If you look at Stinky and think he is meant as a racist stereotype because he is black colored: You're the racist and you're just projecting.
this post was submitted on 02 Aug 2025
48 points (94.4% liked)
World News
48840 readers
2662 users here now
A community for discussing events around the World
Rules:
-
Rule 1: posts have the following requirements:
- Post news articles only
- Video links are NOT articles and will be removed.
- Title must match the article headline
- Not United States Internal News
- Recent (Past 30 Days)
- Screenshots/links to other social media sites (Twitter/X/Facebook/Youtube/reddit, etc.) are explicitly forbidden, as are link shorteners.
-
Rule 2: Do not copy the entire article into your post. The key points in 1-2 paragraphs is allowed (even encouraged!), but large segments of articles posted in the body will result in the post being removed. If you have to stop and think "Is this fair use?", it probably isn't. Archive links, especially the ones created on link submission, are absolutely allowed but those that avoid paywalls are not.
-
Rule 3: Opinions articles, or Articles based on misinformation/propaganda may be removed. Sources that have a Low or Very Low factual reporting rating or MBFC Credibility Rating may be removed.
-
Rule 4: Posts or comments that are homophobic, transphobic, racist, sexist, anti-religious, or ableist will be removed. “Ironic” prejudice is just prejudiced.
-
Posts and comments must abide by the lemmy.world terms of service UPDATED AS OF 10/19
-
Rule 5: Keep it civil. It's OK to say the subject of an article is behaving like a (pejorative, pejorative). It's NOT OK to say another USER is (pejorative). Strong language is fine, just not directed at other members. Engage in good-faith and with respect! This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban.
Similarly, if you see posts along these lines, do not engage. Report them, block them, and live a happier life than they do. We see too many slapfights that boil down to "Mom! He's bugging me!" and "I'm not touching you!" Going forward, slapfights will result in removed comments and temp bans to cool off.
-
Rule 6: Memes, spam, other low effort posting, reposts, misinformation, advocating violence, off-topic, trolling, offensive, regarding the moderators or meta in content may be removed at any time.
-
Rule 7: We didn't USED to need a rule about how many posts one could make in a day, then someone posted NINETEEN articles in a single day. Not comments, FULL ARTICLES. If you're posting more than say, 10 or so, consider going outside and touching grass. We reserve the right to limit over-posting so a single user does not dominate the front page.
We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.
All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.
Lemmy World Partners
News !news@lemmy.world
Politics !politics@lemmy.world
World Politics !globalpolitics@lemmy.world
Recommendations
For Firefox users, there is media bias / propaganda / fact check plugin.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/media-bias-fact-check/
- Consider including the article’s mediabiasfactcheck.com/ link
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
People who find this kind of stuff racist are the most racist. Who the fuck see a dark blob and think "this has to be a black person"??
This question is answered in the article: No one.
Also "They're the real racists!" is a very narrow-minded if not bad-faith take on institutionalized racism, the history of racial caricatures, and people who may be more sensitive to racial stereotypes than yourself.
Overly sensitive and guilt-ridden subconsciously racist white Americans?
Idk
How did you post this without even reading the brief? 🤦🏼♀️
That's the first paragraph I posted. One out of the three that is in the article.
Or depending how you define "paragraph", I posted all the paragraphs under the first subheading, which is one out of three in the article.
But either way you look at it, I didn't copy the entire article. At most 1/3 of it. And it's from Yleisradio Finland, so there's no need to worry about copyright, really. It's the Finnish equivalent to BBC, basically, and they're not as fussy about copyright as profit-mongering entities. Still, I did follow their rules while posting.
Did anyone notice how this story doesn't involve a single person calling this character a racist caricature?
Wokeness is fine, correcting things is fine.
But Stinky just has zero racist connotations. Especially when you take into account the author's general intent.
Yeah. Who said otherwise? I feel like I'm going crazy here, because the article you posted makes no mention of anyone that did.
The person who complained to the Brooklyn Library, obviously? Just like the article mentions, I too doubt that they've ever actually looked into the work. They link to this in the article, maybe look at that for more info?
They literally didn't.
"One of their supporters had thought Stinky could be seen as a racist symbol"
This is a hypothetical. Nobody mentioned in the article holds that position. This person did not complain about the character. They raised concerns as a supporter that they thought someone else might complain in the future.
But everyone here is upset at a hypothetical person filing a hypothetical complaint, rather than the real person that made the decision to remove the character outright, instead of putting in the work to address the supporter's concern in more constructive ways.
Well if one of the had thought it, and we're yet to discover telepathy, it'd make sense to assume she had told someone about her thoughts.
What's your assumption? That this is entirely made up? Based on nothing?
I fail to see your motivation.
What? I literally don't get what you're trying to say about telepathy.
I'm not assuming anything, I'm directly citing the article you posted. Your point rests entirely on an assumption that is already disproven in the article itself.
You know I didn't write the article, right?
There is no issue with the article.
The issue is people here in the comments making false assumptions, jumping at the chance to fight a bullshit reactionary culture war against windmills.
Said character:
Honestly it's just a fluffy black puff, there's nothing racist about it originally, it's american and their history.
They’ll be coming after the Ghibli Soot Sprites next.
Who "they"??
Read the brief at least.
Yup, there's literally no connotations such as what the literal Jim Crows had in Disney films.
There's no implication or connotation or anything of the sort.
If anything I think it's at most referring to like bearded drunken Finns, Stinky being sort of 100% beard and he's not exactly evil but he is sort of self-centered and very moody.
But yeah there's absolutely nothing racist about him.
a win for censorship, a loss for education.
It's not that surprising. America doesn't have a cultural history with Moomin. It blew my mind to find out how popular the IP is in the rest of the world.
It's a shame though because I would have loved Moomin and Asterix the Gaul growing up in Texas.
The "Moomin Boom" only really began in the 90's although the original characters are from like the 1930's and the author died in 2001.
So only later in her life was it really more commercialised. The original art being rather political. She drew lots criticising Hitler and Stalin among others.
There's also comic strips of the Moomins doing drugs etc.
But I didn't know any of that until later in my life. I still reaaaally vividly remember how epic it was when my dad took me to see "Muumipeikko ja pyrstötähti" — "Comet in Moominland", although that's a poor translation imo, the direct being "Moomintroll and the tailed star" where "Moomintroll" is not just a description but the main character, who is named Muumipeikko. So like a Finnish person named Finn, essentially. And "tailed star" is just what comets are called in Finnish "pyrstö" = tail (but like that of a fish, not a cat's tail, not a mammalian whisky tail) and "tähti" = star.
I was very much into moomins as a kid and the themepark is kinda nearby, just 30km from where we lived. Later in life dad actually drove a sort of road-train for them (which takes customers from the parkin lot to the park or the hotel).
But as a kid apparently I got insanely scared in some part of the theme park and just like ran out of a maze, but actually went below a fence, where a kid could fit. And my god mother who was supposed to take me through it came out looking rather scared when I was already standing with my mom. She looked kinda elated when she saw me. Or I may be imagining that I remember that idk, mom having told me the story so many times.
You guys didn't have Asterix and Obelix either? Oh man.
The hell is a Moomin?
Basically the Finnish/Nordic equivalent of Mickey Mouse.
But instead of the writer being a racist white guy, it was a radical leftist lesbian who openly criticised Hitler and Stalin as the ridiculous little men they were.
https://www.huckmag.com/article/how-the-moomins-became-an-anti-fascist-symbol
Nowadays it's become a banal family thing and some criticise it as it leaves out the very clear political messaging of the early comics.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moomins
