Mouse Cleaning (1948), which ends with a prominent blackface gag, is one of the cartoons excluded from The Tom and Jerry Spotlight Collection. © Warner Bros. Home Video.

"They will continue to send out all the wrong messages that perpetuate this attitude in some parts of my black community that makes a man returning from prison hailed like a conquering hero and the kid on spring break from college is a chump to be ridiculed. The standards are all wrong, and it has to change... The negative images that are embraced by too many young (black) men in our society needs to be changed to make them understand that intelligence is right and ignorance is wrong. We need to alter the perception so that it's cool to be smart and the thug and gangster lifestyle is wrong."

The battle against today's modern stereotypes, against an unjust system, against attitudes that promote violence and ignorance above education and career are probably more important than keeping copies of Tex Avery's Uncle Tom's Bungalow (a cartoon made four years after the birth of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.), out of DVD collections. As pernicious as those racist cartoons might have been in their day, it is clearly no longer that day. As I have for years, I side with the Los Angeles Urban Policy Roundtable: If these cartoons are to be released, let it be with appropriate disclaimers and an explanation of historical context.

One of the saddest emails I have ever received concerned an analysis I did of Coal Black and de Sebben Dwarfs for Animation Nerd's Paradise back in 1997. The email was sent by two sub-literate skinheads who apparently placed less value on education than the most virulent gangsta. After assailing me personally in rather impolite terms for impugning the racist content of the cartoon, they gleefully stated that what the world needed was more cartoons like Coal Black, so that white people could be more frequently and heartily amused.

Of course, they missed the point: Such cartoons will certainly never be made again, and the old cartoons, as repulsive as they are in their racism, are museum pieces that do not hold up well to historical changes in our culture. That is what my skinhead critics did not realize: it is possible that both races may well have moved on to other, and more important, issues as we work towards a settlement of our racial differences and a true acceptance of our human commonality.

Martin "Dr. Toon" Goodman is a longtime student and fan of animation. He lives in Anderson, Indiana.