Racism! Where?

Is ignorance bliss? When it comes to race and racism, maybe it is.

I feel like I am the ONLY person in the world who didn’t cry “racism” after seeing The Phantom Menace. Maybe it was because I was 10 or 11 at the time and I was an innocent child. Maybe I wasn’t obsessed with trying to find racial stereotypes in everything to get bent out of shape over it.

We get all up in arms when we see classic cartoons or shows depict a racial stereotype of the time. Yes, the direct stereotype is a problem (having an actual black person act like an idiot), but when a five year old sees a group of uneducated crows, they’re not going to think “These are depictions of Black people!” They are going to think this is what these specific crows are like; that is their personality. Like with Jar Jar Binks, the Neimoidians, and Watto, I didn’t see them representing an entire race (of people), I saw them representing themselves (or their alien race). Jar Jar is annoying. That’s how Neimoidians look and sound. Watto is a scrupulous businessman. I didn’t see African-Americans, Asians, or Arabs.

(It probably doesn’t help that the accent for the Neimoidians was someone’s attempt at a Thai accent…)

Oh, and nobody mentions those things in Harry Potter, as Dan O’Brien calls “tiny accounting monsters”? Those creatures whose main occupation seems to be banking/accounting, are short and have big noses? NO ONE CRIES ANTISEMITISM???

Cracked brings up how Hollywood whitewashed the movie 21, making most of the characters, who were originally Asian, Caucasian. I’m sorry, but wouldn’t we be crying racism if we (accurately) portrayed the math team as mostly Asian? Isn’t “Asians are really good at math” a stereotype? “Oh I get it! The math team is made up of Asians! Racist!!!” Yes, the Asian characters they did have could have been more than the stereotypical “goofy sidekicks” they were written as. And yes, Mickey Rooney’s performance in Breakfast at Tiffany’s is horribly offensive.

  The Horror...

We try to raise kids to see beyond racism, but then constantly point it out to them. How are we going to progress when we keep shoving stereotypes down their throats and make them walk on eggshells their whole lives fearing to death that they are going to say something offensive? Congratulations! You just created the White Stereotype!

Is this a time in which forgetting about our past would be a good thing? How are we going to heal if we keep remembering the unfortunate past and we let it open old wounds? In response to the line “We need to open the wound to begin the healing”, Hank Hill said it best, “A closed wound means the healing has already begun.”

I don’t want to see Jim Crow laws return. We don’t live in a post racial society. We are still going to get white police officers acquitted of violently beating a non-violent African-American suspect and a mostly African-American jury who will acquit an African-American man of murder. Instead of constantly reminding us of the horrible things that have happened and the stereotypes, let us use the blank slate of the children to raise them race neutral. Instead of reminding us of how different we are, maybe we should focus on our similarities. Or maybe we can admit that racism is never going to go away and focus on groups like the KKK instead of George Lucas.

(P.S. I have no idea why the font changed for absolutely no reason. This seems to happen a lot.)