COULD SOMEBODY EXPLAIN THIS TO ME?

I'll give it a try.

In spite of conservatives claiming that some racial depictions being not available to them or that they get blowback from indulging in them themselves somehow robs them of the right to free speech, the companies who own the material or who are releasing public domain material in a new format may make any decisions they wish regarding material and formats that they own.

In other words, if Boomerang (I never heard of it) withholds Tom and Jerry they are within their rights to do so. The DVD companies also are within their rights to release T&J unaltered. The same applies to their judgment of Pepe le Pew. On the other side of the coin, consumers of their product are free to engage the company with discussions of their policies in an effort to get change.

The case of “Song of the South” may be instructive here. There have been many threads about this film on the old boards. Most of them are taken up with white people saying that they don’t see anything racist in the movie – and I’m sure they don’t. African-Americans, however, who have been the recipients of race hatred are the ones who DO see the old-time racism stereotyping. Apparently, Disney (who owns Son of the South) bows to their perceptions, as I do. My guess is that Boomerang is following the same line as Disney. However, they have not received the same kind of negative feedback on Pepe le Pew. Maybe turning up the heat about Pepe’s totally un-funny and relentless pursuit of unwilling and frightened females will get results.

There is not anything that’s hard to understand. There is no national or industry control over private companies in this regard. The only control is how their product is received by paying customers.