Disney Cartoon Reboot Under Fire For A Controversial Reason

Disney's The Proud Family: Louder and Prouder reboot is being criticized for featuring a song describing slavery as having contributed to the building of the United States.

By Zack Zagranis | Updated

disney proud family

A controversial episode of the Proud Family reboot The Proud Family: Louder and Prouder is getting slammed by critics as “woke” for featuring a song that dares to claim that slaves built America. A clip from the episode titled “Juneteenth” is going viral on Twitter. @EndWokness posted the clip a few days ago on Twitter along with the question: “Why are they showing this woke BLM propaganda to our kids?”

It’s important to note that nowhere in the clip is BLM mentioned by name. The clip instead shows series protagonist Penny Proud helping to protest the statue of a former slave owner outside her school. Penny’s opinion that someone who literally owned another living, breathing person shouldn’t be celebrated is apparently not a universal one.

The tweet follows one posted by @EndWokness on February 4 where the account decried the new Proud Family as “Blatant anti-white propaganda” above a clip of a song from the same episode detailing the history of black labor exploitation in America.

The tweets have prompted pushback from several accounts on Twitter praising Disney and The Proud Family for their progressive messages.

Several people have pointed out that The Proud Family has always gone out of its way to champion black history and the challenges African-Americans and other minorities face in America on a daily basis.

It’s ironic that anti-woke crusaders would want to boycott Disney for their progressive programming. Disney releasing shows like The Proud Family: Louder and Prouder is itself like a form of reparations. The House of Mouse is finally making inclusive content after decades of releasing questionable material on a regular basis.

Disney films like Song of the South and Dumbo have depicted African Americans in a negative light. Though it’s seldom brought up, even Disney’s mascot, Mickey Mouse, was born out of racism. Mickey’s original design, including his signature white gloves, was inspired by racist minstrel shows where white performers would put on blackface and dance around in a stereotypical “black” manner. Even Walt Disney himself was allegedly a notorious anti-Semitic.

Oddly, many of the folks up in arms over The Proud Family have never complained about Disney’s previous racist content. Several have even spoken out in defense of properties like Song of the South, most recently in relation to the Splash Mountain ride being overhauled at Disney theme parks in America.

It should come as no shock to anyone that it’s largely conservatives leading the charge against the new “woke” Disney and its “anti-white” propaganda. One tweeter, going by american4freedom, even went so far as to claim that Disney used to stand for family values, implying that “family values” means white families and not those that look like The Proud Family.

Fox News.com, a known bastion of fair and balanced reporting, has used the controversy to drum up outrage among its base. Fox even found a way to tie The Proud Family to the current GOP boogeyman Critical Race Theory.

It’s unknown at this time whether the backlash will have an impact on The Proud Family‘s continued presence at Disney.