memes

It is gloriously pedantic, and it's good to be specific! Thank you for the additional info. 🙂

1993 sounds about right, because I feel like I've seen it & it didn't feel like an old or retro episode (neither was I thinking, "Why is that black man sharing a foot pool with a white man?" But I think my parents carefully explained why this was significant, what racism was (/is), and I thought it was ridiculous. Because it is.).

That's a good obsession to have, raise them right. Mr. Rogers was a good role model with great messages.

*Me, a connoisseur of pedantry*: "Aww yes, that's the good stuff"

Lovely interview with (Officer) Francois Clemmons. Clemmons grew up during civil rights unrest and was firehosed and beaten by cops and did not want to play one on TV. I don't know if making kids less scared of cops was a good thing or not, but I know Mr. Rogers' heart was in the right place.

https://youtu.be/UD7Z-O7U33c

The song at the end is the one Clemmons sang while they were hanging out in the pool the second time they did this scene 20 years after the first one: "There are many ways to say I love you." In this one Mr. Rogers dried Officer Clemmons' feet as they were getting out of the pool.

Also better that he just played a cop, instead of actually being one

Classic Mr. Rogers story that when you dig deeper, it's even more wholesome than initially presented.

That’s when you know you’re winning.

And we are unfortunately vulnerable to regression. It's sad to think that if Mr Rogers was around today his show would probably be attached to an executive order to have his funding cut.

I don't know if a similar show would be influential in today's media market. Not just because it would be considered "woke" by half the population, but because the content would be like watching paint dry for a lot of kids.

I think a big part of learning empathy is wrapped up in learning how to be patient, and how to appreciate someone's company enough to allot them your time and attention. I just don't think people value patience very much anymore and wonder if our media reflects that or it's vice versa.

I know! I'm in my 40s and queer, I'm always stunned by how different young people's attitudes are to lgbt now.

No need, he only played a cop on the show, his real occupation was singer, actor & lecturer.

I grew up on Mr. Rogers, Bob Ross, etc. They’re a big part of what shaped me and made me empathetic. I live a good life but the world around me (the US) is determined to make me bitter and angry, and it’s an everyday struggle to keep my mind above water.

I know if he were around today, he would still manage to always keep a cool head and a grounded spirit, despite knowing where this country is headed.

Oh trust me, they do understand the importance of education. That's why they cut funding.

Don't get it twisted. There were plenty of people who were against slavery but still deeply racist. There was a big movement among abolitionists to send all the black folks back to Africa. That's how Liberia was founded.

It really isn't that simple. The north didn't have as much strict segregation but in a way it was because they didn't have to. Economic pressure reinforced by subversive hiring practices, prejudice in housing and hostile attitudes kept black communities tight knit and localized which meant you didn't have to have specific "Colored schools" because they were created by these forces squeezing folks together into controllable blocks of population.

In the South the fall of segregation had a number of nasty fallouts which harmed black communities as well. When they merged the systems there was a historicly significant loss of black teachers. People got up in arms over really stupid questions like "What if my menstruating daughter had a black male teacher" and that prejudice ensured that a lot of the teachers who understood the challenges of being black in America were no longer in a position to help students.

This meant that effectively in the North segregated schooling continued to be a thing in practice but not in name while in the South it wiped out infrastructure that was helping black students succeed. It was handled incredibly poorly and was not unambiguously good but it did change a lot of the legal categorizations and is considered a win.

Because the leaders of the confederate were allowed to live