Politics & Crime International Ignorance: A Recent History of Foreign Blackface

They say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery—except when it’s an insidious form of racist fuckery. Case in point? Blackface, the American theater tradition that portrayed African-Americans as stupid, lazy, and buffoon-like. Blackface had an undisputed detrimental impact on the country’s perception of black people, and, as a result, its existence today in America is limited mostly to history books and satirical works a la Spike Lee’s 2000 film Bamboozled (and probably Rush Limbaugh’s community theater group).

In other countries, however, blackface still has contemporary cultural relevancy. Korean recording artists “Bubble Sisters” released an album which showcased the group with their faces painted in black on the cover, and Japanese toy maker Sanrio at one point produced Bibinba, a small action figure with features easily attributable to blackface. And most recently, a group of white Australian performers performed a sketch mimicking/mocking the Jackson 5. Shake.Our.Heads. Complex looks at some of the other controversial foreign blackface moments…

Movies Is “Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen” Racist?

Autobot twins Skids and Mudflap strike a b-boy pose during their minstrel show.

According to a leaked memo, director Michael Bay is pissed off at Paramount Pictures for not putting enough hype behind his new sequel, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. Having seen it, we can’t help but wonder if Paramount is keeping quiet because his flick about warring alien robots transforms into a vehicle for racism.

As if black people didn’t catch a bad enough one from the Jar Jar Binks character in Star Wars Episodes I-III, Bay’s Autobot twins, the “black”-voiced Skids and Mudflap, are the 2009 version of the Amos n’ Andy minstrel show. It’s hard to believe a big-money director would show his ass like this in what projects to be a much-watched blockbuster, but maybe he’s gotten too comfortable hanging out with his boy Black-Ty. Whatever the rationale, it’s clear that Bay is violating. How can we be so certain? Check out 7 reasons why Transformers 2 might be racist…

Politics & Crime The Best Of The Worst Anti-Asian Racism

Hateful, offensive humor has only a few easy targets left: gays, retards, and'our personal favorite'Asians. So we weren’t really surprised to see the Spanish Olympic basketball team making a “Me Chinese!” slanty-eyed gesture for a magazine ad. You think that’s offensive? Ho Rearry?? We put the Spanish ad up against other recent examples of anti-Asian racism in the media using our exclusive Chinaman rating scale…

Movies Towelhead Is The Arab-American Beauty

Life kinda sucks for Jasira, the main character in Towelhead. Based on Alicia Erian’s successful novel, the movie version was directed by Alan Ball (the writer of American Beauty and creator of HBO’s Six Feet Under). After her mom’s boyfriend starts getting all pedo on her, 13-year-old Jasira is sent to live with her Lebanese father in Texas during the '90s Gulf War. Thanks to some racist small town shenanigans, she’s forced to deal with her ethnicity as an Arab girl for the first time. Meanwhile, her budding womanhood draws the attention of neighbor Aaron Eckhart.

Lead actress Summer Bishil'who is actually 19 and part Indian, not Arab'is definitely a dime in the making. With a heavy dose of suburban desperation, forbidden teenage love, and Alan Ball’s direction, this flick could get some of that American Beauty Oscar buzz when it drops in August. Watch the trailer after the jump.

Events Study Says Nervous Whites Ignore Black People

In this post-Imus, post-Kramer society, white folks are more scared then ever of “saying the wrong thing” and getting Al Sharpton on their case for being racist. But rather than confronting their fears by, you know, talking to actual black people, a new study has found that whitey is more likely to just pretend they don’t exist.

The Northwestern University study called “The Threat of Appearing Prejudiced and Race-based Attentional Biases” asked 15 white students to take a simple computer test showing a black face and a white face with the same expression. The students overwhelmingly looked at the black face first, but would quickly move their attention the paleface, apparently a more comforting sight. They concluded:

Study participants indicated that they worry about inadvertently getting in trouble for somehow seeming biased. As a result, the study suggests, they behaved in a way that research shows people respond when faced with stimuli that cause them to feel threatened or anxious: they instinctively look at what is making them feel nervous and then ignore it.

In honor of everyone someday living in perfect harmony, watch Paul McCartney & Stevie Wonder’s “Ebony & Ivory” after the jump.

Art Is The LAPD’s New Mural Racist?

Residents in East Los Angeles’ predominantly Latino neighborhood Boyle Heights are pissed.

A $195,000, 100-foot tiled mural that is scheduled to go up next month at the their new local LAPD station was supposed to depict a quaint Sunday afternoon in the neighborhood. But now the installation seems to be stalled, with members of the community expressing their anger at some of the Mexican-American stereotypes portrayed by the artist, Sandow Birk.

The mural has drawn complaints for depicting the 'hood as a depressing, crime-ridden dump. In the painting, plump, braided women parade around the streets, which are filled with stray dogs, piñatas, beer-drinking men, Mexican flags, men being arrested and illegal street vendors (including one women selling a Shaq jersey). The artist based the mural on iconic Mexican artist Diego Rivera’s “Dream of a Sunday Afternoon in Alameda Park” (see the original here). Check out more pictures of the mural after the jump and make your own judgement…

[LA Times]