In the song Roustabouts, a group of literally faceless black men sing about slaving “until we're almost dead”, before the racist stereotype that they can’t handle money is aired (“When we get our pay, we throw our money all away”), and then as a final insult, they get called “hairy apes”.

Dumbo was made in 1941, which explains (though doesn’t excuse) this racism. That we largely still see it is as an adorable, child-friendly film in 2016 is however less than acceptable.