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In reply to the discussion: The Dutch: Traditional, or Racist? [View all]MADem
(135,425 posts)There's got to be a point in time where you look at something and get that feeling down in your gut that this shit is just wrong. When I was a little kid, when we had tee vee, we'd occasionally see a Charlie Chan (the Chinese detective) film on the Saturday matinee, or whatever. Charlie was played by a white dude by the name of Sidney Toler--he did the stupid "accent" and wore make up to make himself look Chinese-ish, but he didn't further forsake Charlie's dignity (though other characters certainly did make Chinese people look like shrieking fools with pigtails). His son, too, was a total clown. Charlie, the films inferred, was unique in his gravitas, not "evil" like some, but "inscrutable." A lot of "Ancient Chinese Secret" vibe going on there.
As I grew up, and started to become aware that people who didn't look like me or my family could sometimes be rude, nasty or otherwise hateful towards us, based solely on appearances, I started to feel bad about watching those movies. I knew a few Chinese people by then, and they weren't running around screaming with a hatchet and mugging for the camera. By the time I was 12 I couldn't look at those things any more. It wasn't any big "lesson" I got, it was just a vague sense that this sort of characterization was unfair. It made me uneasy.