A friend of mine from history was working with me on our history projects. He showed me a youtube video of Disney's Peter Pan (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y_at9dOElQk) of one of their songs, "What made the red man red?"
At first I was really shocked. It's been a while since I've seen Peter Pan, so I never recognized the racism behind this song. You can definately tell in some lyrics that this was meant for children and it was meant to be innocent. But then again, you can say the same thing about Nazi progaganda videos that were in cartoon form.
I was even more shocked, and a little offended, (Crow in me taking over) when I looked into what the word "squaw". This was a term for Native American women, however it was rarely used on such friendly terms. White men coming to America would call the Native American women this with the intention of calling them whores.
Even though this movie was made in the 1950's, and Walt Disney was known to have a little racism, and squaws' true meaning is just woman, I'm very surprised that I never heard anyone hating Peter Pan because of that song. Then again, the beat is fantastic!
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