Now I personally haven't watched a lot of PBS

I grew up in a plains state where the population was 98% white. There were two things that helped me to see people who look different than me as people, my maternal grandpa farmer who served in WWII and brought home a strong interest in other cultures and PBS.

My grandpa didn’t make a big deal of it, but he had one of those giant satellite dishes and loved watching shows from around the world despite not understanding any of the languages. He was perfectly happy with his remote and uneventful life but loved seeing variety.

PBS let me see things in other places like documentaries, shows that explored other cultures, and shows like Sesame Street where a diverse group of people juat did normal stuff together and it wasn’t a big deal or anything. Sesame Street was the opposite of my local area and let me see other people as just people. Sadly this did not catch on with a lot of the people around me, who had racist views based on rumors because they personally had not interacted with anyone different than themselves either.

Being accepting of others mainly comes from exposure that lets someone see different people as people, and PBS did, and I assume still does, a great job of doing that.

These are people who retconned Jesus out of their own religion so I don’t suspect a whole lot of sense from them. It’s a real shame though, I grew up with these shows but it felt like a whole different world. I took a lot of the lessons with me, but they prepare you for a world that is very different than the real one. It’s kind of like “Wouldn’t life be nice if everyone got along? Let’s see how that looks like.. OK. now, here’s the real world.. good luck!”. Nah let me back to Sesame Street I don’t wanna live here.

Absofuckinglootly!

Mr Rogers introduced me to John Carroll Kirby the bastard

There was a magic school bus episode where the kids used everything they learned on a trip to cheat at a dunk contest. I refuse to forget this