The Proud Family creators: ‘There’s not just one view of Blackness or a Black family’

polygon.com:

When The Proud Family premiered on Disney Channel in 2001, it was not only the first original animated show on the channel, but one of the few all-ages animation programs on television at the time centered around a Black family. The show followed 14-year-old Penny Proud and her chaotic, but loving family and ran for five years before ending in 2005 with a TV movie.

The sequel series,The Proud Family: Louder and Prouder, is now heading to Disney Plus later this month 21 years later with the same characters back again. Unfortunately, frustratingly little has changed about the grander TV landscape in the show’s absence.

“We’re both proud and disappointed at the same time,” says Ralph Farquhar, executive producer of the original series and one of the creators on the revival. “Proud that we got a chance to be the first, disappointing that we remain the only [show]. That’s why it’s important to do this show. We want there to be more Proud Families on. There’s not just one view of Blackness or a Black family. We would like to see a lot of different families portrayed.”

There were animated shows centered on Black protagonists before The Proud Family and there are certainly animated shows that followed. But in the vast expanse of American animation, there are still more shows about talking animals than there are about Black families, and still more genre series about white heroes than Black ones. Shows like Kipo and the Age of Wonderbeasts, Craig of the Creek, and the upcoming Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur — which all feature Black characters as central protagonists — signal an expansion. They all represent a new step for diversity, stepping into new genres. That’s exactly what the Proud Family creators want to see happen.

“We’