Racial Stereotypes Replicated in Fantastical Animations

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When I was younger and anime came on the cartoon channels, I knew it was time to go to bed. One night, during the vacation, I sat down and watched an episode of a fantasy program of Japanese origin. I was enchanted with the magic, monsters, and overarching storyline I had never seen in an animated show before. As the years went by, and I watched more anime, first on t.v. and then on streaming platforms, I noticed a pattern in the skin color of the anime characters. I realized that this magical world was infused with the prejudices of the world in which I lived. For my mini-ethnographic project, I sought to understand the attitudes Caribbean youths have toward the profiting of racial and cultural stereotyping in some of their favorite anime shows. In the anime programs that I watched, I had made two casual observations that I wanted to explore for my mini-ethnographic project. The first, there were only a few dark-skinned characters and, the second was that the darker-skinned characters were typically evil and lighter-skinned characters were typically good. This presentation replicated the patterns of the modern era that had been entrenched in Trinidad and Tobago also where dark-skinned populations were historically more subordinated economically, politically, socially and culturally than light-skinned populations. There were exceptions to this pattern, I realized of course, but I was shocked to see how blatant this connection between color and moral value was in these shows. 

By Samantha Chu For

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