South Park and Racism

I was reading Reed's blog post about South Park, and another episode of the show on the topic of racism came to mind. In this episode, the character chef, who seems to be the only adult black person in the town, discovers that the flag of south park shows a bunch of white stick figures hanging a black stick figure. Chef is outraged, and rightfully so, about the racist flag and protests that it be removed. Unexpectedly, the main characters of south park, the kids, counter Chef's protest and argue that the flag should remain. Chef is bewildered by the kids blatant racism until the very end of the episode where it is revealed that the kids hadn't even noticed that the stick figures colors represented different races, but instead said this "Our main point is that the flag shouldn't offend anyone, because killing has been around since the bieginning of time. All animals kill. And the animals that don't kill are stupid ones, like cows and turtles and stuff. So people should not be so upset about killing." Chef instantly realizes with amazement that the kids were not the ones at fault here, it was he for assuming that a bunch of fourth grade kids were racist. It is very hard to verbalize the message of this episode, but I think it is a very important and deep one. The episode concludes as Chef says that the kids' rationale for supporting the flag was "the most bautiful thing [he's] ever heard", after the kids say that of course the race of the stick figures doesn't matter, as the color of someone's skin has nothing to do with anything.