White Dawn?

There's a remake of "Red Dawn" filming right now. The original featured hordes of Russians invading America and a band of scrappy high-schoolers getting together minute-man style to fending them off.

This time instead of Russians they're casting Chinese as the Reds. That's somewhat offensive and makes me not want to see the movie. Last I checked the US saw China as the weird-rich-friend-that-makes-questionable-choices they keep around because they have money.

What really ticks me off is that Australian actress Isabel Lucas will be playing an Asian American highschool cheerleader whom I assume will help the American highschoolers fight against the invading hordes of the Yellow Peril.

Isabel Lucas is not Asian. She's White with blond hair in most pictures google pics found for me.









This situation is also happening with M. Night Shyamalan's "The Last Airbender", an adaptation of the American anime series on Nickelodeon. The main character in that movie is named Aang and is play by Noah Ringer (White kid). The character Aang ain't white.

Which brings me to the issue of "Yellow Face".

I can't remember the last example of truly offensive Black face other than those from looney tunes or that "Mammy" bit from the 40's. But I'll stick my neck out and say there have been no instances of Black face in wide spread media in my ~30 years. I attribute that to people like Bill Cosby in the 70's standing up, showing how Black people had been systematically hurt by the media and needed to be treated with respect. This was the beginning of people understanding that things like using the word "nigger" and performing in black face was offensive and just not acceptable even as a joke.

I don't know where this is from but it pisses me off

I'm so, so, so pissed about this because I recently lost a good friend because of a similar situation.

This former good friend of mine (who is white) I held in high regard because I felt for the first time they could understand that there are cultural differences and that was a non-issue in the friendship. But like every other White person I've ever known they decided it would be funny to point out how my Asian-ness or my Chinese-ness was either too much or too little in what ever circumstances. They even went as far as to use terms like "China-Man" and "Chink" to describe me or other Asians for supposedly comedic purposes. I wonder how this information would affect my former friend's significant other who is half Asian.

Its my mistake to have kept this person as a friend. They knew that calling black people "nigger" was wrong and never did that. I assume now they know that saying "chink" is wrong no matter the context.

This was very hurtful because I felt I simply could not trust people who weren't Asian to behave themselves in situations where racial sensitivity is important. I would even goes as far as to say that it has hurt my perception of White America as a whole in that I can no longer have faith in the White American public to be responsible for any racial insensitivity they bring to people of color.

Warner Oland as Charlie Chan

Just because the shade of an Asian person's skin is closer to that of a White person than a Black person's is doesn't make it okay to dress in "Yellow Face". Just because there hasn't been a civil rights movement for just Asians doesn't mean you can treat us like you treated black people before the 90's.