Nice Haircut, Buddy

Been thinking a bit about race today.  Particularly in the realm of character design and writing.  I’m currently tasked for a job to design two families for animated show pitch.  One of the families is of African-American descent and another of mixed races (black and Israeli).  There are some specific goals being asked for with this job and it’s an interesting situation to be in, creating someone to either “look black” or “look Israeli” Etc., without resulting to stereotypes. It brought to mind an experience I once had while teaching English lessons abroad.  Maybe it won’t be that poignant hearing second-hand, but it was very enlightening to me.
Going around Japan teaching English, it was always a good idea to keep a little photo album with you to show to your students.  It was an easy way to start up simple conversations.  I would have photos of me with family, friends, girlfriends, etc, and in the album I had a shot of me with a friend back in Charlotte named Terrel.  I remember one night after a class, I was showing the album and talking with one of my students when she stopped on the picture with Terrel and was shocked that he was there in the picture with me smiling.  When I asked why she responded that she thought all black people were violent and scary.  At the time, I laughed at how ridiculous of a statement it was.  I thought this girl (like so many of my students) was just crazy.
But then it happened again (three times, actually) with another student and it stopped being funny.
Now, Japan is a famously xenophobic place.  Though it’s changing somewhat, the whole country has a fascinatingly narrow ethnic pool.  It’s something a lot of us take for granted here in America, where you don’t think twice about someone you pass on the street being from a whole other country or continent.  But in Japan, in many towns the only black people you are likely to encounter is in Hollywood movies.
And that was the problem.  It’s obvious to many, but the type casting of the black man as the ruthless mercenary or violent murderer is so pervasive that too many people don’t even see it as odd.
There’s a thousand essays about all that stuff, written by people far more qualified than me to talk about it, but what was interesting to me was the effect it was having on what was essentially a clean mind.  I’m no conspiracy theorist, mind you and I don’t think these decisions are made on a malicious level.  When I was very young I remember I had a burglar character and he was black.  Which might have even been fine, but he was my only black character.  Ugh.  Such is the subtle conditioning of entertainment.  My selective sampling of course doesn’t prove anything, but it’s enough for me to take a closer look at the way we cast our characters.

Edit:  I should note that I don’t find the aforementioned project I’m working on offensive in any way.  There’s nothing wrong with wanting to define your character’s ethnicity visually.  This just sprung from a train of thought as I thought about how to be more diverse with my own cast of characters.