Fundamentals of Interactive Journalism

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2009 is a big year for diversity in animation:

The Black Panther animated series.

The Cleveland Show.

Astro Boy Movie.

The Princess and the Frog – the new Disney movie where the lead princess is a black character.

5:04

2008: The Boondocks banned episode.

No token hero: Static Shock. Napolitano says that the character of Virgil defies tokenism and reminds us that the black lead’s white friend acts “even blacker.”

In 2000, Dora the Explorer hits Nickelodeon, one of the very few attempts to seriously represent the Latino community in children’s television.

5:03

Simpsons becomes the first cartoon to lend a serious ear to gay issues with its “Homerphobia” episode.

5:00

1969 Fat Albert appears on screen – Bill Cosby turns his childhood experiences into a cartoon. The cartoon addresses topics such as drugs, racism, peer pressure and the strains of urban life.

4:56

In 1963, Astroboy is born – the first anime. Animation took a huge step from vilifying the Japanese in comics to becoming voracious anime consumers.

All Negro Comics comes into being in 1947s during a brief spurt of the segregation gap breach with Jackie Robinson and Orrin C. Evans.

4:50

Something happens with the Napolitano’s mouth and he starts to lisp noticeably.

4:47

Walt Disney sent by USA to South America to try and reclaim America’s image against German propaganda. Saludos Amigos produced – the prototype for all the “Speedy Gonzalez” and “Chiquita Banana” characters.

4:38

Napolitano told three stories about Aunt Jemima, Uncle Remus and The Yellow Kid – fiction and cartoons representing blacks and immigrants respectively. Back then, animation companies liked to present different ethnicities as parodies of themselves.

4:30

The main speaker, Dan Napolitano opened the panel. A multicultural director at Alfred University introduced the “Art Force Five” – five young people representing the different art forms. They go into schools where some students may have been formerly incarcerated to talk about art.

Friday found me at the New York City Comic Con. The main space at the Javits Center dazzled with its array of colorful fiction but once you’ve seen one con, you have seen them all. What really interested me were the panels. I found one called “From panthers to princesses: diveristy in animation.” Intrigued, I came in just as the panel was about to start.

When I mention to people that I have the Upper West Side as my beat neighborhood, most tend to say: “So basically it’ s just a bunch of rich people who don’t have any problems.” And yes, that does seem to be true to some extent, but there is definitely more to my CD than meets the eye.

The Upper West Side is an interesting district because of its diversity. The residents of the area represent a variety of income groups, professional backgrounds and ethnicities. While that is one of the strengths of the district, the problem is that the different income and ethnic groups live very segregated lives. In fact, the CD is practically split into two distinct neighborhoods. The southern and middle parts of the CD are generally considered the wealthy areas of the Upper West Side (59th Street to early 90s), populated mostly by well-to-do white people. The northeastern parts of the CD are the less affluent areas where Hispanics and African Americans outnumber whites three to one.

The US Census numbers from 2000 for show this trend very clearly. Two of the northeastern Census tracts, 189 and 193 (100th Street to 110th Street on the east side of UWS), have a combined population of 10,626 Hispanics, 5,491 blacks and just 4,331 whites. The median household income is a mere $23,836 for tract 189 and $34,360 for 193.

Completely opposite examples are tracts 157 and 159 in the heart of white Upper West Side, from 70th Street to 74th Street, Central Park West to Riverside Drive. A whopping 16,954 people are white, compared to 1,183 Hispanics and 608 African Americans. The median household income is $71,839 for tract 157 and $75,327 for tract 159. That is quite a noticeable difference compared to the northeastern tracts.

Jeanne Voltz, a food stylist and long-term resident of the Upper West Side, is also aware of the big income gap in her neighborhood. “West of Broadway is upper middle class white people,” she said. “The east is middle class to lower middle class.” Voltz said that economic issues “tend to be pushing the poor people out” from more expensive areas.

While there are many reasons why an income discrepancy as big as this one would be bad in a neighborhood, the main reason is that the rich community often neglects the poorer area. That is already happening in the Upper West Side.

One of the people that have noticed this is Matt Hecht, owner of SIP coffee bar and lounge located in the northeastern part of the Upper West Side. “People from 92nd Street and south don’t have a clue of what goes on at 99th Street and up,” he said. “We are being ignored.” Hecht said he thinks that the community board doesn’t pay attention to anything that is “outside their little community,” which in turn has led to a slow development of new businesses north of 92nd Street.

Hecht said the community board recently turned down a proposal for a street fair in the northeastern corner of the Upper West Side. “We really need a street fair up here,” he said, adding that it would help raise awareness of the area that is theoretically “a booming neighborhood.” At least that is what one might think since rent prices keep creeping up. “It’s just as expensive to rent here as downtown, it doesn’t make sense,” Hecht said (referring to the West 60s-70s as downtown).