Flawed allegory

Rating: 4/10 (19 March 2016)

"I cordially dislike allegory in all its manifestations, and always have done so since I grew old and wary enough to detect its presence. I much prefer history – true or feigned– with its varied applicability to the thought and experience of readers. I think that many confuse applicability with allegory, but the one resides in the freedom of the reader, and the other in the purposed domination of the author."
J.R.R. Tolkien would have cordially disliked this movie, to put it mildly. This is an extremely preachy movie, which attempts to distill the racial issues of the USA down into black and white. Two takeaways from this movie:
It is perfectly okay for black people to refer to one another as the n-word (IMDB says that is a prohibited word), just as long as non-black people do not:
Clawhauser: "O. M. Goodness, they really did hire a bunny. Ho-whop! I gotta tell you, you're even cuter than I thought you'd be."
Judy Hopps: "Ooh, ah, you probably didn't know, but a bunny can call another bunny 'cute', but when other animals do it, that's a little..."
What a terrible analogy, as "cute" is not a disgusting, reviled word. No one should be calling anyone the n-word, but that's not the point the movie makes. It is telling us that as long as you are the same race as someone else, you can treat that person as horribly as you like. Just as long as people of differing races are nice to one another the world will become a utopia.
The second takeaway of the movie is that non-blacks are responsible for all the ills and suffering of black people. Somehow someone white is seeding all the discontent and suffering that black people experience. They are manipulating black people into being "savages" (to use the exact term from the movie).
The problem with this totally binary view of the issues of racism and inequality in the USA is that it is inaccurate. It absolves the minority of any responsibility whatsoever. It says that they can maintain the status quo, continue calling one another the n-word, continue murdering one another (93% of murdered black people are killed by another black person), and all of that is perfectly fine. What the movie teaches is that under no circumstances may a non-black use the n-word, rub a black person's hair, or manipulate black people into killing non-black people.
While Disney is to be commended for at least attempting to address the subject (and this alone is the cause célèbre prompting many reviewers to trip over themselves to gush about this film), they should at least address it in an evenhanded, responsible fashion.