Spots Before Your Eyes

January 6, 2007 11:23 AM

Spots Before Your Eyes, an award-winning series of animated shorts promoting tolerance and human relations, produced in the 1950s by the American Jewish Committee (at AJC Archives)
posted by LinusMines (4 comments total)

I think Dick Cheney will want to have a word with these people.
posted by WCityMike at 1:22 PM on January 6, 2007

Charming animated shorts, LinusMines! And meaningful. I really enjoyed them, loved the singing voiceovers too. Thanks.

Can't help wishing there were more like these on regular TV these days, updated, of course.

When I was a kid in the 60's, New York City seemed very racist compared with Jamaica, West Indies, where I'd lived from 1959 to 1962. At that time NYC was divided roughly into Christian, Jewish, white, black, Irish, Italian, German, Chinese and Eastern European. I left the USA in 1970 and returned in late 1985. NYC had become a whole other world, a veritable mosaic of Koreans, Punjabis, Mexicans, Senegalese, Peruvians, Japanese, Russians, Yugoslavians, Thais, every nationality, all side by side on every subway and every street. Beautiful.

As time passed I was saddened that there was still contempt, old rivalries and animosity between groups, like between African Americans, Jamaicans and West Africans or the Peruvians and Ecuadorians. I call it the Fuck You Democracy. But over time I saw that the new racism is more tolerant than the old one and, especially after 9/11, that in the end most everybody -at least in NYC- is able to work, eat and live side by side with everybody else.

Like the rest of the foreigners, he'd gone back to Baghdad.

I like this gentle movie at the AJC Archives with a similar theme, Princess in the Tower.
posted by nickyskye at 1:40 PM on January 6, 2007

Good find.
posted by briank at 4:10 PM on January 6, 2007

Wow, this is a really neat, rich historical snapshot. And there are WWII-era radio clips, too. LinusMines, this is a wonderful post, thanks!
posted by mediareport at 5:17 PM on January 6, 2007