They'll say its the "race card"

Sonic the Hedgehog Movie - Sisters Seeing Sonic Scene

Sister in-law hates him, but we aren’t given a reason why… making her seem irrational up until she sees sonic and has a reason to be mad. Everything before Sonic is confusing to us as the audience (unless we’re relying on a stereotype).

Why was this role created for this film?

I know there are bigger problems in the world then some fictional children's movie, but I was in the theater yesterday (34 St AMC the one off 8th Ave in Manhattan) watching Sonic the hedgehog with my wife and our two sons. And it struck me in a weird way that they inserted the black sister in-law in the movie for what seemed to be the sole purpose of shouting and making a fuss. Normally this would be par for the course—since black people’s roles (or lack thereof) in films is an issue all it's own, but when I heard a little kid comment in the theater, "just be quiet! Ugh, she's so annoying!" It didn't feel right - almost as if the scene was created to get that exact reaction and to communicate the message that “these people” (“my people” - come on people, “black people”) are annoying with a tendencies to shout and make a fuss. I tried to brush it off, but at the end of the movie when we left the theater it stayed with me.

Later in the day, I went online to see if anyone else felt the same or if I was just overreacting. I guess I'm kind of behind because I didn't realize there was an entire discussion about it online. Most of the comments I saw online were making fun of people who were offended by it, which initially made me want to stay silent myself. But then I thought, are these just micro-invalidations said to make me feel like my concerns are irrational?

I should be able to answer this for myself, but being raised in this society and not being the best with feeling publicly shamed, I wanted to reach out to some people to see if I was overthinking this character being inserted specifically to serve or because of a racial bias (implicit or explicit).

I didn’t necessarily expect any of this folks to respond, but I decided to reach out on Instagram to handful of folks on the Daily Show—Trevor Noah, Roy Wood Jr., Dulce Sloan, and Jaboukie Young-White. While I held my breath for their replies (jk - reaching out to them most just allowed me to articulate my thoughts), I thought about my recent story on the power of our words (due to come out today on the Moth podcast I believe). Reflecting on my story in relation to this scene, I understood that my concern for this one small scene spanned from a place of knowing that something seemingly tiny and insignificant today can grows over time as its watered with more and more negative stereotypes over the formative years of a child’s life.

This was the reason I couldn’t just let it go. The seed could have been planted in the mind of that little kid in the theater, and I had to know… HOW WILL THAT SEED LOOK IN 20-30 YEARS? We definitely have bigger problems than a fictional children’s movie, but I wonder if our bigger problems are a result of the tiny moments, words, and associations that get planted in children’s minds before they even have a chance to investigate if the biases are true.

Maybe it’s time we started paying attention to what seems like small matters, knowing seeds grow, ripples ripple, viruses spread…