Klansmen would love the original series.

Just jumping in on this one from the point of view of a black female who was enthralled by the series as a little kid and remains that way today:

People today either forget or are unaware of the fact that in 1964 it was rare to see brown faces on TV in the US and that there were markets, particularly in the South, which would yank a show right off the air for showing a person of color unless it was in a derogatory manner. There were many towns in the America of that time in which the Quests couldn't have stayed in a hotel if they'd insisted on Hadji staying with them (which, of course, Benton and Jonny would). The tie-in books of the time, such as the British annuals and US children's books, weren't allowed to depict Hadji at all, as if the character didn't exist, because the books couldn't be sold universally. And the series repeatedly flirted with censorship by depicting noble and heroic people of color and non-Western religious beliefs beyond Hadji, including Pasha, the Raj Guru, Jade, Aku and Nuago and other natives who put their lives on the line to protect the kids, Dr. Quest and Race.

So I'm not really sure how anyone could decry a series which was as groundbreaking on racial issues as "Jonny Quest" was at that time. Hadji is indeed portrayed as being clever, intelligent, respectful and polite, often far more than is Jonny. The dialog told a seriously racially divided America that Benton had adopted Hadji after the little boy had selflessly saved this white stranger's life, and it's made clear through their warm and affectionate body language throughout the series that the Quests accepted this child as family at a time when many whites wouldn't shake hands with a person of color for fear that person's skin color would "rub off." Trust me, no klansman wants to see Jonny with his arm draped around Hadji's shoulder speaking of "our Bandit" or Benton protectively holding Hadji by the shoulders.

What's really sad is that we've apparently traveled backward instead of forward when it comes to such inclusiveness in current days. By the time of "The Real Adventures Of Jonny Quest," the producers had decided that it might "offend" someone in the audience if the fact that Hadji is a Hindu were to be mentioned in a script, as if it's some big secret that there are Hindus in India. Forget that he's referred to as "the Hindu boy" in the "Anubis" episode in 1964---we apparently can't handle such information these days. The fact that he was actually Benton's adopted son was also sidestepped completely in the 1996 series until well into the second season (by which time cooler heads, better scripts and more sensible character models finally made an impact). However, by the time his history is altered by the scripts and we find that he's actually royalty (oh brother!), no one bothered to research enough Indian cultural history to understand that a Hindu ruler of Bangalore would be a "maharajah," and they instead opted to refer to him as a "sultan," a title used by solely the Moslem rulers of that region. Jinkies.

So....it seems to me that we might have actually been more progressive 40 years ago, or maybe responsible people were just trying harder back then. Still, this series, in its own way, paved the way for cartoon characters who soon followed Hadji, such as Val in "Josie And The Pussycats," Link in "The Hardy Boys," and the "Fat Albert" gang, and I'm sure that the Klan wasn't happy about them, either. (I dunno---do humorless, goosestepping bigots really even watch cartoons)...?

johntracytb5, I appreciated your post of 10/06.

Not sure if I like this one so much. I'm never a huge fan of

"after all, white people are the ones who . . .," or

"black people are all . . ." or

"did you ever notice that Muslims . . ."

I just don't know that any good or healing or uniting things come from comments like that.

Crack a history book some time. Arabs enslaved blacks for centuries before whites got in on the game; the Japanese were very racist towards any non-Japanese, especially Koreans; the Chinese called their land the Middle Kingdom and considered everybody else to be barbarians; the Turks massacred the Armenians and enslaved thousands of white people in the Balkans; etc. The very word "slave" comes from "Slav" because so many Slavs were enslaved. Slavs are white, by the way.

Now that we've got that settled, excuse me. I'm going to go watch Race Bannon slaughter some of those heathen monkeys.