nenena | Two most excellent posts.

I saw that on another friend's LJ and I'm still rly impressed by that analogy to illustrate how -isms can be there and you dun see it but once you can you will always see it there :)

Didn't read entries, too busy visualizing the arrow!

(Joking aside, thanks for the links. I agree; it's a very good analogy and totally appropriate.

... ... Yeah, it's like the arrow has been bolded and highlightened and sparklified. ^^;;)

Thank you. Those were very enlightening.

Reading them reminds me of the concept of 'projection' in psychology -- the guy who, cheating on his lover, accuses his faithful lover of cheating is probably the canonical example -- and of an essay about Loki, Thor, and Thor's hammer. Both of them.

Unfortunately, it also made anybody who knows what the normal sleeping arrangements in Viking-period halls were laugh. (It was warm, and trying to start an orgy got sleepy people angry at you, and besides, it also meant everybody in the hall knew what you tried to do because they're all in the room with you except maybe your host and his wife.)

What often happens in these conversations, though, is that the people who know what the normal sleeping arrangements in Viking-period halls were (read: people of color who are targeted by racial slurs, or psychologists who study the effects of media representation on race relations [i.e. the doll test, etc]) are the ones who are dismissed by those who don't (i.e. white people who don't notice the racial slurs and therefore claim that "if I didn't notice it, then it MUST NOT BE THERE!").

Reread what I said.

The people who are going "it is not there" are the people who know, not the ones who are ignorant.

There's quite a few cases of people reading such things as racial stereotypes into things where -- for various reasons -- it's impossible for them to exist in the work itself.

Remember, sometimes a cigar is just a cigar -- and you might have a problem if you always go cigar=phallus. ( Obsessive behavior and paranoia, if I remember correctly. I think there's actually a formal name for this, but I took abnormal psych under somebody whose specialty was OCD & don't own my own copy of the diagnostic manual since I know better than to do clinical psych. OTOH: Makes watching Kid <3! )

I read what you said, and I said that you're wrong, what you say is happening is the opposite of what actually happens.

The ones who are going "it's not there!" are the ones who, most often than not, are ignorant.

Just look at the freakin' comments on my Soul Eater post. Look at anything that's been posted regarding RaceFail09.

One of the unique characteristics of white privilege is blindness to stereotypes that are harmful to minorities.

*sigh* Let me be blunt, then. I find the entire thing a reeking mess of hypocrisy and bad science.

From a psychological standpoint, most people go through life wearing 'glasses' -- they see everything through the lens of their own, personal experiences. If you go in expecting to see white privilege? You will, with enough time and creativity, find it.

I've spent my entire life getting to see this. I'm mixed race, but because of which portions of my ancestry my genes opted to pay homage to, my skin has low levels of melatonin. In the US, this is all people who are supposedly 'sensitive' look at. You want the worst part? In the US, I've had honest racists get my race and ethnicity right right more often.

When I was in Japan, though, people looked at more than just the melatonin in my skin and got the two primary races in my family's mix right. (Caucasian and Asian. Nobody's sure of the details, since it was one of those parts of the border between both where Europe-bound and Asia-bound groups kept riding through and raping the women for thousands of years. The part of my family from the area left during the Interwar years because they'd gotten tired of this fine tradition of everybody else's.)

Then let me be perfectly blunt:

I have seen real racism, and plenty of it. I have experienced racism, both in the United States and in Japan. I have seen white privilege in action. I have experienced white privilege in action.

When you wave your hands and say "glasses! projection! you're looking for something offensive!" you're dismissing my life experiences, my perspective, and the experiences/perspective of every other person who is pointing out racism or privilege to you.

You think we all have glasses on? Duh. Oh course we do. Now take off your own damn glasses and try to see through someone else's eyes once in a while. Hypocrisy indeed.

You are not pointing out anything new, here. In fact, I got a bingo from your last comment alone.

Now here's some advice: When someone points out something racist to you, and you don't think it's racist, then try responding to the actual reasons that the person is giving you that such-and-such is racist, rather than saying "you're projecting!", which is a non-response.

For example, if you disagree that Enrique in Soul Eater is a racist caricature, then fine. If you want to express your disagreement, then fine. But the way to do that is to state a counter-argument to the actual reasons that I (in my post) and other people (in the comments) have outlined. Anything along the lines of "you're being oversensitive" or "you're projecting!" or "you're paranoid!" is a dismissive non-argument, and a downright stupid response.

That's just an example. I dunno what your stance on Enrique is, as the links being discussed here are broader in scope. But in general, the rule holds firm: Respond to real arguments, don't dismiss on face.

I mean, talk about bad science.

Do I need to use the term 'cultural imperialism' for this?

I don't give a flying fuck one way or the other about Enrico or anything like that, I have more problems with people who make a big issue of what may simply be evidence of an overall lack of significant contact between two cultures or even worse, actually be a very accurate depiction of a subcultural group that is rare or just not seen in the areas I've been. Hell, for all we know the character might be based off of a friend of the author who really is that way -- after all, caricatures are exaggerations of the set of attributes that were found remarkable, and it's not impossible to find a living example of it. (Don't go looking; it happened to me by accident, and I had been happier not having the direct experience.)

My complaint, which you have managed to be blissfully unaware of somehow, is that people are throwing out these accusations without checking first to see if they are valid, or even the correct ones.

It's one thing to say you found gay-bashing in, say, a foreign film -- it's another to say it when everybody from its culture of origin knows that it's a passionate gay love story and hero is not angry about the effeminate villain trying to seduce his 'boy sidekick,' he's angry because the villain is going after his lover. Meanwhile, there might be a load of sexist things going on that you're missing. (There has been much ink spent in some cultures on how only boys are worthy of a man's love. Yes, probably a few cultures would have generated male-written mpreg fanfics; I have little doubt some men in those cultures were less than happy that they had to put their penis into a *gasp* female to beget offspring.)

Do I need to use the term 'cultural imperialism' for this?

You could, but that would be a) a gross oversimplification and b) a cop-out.

I have more problems with people who make a big issue of what may simply be evidence of an overall lack of significant contact between two cultures

JAPAN + BRAZIL = HUGE FUCKING SIGNIFICANT CONTACT

"lack of significant contact" my butt.

or even worse, actually be a very accurate depiction of a subcultural group

Oh no you didn't.

Hell, for all we know the character might be based off of a friend of the author who really is that way.

This has been hashed and re-hashed in the comments on the other Soul Eater post. We're all working on the assumption that Ohkubo didn't intend anything blatantly racist or hateful when he created Enrique. Whether he based the character on a friend, or subconciously mimicked the 'monkey' caricature of Brazilians that frequently appears in Japanese media without thinking it through, or whether the whole thing was just a giant fucking coincidence...

That does not change the fact that it's a racist caricature.

We have already CONSIDERED the possibilities that you bring up. And they don't matter. This is simple: Japanese cartoonists and comedians use the monkey caricature (particularly the 'monkey who growls and can't speak Japanese') caricature to mock Brazilians (and other non-white foreigners) living in Japan. In that CONTEXT, where popular media has attached the 'monkey' signifier to the 'shitty stereotypes about foreigners' message, that's the meaning that the South American monkey character in Soul Eater takes on.

When you step on somebody's toe, it fucking hurts. You probably didn't mean to do it. Most people don't go around intentionally stepping on other people's toes. 99.9% of the time, toe-stepping happens because the toe-stepper wasn't watching where he was going, was absorbed in his own perspective, was ignorant of the fact that somebody was standing in the path of his stomping feet, etc. These things are often accidents. But that doesn't change the fact that real pain and real damage is caused, by accidentally stepping on someone's toes.

The point that YOU seem to be missing is that we talk about racism, when we point out the arrows, we don't give a flying fuck about authorial intent. We're critiquing the message, whether it's intended or not. We're critiquing the damaging effects that racial stereotypes cause.

To put it another way: Personally, I always assume the best intentions for authors and artists. I think that most media critics do. But unfortunately, we all live in a culture (whether Japan or otherwise) that's saturated with harmful stereotypes. Whether racism, sexism, heterosexism, ablism, transphobia, etc - there are harmful messages out there, and none of us can completely avoid exposure to them. Sometimes authors unthinkingly replicate those harmful, dehumanizing messages. When that happens, it's a perfectly worthwhile endeavor to point out that the arrow is there, and why it hurts, and why it sucks. As to why the arrow got there, as to what the author was thinking, that's largely irrelevant. Like I said, I like to assume the best about the author. We ALL make mistakes, we all sometimes put arrows in our work. (Lord knows I've stuck some shitty arrows in my writing before, because I was simply ignorant, privileged, and not thinking about the message that I was sending.) But that doesn't change the fact that once the arrow is there, it deserves to be critiqued.

My complaint, which you have managed to be blissfully unaware of somehow, is that people are throwing out these accusations without checking first to see if they are valid, or even the correct ones.

I understand your complaint, and I've answered it multiple times. I'd be careful about throwing around terms like "blissfully unaware" given your last couple responses here. Stones in glass houses, and all that.

And I'm still getting my bingoes.

Edited 2009-04-18 02:29 (UTC)

Added again to clarify, since this is still apparently necessary:

My complaint, which you have managed to be blissfully unaware of somehow, is that people are throwing out these accusations without checking first to see if they are valid, or even the correct ones.

Let me break this down in simple terms.

You claim that people who see the arrows are projecting, reading things that aren't there, and paranoid.

You claim that people making "accusations" of arrows are doing so without "checking to see if they are valid" (read: you argue that the critics are lacking context), or that they're looking at non-existent arrows and missing other real ones.

All of these arguments are based on one flawed assumption: You assume, from the outset, that the arrows aren't there. You're ignoring the valid, clearly-explained reasoning that the critics are giving to explain why they see the arrows. Without bothering to acknowledge or answer those reasons, you accuse the critics of projecting - you assume that the arrows aren't there.

You accuse the critics of lacking context - ignoring the fact that the context has already been explained, in detail.

You derail - by saying "HEY LOOK AT THIS ARROW OVER HERE!" as if that somehow negates the existence of the arrow that the critic is actually talking about. Also, you are so not the arbiter of which are the "correct" arrows to criticize, and which aren't. None of us are. What arrogance!

So yes, as a matter of fact, I do understand your complaint. Do you understand how your complaint is being answered here?

Edited 2009-04-18 07:47 (UTC)

Oh, yes, I do understand what you are saying. I am saying that knowing the context of a series of events is important because bad 'knowledge' is offensive.

This is why a lot of the world has 'rude, ignorant American' stereotypes: people who are part of the WASP-originating elitist culture go wandering around with, at best, a tourist guidebook's etiquette box's worth of proper manners for their sum of awareness, and act like they don't need anything more. Some of these guidebooks' advice is not even current or even based off of total myths.

Right now, there is a textbook being used in a university-level sociology course at an accredited US state university which has horrible mistakes about other cultures in them -- and one of the ones I noticed was about one of the significant minorities within the US. (It's also one I've found quite happy to teach a polite outsider about themselves, too.) Others could have been quickly checked in seconds via the internet, and this textbook would only be about two years old now.

I would offer to transcribe passages for you, but I sold the book back once I passed the course. There is limited amusement value in retaining a book best used to see how horrified you can make members of other cultures look -- or how hard you can get them to laugh, it does depend on the culture -- by what the supposed 'educated elite' believes about them. (Besides, I wanted the shelf space for, if I remember correctly, a Latin dictionary that didn't translate as 'oral sex' a word that actually means 'violent oral rape.' Somehow, I think the distinction is quite important, though at least it's not a living language so hopefully nobody wondered why their request for oral sex got everybody so angry...)

My point? As many different philosophers have had to say repeatedly in myriad different ways, wisdom is knowing what are the limits of your knowledge.

(*scratches head*)

So your complaint boils down to being pissed off that people think they Know It All based on reading flawed books?

Well, I can't argue with that, as it's very true.

However. My experience has been, in almost every discussion I've ever gotten into about arrows, the people pointing out the arrows are basing their reasoning on actual lived experience. This is what's happening in the Enrique debate, too: "I have seen the monkey caricature used to stereotype South Americans in Japan. Blah blah blah examples. I can give you anecdotes about anti-Brazilian and anti-black discrimination in action, particularly related to language ability. Insert more examples here. Here are links to articles either written by or interviewing Brazilians living in Japan, so you can here about the stereotypes in their own words."

Textbook knowledge has nothing to do with it.

I guess if you've only ever seen critics relying on textbooks, then you've only ever seen critics relying on textbooks. I've never seen that happening, though. And I have my doubts as to your ability to actually pay attention to where the arrow-critics are drawing their reasoning from, considering that your first knee-jerk response to this whole conversation is to scream about "projection!" and "paranoia!" right off the bat.

Actually, I really did mean it when I said I didn't care one way or the other about Enrique -- if you can provide me with your resources and your resources are actually credible, when it comes to an 'arrow,' if you can provide me with a good argument and the information needed to back it up and conclusively prove that the arguments are mutually incompatible, that is what I care about.

However, I also know how stereotypes are formed -- if you have the opportunity, some uni/college psych departments will offer a course with a title along the lines of "Belief in Weird Things." ('Weird,' in this case, is a technical term, with a technical definition.) How people form beliefs and learn things is studied by figuring out how 'weird' ones -- ones that do not match with reality -- come into existence.

The normal stereotype exists because we're wired to make generalizations from small samples. It's not a bad thing: a person incapable of this is, for example, not going to be capable of learning proper social interaction (he or she would have to learn everything by rote instead of learning the basic rules from observing adults) nor would this person be able to learn that 'fire is hot' and 'hot things burn you.'

A stereotype is made from a small sample and it is that which is different which is noticed. ( It's not hard to use this to your advantage -- if you know what makes you stand out and why, you can change how you act. It's pretty much what Dr. Stein does. )

I've ended up very cautious in labeling anything as racism because I do not know when the problem is purely one of ignorance or of bad perception, and each needs to be treated differently. If you start screaming racism -- or go in expecting it -- you aren't going to get very far because you're going to turn the people off. If you treat it as ignorance, however, you can work to obtain a more accurate image without offending anybody so much that they won't listen to you.

With Enrico... Sometimes it turns out that, say, it really is Just A Monkey. Remember Hanuman and Son Goku/Sun Wukong. Importantly for this theory, it's already been established that the only apparent requirement to be a meister is a soul -- back when we met Giriko -- and Blair established that possession of a soul is not a uniquely human attribute.

So...the evidence both ways is inconclusive, and I'm not going to discount the possibility that both arguments are correct. (For all we know, Enrico is like the Librarian, and more a commentary upon humanity as a whole. He certainly seems rather more intelligent than much of the rest of the cast.) I don't know the mangaka's feelings about Brazil or monkeys, and I refuse to project my own feelings about either onto him nor let paranoia decide it for me either. For now? I'm just going to wait and see.

Besides, either way, we seem to have a monkey proving a tougher opponent than Dr. Stein -- you know, the guy who according to Shinigami-sama is the strongest meister to graduate Shibusen, ever? Who had Death Scythe, the strongest death scythe ever?

Then I think we have a misunderstanding of what "racism" is, here. Or at least we're using two different definitions. You seem to be working from the assumption that "racism" requires malicious intent, whereas simple ignorance is something different.

I disagree, and I'm using the definition of "racism" used in sociology/anthropology/lit crit circles, where simple ignorance is included. Again, it goes back to the toe-stepping analogy: If you step on someone's toes by accident, it doesn't change the fact that it hurts. I speak about racism in terms of its results and effects, not in terms of its intent. You're apparently still conceiving of racism in terms of the intent of the author. In which case it's no wonder you can't get past the unknowability of Ohkubo's thought process in order to discuss how the monkey caricature actually works in context.

This is why someone with a pysch background and someone with a social sciences background always end up butting heads when it comes to racism. ;)

Yup! Somebody with a psych background has been trained to avoid terms which will automatically get the person you're working with stop listening. The entire point is to find the problem and fix it, which does require avoiding potentially dialogue-ending terms.

But I've also seen it gotten wrong when dealing with works from a different time and place -- one of the most annoying ones being where, from knowing the social history of the period, I knew that the issue was more the thankfully-gone ethnically-based caste system, and so the issue was more one of caste than of race. (True, race was part of caste, but simply having European ancestors wasn't sufficient to make you part of the elite, and sometimes didn't keep you from being too secure about not finding yourself shifted to the bottom, either. There were some riots. We don't really talk about them...)

Somebody with a psych background has been trained to avoid terms which will automatically get the person you're working with stop listening.

And now we're into the Tone bingo space.

(*sits on hands and will not make the obvious ironic comment about NOT LISTENING*)

Edited to add: Wait a minute. You repeat over and over again that you don't have the time or patience to "be nice" to "idiots", but people who say and do racist things deserve to be patiently educated and coddled, especially if they're too immature to deal with the term "racism" without having a meltdown and ending the conversation?!

Priorities!

Edited 2009-04-20 00:50 (UTC)

Actually, I think it's more because of a different understanding of implications of the term. Some of the most racist things I've ever heard have been said by people who, if you told them that they were racist...would not listen to whatever else you might say because they're absolutely convinced they're not.

Certain terms simply can't be used anymore, because they've lost meaning through being used and abused in ad hominem attacks. Both sides are idiots, and I want them both to go away and stop poking the trigger that got conditioned into me. (What else do you call it when you find yourself doing something you hate, because you know you'll be feeling guilty if you don't?)

Incidentally, notice my repeatedly-stated priority: to get them to make nice so I can get on with my life without feeling guilty. (How many times do I need to state that I don't give a damn? As far as I can tell it's pure 'us vs them' and power, and we'd find some new way to have an 'us' and 'them' if we all looked the same or had the same culture. It might be something completely absurd, like how many moles you have. I don't really )

And here we get to the crux of the matter:

None of this is about you. But you're making it about you.

Look back at your very first comment. I posted links to general media-crit articles. Your first reaction was to comment saying "they're just projecting!" Without paying attention to context, without paying attention to reasoning, without paying attention to the actual arrows being discussed, you dismissed the whole thing as being merely paranoia.

Because you've personally had bad experiences with these types of discussions, you generalized your personal experience to apply to all discussions about arrows. To wit: It wasn't about you, but you made it about you.

In subsequent comments you have rambled on, and on, and on, about your own personal situation, your family's stupidity, the "trigger" that *you've* been conditioned with, your melatonin levels, etc.

Did you notice how I never actually responded to any of your TMI? Because it was irrelevant. It still is.

So YOU don't like to get involved in these discussions. So YOU'VE had bad experiences. So YOU have a trigger. So YOU have this complex where you feel like you can't get on with your life if people are talking about racism because it makes YOU uncomfortable.

THAT'S FINE. It really is.

But what in the flying fuck makes you think that you have the right, though, to jump in and say that everybody else is being paranoid, projecting, and "idiots", just because they're having a discussion that you personally don't like?

What makes you think that just because you've had some bad experiences with people being stupid in discussions about racism, you automatically get to declare that all critics are stupid/lacking context/misinformed in all discussions of racism?

Incidentally, notice my repeatedly-stated priority: to get them to make nice so I can get on with my life without feeling guilty.

There again, that complex: Apparently, YOU not feeling guilty, YOU not being uncomfortable because others won't make nice for you, is somehow more important than, you know, the fact that racism is happening and some of us are trying to point it out and fix it.

If people talking about racism really pisses you off so much, if you really don't care as much as you say you don't care, then why not just shut up, step back, and let the debates and discussion continue without you?

Some of us are discussing, learning, examining our own privilege, learning how to write better stories and make better art, dismantling our own internalized stereotypes, challenging the internalized racism in others, and learning to see and deal with the arrows in positive, constructive ways. We don't need you to jump in and declare that we're all being paranoid. We don't need you to keep trying to derail the conversation and inflict your particular brand of arrogant dismissal on us. We don't need you to take part in this conversation if, by your own admission, you don't care about it in the first place. You're not contributing anything by telling us how much you don't care. So GTFO.

Really, though, your comment here is just a confirmation of the thread of stunning arrogance and self-absorption that you've displayed throughout all of your comments here. Like the way that you kept going on and on about your superior cultural knowledge, without every ponying up. Like the way that you asserted, several times, that people were pointing out the "wrong" arrows, as though you're the sole arbiter of which arrows are "right" to criticize and which aren't. Like the way that you keep talking about your family situation as if this validates your blanket dismissal of all arrow criticism. And now finally this admission that you just "don't give a damn" about the arrow, but goddamn do you wish that people would stop fighting about it because it makes you feel guuuiiiiiillllty and bad, and you just want to get on with YOUR life. Cry me a fucking river. God.

Certain terms simply can't be used anymore, because they've lost meaning through being used and abused in ad hominem attacks.

Nope, no complexes here!

Edited 2009-04-20 02:26 (UTC)

Didn't expect to see you pop up here of all places.

Not quite likely to again, either. I've dealt with too many people whose awareness of cultural and social differences is, admittedly, basic to be much good at being nice to them...

BTW get in touch with me sometime, either through AIM or twitter- I need to ask you something about the near future.

whose awareness of cultural and social differences is, admittedly, basic

There you go again.

Arrogant. Dismissive. And an especially ballsy thing for you to say, given that you waltzed into a debate where I (and others, in the comments on the other post) have been explaining a cultural phenomenon to you, using plenty of real life examples, even linking to articles about racial stereotypes in Japan written by the people who would know best (minorities themselves, and trained sociologists who have spent their lifetime experiencing and studying this shit), giving you knowledge and context by the bucketfuls.

You have yet to pony up a single iota of cultural understanding. I don't doubt that you have cultural knowledge, but you aren't showing it here, you're not engaging with the cultural debate at ALL, you're just using dismiss-without-engaging techniques such as shouting about paranoia, projection, cultural imperialism, and now sighing and declaring that your opponents knowledge is just too basic.

One side here is actually showing cultural knowledge. The other side has yet to.

"Wisdom is knowing what are the limits of your knowledge" indeed. I'm amazed that the person who threw that quote at me is also kvetching about how superior her cultural knowledge is - a superiority that has yet to be demonstrated in any way.

Has it occurred to you that if you deal with enough idiots that you end up with certain things becoming red flags, you automatically become wary of anybody who starts triggering them?

As for superior cultural knowledge: Half the references I can give you are not on the internets, unless they've been added to Google Books. Several are out of print last I knew. (One of them I have asked Amazon to let me know if it ever gets back into print, since despite being quite old it is still the best work on the culture in English.)

If you do have access to a good university or college library, and are willing to wait for me to have the necessary free time to compile the research...

Also: the post you're replying to was made before I saw the reply before this one. I am not kidding about having spent too much of my life being the one stuck soothing ruffled feathers because of cross-cultural misunderstandings, and unfortunately my sense of ethics refuses to let me just sit back and enjoy the black comedy. The best solution I've found is to generally just avoid it: I don't have to do something I've grown to hate doing, nor do I end up feeling guilty for doing nothing. (What, you thought that just because people from different cultures marry each other and have kids, that means their families will get along? Hasn't worked in my family so far, and we've tried it...about three times, I think. I'm not sure because one entire section stopped talking to the rest before I was born.)

srz biznez post (since this been here for some time i maynot get a reply but throwing my 2 cents out there anyway for what it's worth and i do warn you that i may get all over the place with this lol)

1. I never seen the FedEX arrow until after a class i had in my intro to graphic design class at the art institute when the class was doing a major project by the professor.

2. i haven't been able to stop seeing it then and i think the logo was very clever indeed, it was very suOblte done. But even though i didn't see the arrow in the logo before, doesn't mean i haven't been able to pick up alot of equally sublte 'arrows' or right in yer face 'arrows'.

So with that said I move onto my equally tl:dr srs biz post of my own, than after i've said my peace I'll kindly fade into the wind. :D

Since I suppose your post (from what I've read) is about the 'intentional or not-intentional' dicpiction of the character Enrique in Soul Eater, that's what I'll focus on.

I firstly have no idea of what your ancestral background is or how you deal with issues of racism (or other -isms) but I do see the point you are making.

And I'm not even going to lie, when i first saw the monkey and figured out where he came from, I nearly facepalmed and could have fell out of my seat, literally.

I was thinking..."Rly, Ohkubo? RLY? (and he did so well with Kilik >_> and I suppose to a certain extend Nygus, Sid, and the Pot twins as well).

Now mind you I don't really know much about japanese people using the monkey to 'stereotype' the people of particurly South America (since this is where Enrique hails from) in such a negative conotation...if so that is very interesting to know.

*Being of African origin this shouldn't surprise me but ehh..*

But my mind did think when I saw the character...wow Ohkubo, just wow O_o...you created Kilik (who i'm so fond of btw, because I love to see variety in my manga/movies/etc from time to time >_> *coughs*) and then you just had to go and do this?!

yea okay it doesn't dampened the awesomeness of your manga, and at this point after watching DBZ (mr. Popo), Bleach(Kaname Tousen, Yoruichi, Halibel, Zommari), *other anime i can't think of which at times can really over exaggerate characters that are suppose to look foreign* I'm really not all that surprised.

My slight irritation with the character in general is that I was expecting to see some new variety instead of the standard 'suppose to be japanese, but for some odd reason turned out to look more european in nature anime character look' wondering 'how' the author was going to depict this character from South America.

But whether the author did this intentional or not I suppose can be irrevelant at this point. But I will say, that he had to at least known what he was doing, I do like to give artist/authors the benefit of doubt, but somethings I can't let slide.

I will just ASSUME given how he's depicted Enrique (and on top of what you've said about the stereotyping) that had to be intentional, but not in the intention to outrightly hurt anyone. Sometimes, authors/artist will deliberately put something sensitive like stereotyping in their works to send some sort of message. (it doesn't mean the author/artist is a bigot, but it still doesn't make it any less annoying either >_<).

Perhaps, being very aware of how he created Enrique, could have been his way of 'mocking' that stereotype. I mean instead of making this very interesting character fit the degoratory aspects of calling South America/Blacks disgusting monkies, he seems to go out of his way to do the complete opposite and the way he characterized his character.

Now say...he not only designs Enrique as this monkey from Brazil but also added the degoratory description along with it

then yea...I would be beyond pissed but begrudingly still read the manga re

and the only reason i said I ASSUMED he did this intentionally, is because of the way he designed his character Kilik (which trust me could have turned out just as bad, but strangely enough, the author has strayed away from any stereotyping of this character that I have seen thus far >_>. I even like his dipiction of Nygus thar as well for a lot of reasons I'm won't bore you with XD)

and in general there are quite a few anime/manga i've seen with the characterization of black characters having extremely overly large lips...and i LOL because come on, srsly...as much as I would have wanked from sun up to sun down about that when i was younger, i find this to be highly amusing. Irritating because I know they can design awesome foreign characters without needing to overexagerate them, but amusing none the less.

Especially when they play up characters like this as random punk/gangs/bad guys. There's total exagerration there. (sometimes they use that exagerration of big lips or whatever on badguy or punk characters that you can tell are suppose to be japanese.)

then of course, there's depictions of the Ganguro girls from Japan itself >_> (which is probably why for some strange reason I seem to see the majority of any tan/dark skinned female character in anime have the blond hair??? O_o)

In the end, I'm not going to scream foul/fail over this, as I get enough of seeing the typical stereotypes played in Media right in the good old USA. (Which has accounted for any sort of racial stereotyping that might pop-up in anime/manga *since this is the medium we're discussing right???* I mean it is kind of hard to wonder if an author/artist is intentionally being bigoted when the very people they're making a character of another background base off of act out those same stereotypes themselves, sometimes even becoming them *and i'm just saying this in general*)

At this point its all moot for me really. I mean Ohkubo could just really love monkies and don't they use monkies as a symbolism of wisdom??? it could really be that simple O_o. anyhow that's my take on it. I try to see a situation from all sides.

so while I do see the arrow, it still doesn't stop me from enjoying whatever I like in the first place, all depending on what form the arrow takes. ^_^v

and wow did this tl:dr turn out to be very long indeed O_O

Hey, I just wanted to say thank you for posting your thoughts here. Your comments are really interesting and well thought-out.

so while I do see the arrow, it still doesn't stop me from enjoying whatever I like in the first place, all depending on what form the arrow takes. ^_^

Yes. I think this is the most important point. A lot of people tend to freak out if you tell them that there might be something racist or sexist in a story that they enjoy. But that doesn't mean that they're not allowed to enjoy the story anymore. It just means, hey, be aware, there is an arrow here, and it's important to recognize that.

Frankly, if I stopped enjoying manga that had bits of racism and sexism in it, then... Well, I would hardly have any manga left to read! Or TV left to watch, or movies left to enjoy, etc. Nothing is perfect. No authors are perfect, either. That doesn't mean that we're not allowed to enjoy imperfect stories, though!

Buuut, like you said, "depending on what form the arrow takes" is important to consider, too. Some arrows are so awful, so harmful, that they make continuing to enjoy the original work a morally skeevy thing at best. (I'm thinking of the recent example of Patricia Wede's The Thirteenth Child and MammothFail09, here.) But other times, with arrows of different shapes and sizes, everybody's just going to have a different reaction to it. What may be an unacceptably horrific arrow to one reader, causing her to completely stop reading a particular book or comic, may be an icky-but-ultimately-tolerable arrow to a different reader, who decides to continue reading and enjoying the book/comic in question regardless. As long as we're all aware of the arrows, however, some degree of YMMV is okay.

Edited 2009-05-15 11:08 (UTC)

ah you read my tl:dr post :D

you're welcome about the post. :3

Yea, a def. YMMV is necessary.

sometimes though, if I can't take anymore brunt of seeing the obvious stereotyping of an author's work, then I just stop reading, or if i do continue reading it won't be with much enthusciasm as before.

then i think well if this is how you're going to depict all of your foreign characters than you might as well not even put them in your story at all >_>.

anywayz as far as Enrique goes...I do hope at least he does talk instead of growl, I mean I'm sure that's put in there to be like 'cracky comical relief' especially if he's telling such witty innuendo jokes that only his weapon can understand' but to me that'll get kind of annoying after awhile (and i'll feel this way if Enrique was a cute bunny >_<) I can't understand 'growls' to get the joke or laugh at teh crack! D:<

come on Ohkubo you now owe us, Enrique at least doing a 'blair-chan mode' and turning into a hawt south american babe! >:3 (and talking in both forms if you can make blair-chan do it than he can do it too!! the girls need some fanservice D:<)

Two most excellent posts.

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