Everybody Always Throws Me Peanuts

From what is described on YouTube as "Early 1970's PSA about Racism", but I think just works better as "Racist PSA"


Dig how Mom seems to be trying to remind herself what the motivation is for this character, in those first few uncomfortable seconds. Next, what exactly is the explanation for the arrival of the woman with the kidnapped black boy? Why exactly does she have him, if not to just openly taunt the mookish businessman father, who was clearly about to remark on the awful basketball playing skills of black people, shortly before being shushed.

I enjoy the Recipe For Disaster aspect of this whole thing. First, get yourself a black child; doesn't matter where or how. Next, in the guise of progress, randomly show up at your asshole neighbor's house and foist said child upon them. Make sure the husband really hates black people. He will openly threaten the (perhaps) ten year old, and the ten year old, raised in the mean streets and all, will have no choice but to respond in kind.

Better still, there's this inevitability in the man's eyes that seems to suggest that yes, though he hates being randomly paired with young black children, It's The Law, or something. I believe this may be a glimpse into the scriptwriter's mind: Affirmative Action literally means I will have to adopt a minority type and keep it in My Own Home.

Both parents look like actors who would later achieve a modicum of non-PSA related fame. I don't know where, and I can't place a name on either of these people. Maybe everyone in the Seventies just looked like that.

"Come on out, Bette Davis!": I like too that child actors of that period hadn't really been polished into the preternaturally on things that they are now. I like how the actor-who-plays-sullen-little-boy pretty much is a sullen little boy, and the smallest girl totally butchered her one line.

But above all else, this clip demonstrates the fine line you have to walk with consciousness-raising on a mass level. If you do too good of a job identifying the problem, you might very well seem to be tacitly suggesting that the problem is everyone else who wants to invade my pleasant, quiet home with their stupid ideas of Uplift. We have been doing things in the same way around here for as long as anyone can remember, and that's the way we like it.

Also, why do I find myself eerily reminded of that PSA campaign of only a few years ago that, while ostensibly being about preventing child abuse, in fact seemed to give abusers new and gorier ways to go about abusing their children, i.e.
"CLOSETS ARE FOR HANGING COATS" and
"A STOVE IS FOR BOILING WATER".

Boiling water- TO THROW ON YOUR GODDAMN BRATS WHEN THEY JUST WON'T QUIT SCREWING AROUND ALL THE TIME! WHY CAN'T I GET AN EVERLOVIN' BREAK AROUND HERE?

Finally: "Why don't we adopt Eldridge Cleaver...No really, why don't we?"

I'm gonna try my damnedest to see if there's a part two of this out there, somewhere. Frankly, I'm not sure it's really a PSA; it looks more like a random piece of some shitty made for TV movie.

At what point will Enlightenment arise from this terribly orchestrated scenario? I mean, it's inevitable: you know it will, but how?
Ah, I got it: that mini bar (that ain't all that mini, might I add) at home. This will probably play some role, shortly after (or before) dad literally throws peanuts at Fred Wilcox, young black person, and realizes what a schmuck he's been, all these years.

Then the strange neighbor lady shows back up with a Vietnamese, ferchrissake!, and the laughter washes over us all.