Black people love cartoons, almost as much as they love professional wrestling. Cartoons are simple to follow, contain an easy-to-digest storyline and hardly any difficult words to understand. All of that equals the perfect formula for the Black persons medium for a television show.
Black people might love cartoons, but Black people do not love The Jetsons. Produced in 1962 and 1963, when the United States was more than 90 percent white, The Jetsons depict a white family in the year 2062.
The only problem: in the future, there are no Black people. The lovable story of George Jetson, Jane his wife; his boy Elroy; and daughter Judy, unfold in a world without the deft touch of Blackness and Black people.
It is unhip, uncool and boring.. a world without rap music and where robots play sports instead of Black people and the occasional white guy. It is also a world of advanced technology, flying cars, zero pollution and, apparently without war and chaos. Crime seems to be a thing of the past and murder doesn't even happen.
Black people watch The Jetsons and see a white bread world that works efficiently; has advanced technology and a people who have mastered artificial intelligence. No longer are lower class people necessary for performing simple tasks around the house or janitorial work; Rosie the Robot is more than capable of said chore.
The future envisioned by the creators of The Jetsons is one of relative peace, without violence or murder, where technology has continued to move forward unabated and where Black people are no where to be seen.
Stuff Black People Don't Like begrudgingly includes the The Jetsons, though it might be a cartoon, it is unabashedly a cartoon that depicts what the future could have been like in the United States, without Black people fingerprints all over that blueprint.
The Jetsons offered white people a glimpse of a possible future on this continent, but they decided just like Black people, that they did not want any part of that future either.
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