Interracial relationships in animation

[Guy Who Needs To Know]

For the most part, unless it's a more adult geared series where they may take humorous jabs at it, has there been any cartoons where the issue has arisen whenever there is marriage or casual dating between various races? Usually from most of the ones I've seen geared to kids, it's never brought up or mentioned from what I've seen. Has there been any episodes of shows you can recall where it was blatantly remarked upon or the subject?

[Judd]

There was an episode of Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids that dealt with the subject of interracial romance/families. The kids brought pictures of their families to school, and 1 girl was appalled by the fact that her male classmate had a black mother and a white father.

[Samater]

In Batman Beyond, Barbara Gordon was revealed to be in an interracial marriage.

[!?!?!?]

I think he's asking for examples where the relationship is made into an issue.

[JB5000]

I don't recall at the moment interracial relationships in television shows, but I do remember one from an animated movie. There was Pocahontas' relationship with John Smith in Disney's Pocahontas. They obviously didn't get married, but they did have a relationship in the film that led to both Pocahontas' tribe and John Smith's fellow men to almost fight each other. The issue of their interracial relationship was mostly evident after Pocahontas and John Smith kissed and then that led to the real fighting nearly starting.

[heyimtisa]

I don't know how true this is, but I always wondered why the Justice League episode Wild Cards was never replayed during its stint on Cartoon Network. (but eventually did so on Boomerang) And I remember seeing on some message boards talking that the reason may have been because people complained about the kiss shared between Green Lantern & Hawkgirl. Any truth to this rumor?

[Souradip]

Yeah, that is somewhat what I was getting at. Usually in cartoons it's just taken as face value, and race never really factors in unless it's a "very special episode." Kids can have crushes on characters of different races and date, and no one bats an eye for the most part. I have noticed in some recent ones where the main character's unrequited love is another race, like in FOP with Timmy and asian Trixie Tang, and Danny Phantom with mexican Paulina. And the now defunct Juniper Lee and her casual lust for Marcus.

[gary_lombardo]

I can't think of any more examples, but personally, I would very much like to see more interracial romances/couples/marriages on TV, animated and otherwise. However, I would prefer it if the racial differences were not made into an issue. I'd like to see an interracial couple portrayed in the same manner as a couple of the same race, and not just white guys and their Asian-American girlfriends, because I've seen that a few times on TV already. The only black/white couple on TV currently (that I know of) are Tom and Sarah Dubois on The Boondocks, and Tom is about as 4 cornered as a guy can get.

[angelwithhorns2894]

I also agree that race shouldn't be brought up as an issue, the fact it's not shows progression.

Though if you count aliens, Ben 10 has quite a few inter-species relationships that were called "gross/weird" by other characters.

[justjoe]

I remember a Captain Planet episode where they were using race as an issue. It was similar to west side story but no musical numbers.