Crystal Gems Speak Up

This post is a result of a tweet of a Tik Tok of a video clip of a PSA from the Cartoon Network. Yes, my friends, these are the kind of rabbit holes I dive into each day in the interest of finding resources to share on this blog – and in the interest of avoiding copyright violations.

Since we have no one under the age of 10 in our house, we don’t have the Cartoon Network, and I don’t really know who the Crystal Gems are. But they are anti-racist, so that is definitely a big plus in my book. When you visit the Crystal Gems Speak Up site, you will find two short (less than 2 minutes each) videos that tackle the topic of racism. The first one, “Tell the Whole Story,” explains how Thomas Edison would not have been able to invent the light bulb without Lewis Latimer, the Black man who invented the process for carbon filament. Latimer worked for Alexander Graham Bell at one time, drafting the drawings for the patent for the telephone, and then went to work with Edison. You can learn more about this fascinating man, who was also a writer and consultant, here.

In “Don’t Deny It, Defy It!” the animated actors deliver the message that racism exists even if you don’t experience it or observe it in your own life. It’s a gentle reminder of the need to continuously educate each generation about the damage that we do to each other by pretending that racism is in the past and will remain there.

This post is part of a weekly series of anti-racist articles. For previous posts in this series, please visit this link.