‘Charlie Brown’

I was happy to grow beyond my childhood fantasies and rituals. Indeed, it felt like a rite of passage. I stopped believing in the Bible, the Tooth Fairy, and Santa Claus and no longer had to attend Church.

But I don’t mind admitting that I never grew out of watching Charlie Brown. This enduring interest stems from the indelible impression Franklin made on me.

He, of course, is the Black character Charles Schulz introduced in his cartoon strip in 1968. Schulz depicted him as just another of Charlie Brown’s friends. However, that he was Black and lived in a different neighborhood meant everything to me. It was the early 1970s, after all.

Sure, Black sitcoms like Sanford and Sons and Good Times were beginning to appear on TV. But none featured a Black boy playing naturally with White kids like Franklin did with Charlie Brown and friends. 

I was the only Black boy on my high school swimming team at the time. Hell, I was the only Black kid in the school until my younger brother and another Black boy enrolled. So I could relate.

A racist Thanksgiving 

However, nothing challenged my childhood impression of Charlie Brown until a few years ago.

BC’s annual ‘A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving’ special was slammed as racist by some on social media, with some viewers objecting to the dinner-table seating of its only black character. The scene in question has four characters from Charles M. Schulz’s iconic ‘Peanuts’ cartoon — Sally, Charlie Brown, Peppermint Patty and dog Snoopy — sitting on one side of a makeshift outdoor table for Thanksgiving dinner, with Marcie at one end of the table and Linus at the head.

The cartoon’s lone black character, Franklin, is on his own side of the table seated on a lawn chair. 

(The Hill, November 23, 2018)

I ignored it back then. After all, looking at the scene, one could easily argue that Marcie, the lone Asian character, is on her own side.

But, thanks to TikTok propaganda, it has reared its ugly head again. 

The same category of videos showing misguided youths praising Osama bin Laden as a modern-day Robin Hood also depict them denouncing Schulz as a Charlie Hebdo racist.

Yes, I was obliged to disabuse a young family member of that impression. Viral videos swayed her to believe that the very liberal and progressive Schulz was depicting the racist notion of ‘separate but equal‘ in that Thanksgiving dinner scene.

So imagine my dismay when I saw that no less a news authority than CNN is propagating that impression. It ran a story on Friday promoting “A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving at 50.” Yet, of all the possible photos, CNN chose one depicting the scene The Hill featured in its 2018 story.

Nothing racist about Charlie Brown

Here’s the truth: Schulz drew many scenes with Linus and other friends sitting on their own side of the table. More to the point, though, CNN only had to google “Charlie Brown Thanksgiving dinner” to see more wholesome depictions like this one:

Were you inclined to stop watching Charlie Brown because of this viral slur? If so, I hope this post disabuses you of that inclination. And, for a little context, there’s this:

Jean Schulz says her husband added Franklin to Peanuts in the wake of the 1968 assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. …

The company that syndicated Peanuts to newspapers objected to the idea of Franklin. In response, Schulz reportedly delivered a very simple ultimatum: “Either you run it the way I drew it, or I quit.”

(CBR, December 22, 2022)

Alas, we live in a dystopian world. It features a racist former US president garnering cheers for projecting his racism onto Black prosecutors of unimpeachable character and integrity. 

So it’s hardly surprising that people are jeering Schulz for being in the vanguard of White cartoonists portraying Blacks in the most non-racist way possible.

Canceling Scott Evans’s Dilbert was entirely warranted. Canceling Charles Schulz’s Charlie Brown is not.