Is Rastamouse Racist? Disrespectful? Or just trying to educated kids in a way that they can understand?

Rastamouse, a television programme aimed at 6 year olds and based on popular children's books. A programme about a Rastafarian skateboarding mouse, with his friends Zoomer and Scratchy who make 'Da Easy Crew' a crime fighting, problem solving, singing group of mice. Britain is a growing country and we have a growing population of different races of children being born and growing up in England. The programme appeals to all children but is it a bad influence on Caucasian children? It is wrong to allow kids to learn about different dialects and about people from different origins? What's the problem?

The same problem has been raised repeatedly, is Rastamouse racist?  The programme has been an utter success and children love it. But it is the parents who are worrying? The show has been said to make references to drugs; 'cheese' could be replacement for marijuana, or is this just parents overthinking. The dialect that is used is different to Standard English, such language as Jamaican patois, creole and pidgin. Popular language used in Caribbean countries.  Some parents are worried it will encourage slang such as wagwan (what's going on) and irie (happy) which are parts of patois Jamaican language, and that children will pick up the slang words and use it towards other children which then could be misinterpreted as racism. But is this language even slang, the lexis used within the programme is all dialect that is used in Caribbean islands, to us maybe it is slang but to them it is their language just as standard English is ours.  Although on most websites like Wikipedia it says Patois is any language that is considered non standard, I found an article by a journalist named Karl Folkes who gave 15 reasons to why Patois was a language on its own. The article included that Creole languages all adhere to linguistic standards, meaning that just as it is linguistically correct to speak standard English it is also with standard Jamaican and that the language has evolved over many years just as any other spoken language and has changed and adapted. http://www.jamaicans.com/speakja/patoisarticle/patois_language_15points.shtml

But what's wrong will allowing children to learn about Rastafarians, they will pick up the language but so will other children using it and surely young kids are unable to see things as racist or crossing the line because they all see each other as equals and by having programmes like Rasta Mouse, it encourages them to treat each other like so and teaches them that all races are equal and they will grow up to accept this. It is encouraging Afro-Caribbean patois rhyme allowing children to learn new languages and accept other races as normal.

Some people have complained about the programme being racist and disrespectful, one man said "I'd never portray a Rasta as a pig or a mouse as I don't think the values of being a Rasta are served by that. If it was a lion that would be very different, a lion is a strong symbol in Rastafarianism."  This may be true but at least they are being represented on the TV, some see the programme as a bad representation but agree that this is only the start so of course the language is not going to be perfect and of course it will attract attention.

So how can we change the perspective of children? And how can we teach people that no representation of other countries is going to be perfect because we are not that race? Everything has to start somewhere.

Jade Leman