Black kids are growing up in a world where scary things come from "The Black Lagoon" or "The Black Forest." It's a lazy trope to put "Black" in front of a place or thing to make it sound scarier. You don't want to be the "Black Sheep" or buy things on the "Black Market." Having taught kids for 5 years, I can tell you they pick up on these things.
Passing all of these off as 'lazy tropes' is lazy in itself, and does a disservice to the kids. Better to equip them with the tools to recognise context and research the origins of different uses of the word 'black' and allow them to determine whether racism was intended. Without these critical thinking tools, they will merely attack or reject perfectly innocent uses of words because they have been taken wildly out of context - leading them to a path of conflict rather than understanding.
There is a base human fear of the dark. This is natural. I can't speak to the exact motivations of the original coiners of "The Black Lagoon" or "The Black Forest" but tapping into a basic human fear of the dark seems a perfectly valid and effective literary device to instil fear in your audience - especially in a filmed entertainment where the viewers may not desire any level of verbal sophistication.
As for 'Black Sheep' and 'Black Market' - again, to my knowledge, there is nothing racist in the etymology of these terms. 'Black Sheep' is used to denote something unusual within a group of similar things - black sheep are unusual in a herd that is made up of predominantly uniform white sheep. There's no racism or prejudice there - unless you choose to insert it. Some information on the etymology of 'Black Market' can be found here - again, there is no racism behind it unless you choose to insert it.
Context is everything
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Passing all of these off as 'lazy tropes' is lazy in itself, and does a disservice to the kids. Better to equip them with the tools to recognise context and research the origins of different uses of the word 'black' and allow them to determine whether racism was intended. Without these critical thinking tools, they will merely attack or reject perfectly innocent uses of words because they have been taken wildly out of context - leading them to a path of conflict rather than understanding.
There is a base human fear of the dark. This is natural. I can't speak to the exact motivations of the original coiners of "The Black Lagoon" or "The Black Forest" but tapping into a basic human fear of the dark seems a perfectly valid and effective literary device to instil fear in your audience - especially in a filmed entertainment where the viewers may not desire any level of verbal sophistication.
As for 'Black Sheep' and 'Black Market' - again, to my knowledge, there is nothing racist in the etymology of these terms. 'Black Sheep' is used to denote something unusual within a group of similar things - black sheep are unusual in a herd that is made up of predominantly uniform white sheep. There's no racism or prejudice there - unless you choose to insert it. Some information on the etymology of 'Black Market' can be found here - again, there is no racism behind it unless you choose to insert it.
Context is everything