10 Oddly Wholesome South Park Moments

With Apologies to Jesse Jackson (Season 11, Episode 1)

In one of South Park’s most forthright explorations of racism, Randy Marsh destroys his reputation on a television game show. When answering the conundrum pictured above, Randy blurts out a racial slur rather than “naggers”.

While Randy ironically experiences discrimination as “The N-word Guy”, Stan battles guilt by association. As Token is the only African American who Stan has a relationship with (by this point Chef had been exposed as a paedophile and brutally slain), he goes out of his way to preserve their friendship. Stan’s attempts are tone-deaf. He states his dad isn’t racist, “just stupid”, and that it is “no big deal”. Token is rightly offended at Stan’s attempt to quickly dismiss the incident as petty.

Stan alienates Token further when he mistakenly believes the situation is “cool now” as Randy had apologised to Jesse Jackson. Also, he equates the struggles of African Americans and Little People.

However, in the episode's closing moments, Stan has the epiphany that he “doesn’t get it”, that he’ll never understand how a black person feels when somebody uses the N-word. The episode is a powerful piece of character development that touches the show’s predominantly white audience.