With two kids, I am exposed to a LOT of children's television on Saturday morning and elsewhere.

An interesting trend is that on the cartoons, race means far less than it does in the real world. With rare exceptions, like when the show is trying to make a specific point about racism, the world of prime time and Saturday morning kid's TV seems to be totally colorblind. It is not unusual at all on these shows, both cartoon and live, for a high school kid of one racial background to be dating a kid from a totally different racial background, and nothing is ever made of it at all. Apparently no one watching the shows protests, no one raises the issue. A refreshing change. I can still remember when Captain Kirk kissing Lt. Uhura was groundbreaking television, and it only passed the censors because he was being "forced."

As for Cinderella, color-blindness was raised to astonishing heights in the last TV special based on the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical story. Brandy, who is black, played Cinderella. No problem. But the king was white, Whoopi Goldberg was his queen, and their son the Prince was--I think--Hispanic (Paolo Montalban). Bernadette Peters was the stepmother, with, as I recall, one black stepsister and one white. Genetics apparently means even less in fairyland than on Star Trek, where just about everyone is half human and half Little Fuzzy Creature From Alpha Centauri.