The BBC has announced that UK subscribers of Amazon's Prime Instant Video service are being warned that Tom and Jerry cartoons contain "racial prejudices."

The warning appears under the description and states:

Tom & Jerry shorts may depict some ethnic and racial prejudices that were once commonplace in American society. Such depictions were wrong then and are wrong today.

Specifically, Tom and Jerry: The Complete Second Volume carries the "trigger warning" seen below:

This addition set off University of Kent Professor of Sociology Frank Furedi, who called it "empty-headed," according to BBC.com. He added that this is yet another example of a "false piousness" that "seems to be sweeping cultural life."

At the time of this writing, there was no evidence to suggest that these racism trigger warnings were added to Prime members in the States. But a 2005 US addition of a Tom and Jerry DVD set came with an introduction/disclaimer from Whoopi Goldberg that includes similar language to Amazon's.

Goldberg also stated that the cartoon was created in a time where racial differences were "caricatured in the name of entertainment" but at the same time, revealed "society's unfair and hurtful representations of people of color, women, and ethnic groups." However, Goldberg defends the inclusion of Mammy Two Shoes -- the black maid and by far the series' most-used example of racism. Through the years, Mammy's voice has been re-dubbed to sound less offensive and sometimes the character edited out altogether. But Goldberg celebrates her inclusion saying, "Removing Mammy Two Shoes from this collection would be the same as pretending that she never existed."

Watch Goldberg's disclaimer below: