"This might seem like an innocuous comic scene if Travers' novels didn't associate chimney sweeps' blackened faces with racial caricature. 'Don't touch me, you black heathen,' a housemaid screams in Mary Poppins Opens the Door.
"When the dark figures of the chimney sweeps Step in Time on a roof, a naval buffoon, Admiral Boom shouts, 'We're being attacked by Hottentots!' and orders his cannon to be fired at the 'cheeky devils.'
"We're in the on the joke, such as it is: These aren't really black Africans; they're grinning white dancers in blackface. It's a parody of black menace; it's even posted on a white nationalist website as evidence of the film's racial hierarchy."
The academic's opinion has been me with a mixture of agreement and denial.
