Posted on 07/10/2008 5:39:29 AM PDT by Titus Quinctius Cincinnatus
A comic-book character popular in Mexico for generations has run into a cultural barrier at the border, where Americans see him as a racist caricature.
For more than 60 years Mexicans have followed the adventures of "Memin Pinguin." But the dark-skinned Memin's exaggerated features in "Memin for President" came as a shock to Houston, Texas, Wal-Mart shopper Shawnedria McGinty.
"I was like, OK, is that a monkey or a boy?" McGinty said. "To me it was an insult."
She'd never heard of "Memin Pinguin." She bought a Spanish-English dictionary and tried translating but still didn't like what she saw.
"So I asked my boyfriend, does that look like a monkey to you?" she said. "And we went back and forth and he was like, no, that's a black woman," referring to the character's Aunt Jemima-like mother.
McGinty and Houston community activist Quannel X want the comic books removed from the stores.
(Excerpt) Read more at cnn.com ...
If someone doesn't like it, then don't buy it or watch it.
I would not buy this chimp looking black kids pic for example, it's a bit over the top. I think some pickney drawings are charactititure enough.
But don't forget nearly all races and groups have been drawn as such.....exaggerated looking for effect..
thanks for showing finally the proper way to spell a word I have misspelled for years...”caricature”
Once again AM radio scoops the ENEMEDIA. I heard this on the Walton and Johnson, three days ago.
Quanell is the airbag complaining about 2 burglars being shot for burglaring in Houston.
I agree that the elites in Mexico are mostly more European and less “Indio”
but you write like it’s all a plot....maybe I misunderstood you
sometimes things just fall the way they do
Europeans with a fairly long history of civilization and mercantilism conquer a land and run it pretty hard as colonial masters for a few hundred years and they end up on top since that culture now more reflects what they brought than what they conquered....at least at the top.
It’s not surprising. It’s simply not by accident that the groups that were more “advanced” 400 years ago now still occupy disproportionately the upper rungs in the cultures they either migrated to or conquered.
How much is a conspiracy is debatable.
Al Sharpton and Obama would say it’s all on purpose.
Most conservatives would say it’s more the natural result of things than that....not saying repression doesn’t have an effect. But repression doesn’t explain why some less advanced groups worldwide still lag for so long
I was raised on Uncle Remus.
Aside from the derogatory use to describe a “mixed race baby” nowadays I never saw in the story whereby the tar baby meant a negroid infant but rather a made up of tar doll.
Nothing gay at all about the Rifleman and no Chuck Conners never did any gay porn and nor was he gay.
Jim Nabors and Rock Hudson....now that was a 1950s/60s rumour that was true.
The Rifleman rocked...at least to this once little boy.
It wasn’t Mexicans or Mexican-Americans who objected to the WB Speedy Gonzales cartoons either. In fact, for the most part, they saw him as a good character model, who was in his way very strong, attractive, and smart.
But at the time, he was about the only Mexican-based character in the cartoons, even though Walt Disney had made several forays into Mexico to show off Mexican culture.
Perhaps an even more tragic example were the objections to the truly artistic “Gordo” comic strips of Gus Arriola. From 1941 to 1985, they were some of the best art on the comics pages. Ironically, these comics were the first, and perhaps largest introduction to Mexico and its culture for many Americans. Its main character was a tour guide who took pride in showing off his country. Gordo was a Mexican ambassador to the world.
But the race obsessed couldn’t get over how Mexican he and the other human characters were, and how this meant that they were somehow offensive to Mexicans.
Houston PING
Quannell the Tenth’s PR activism has been picked up by CNN.
Of course the Mexicans were offended by Speedy Gonzalez and got him banned.
I’m trying to drum up a little sympathy for Hispanic free speech but...what can I say...I’m still upset the Taco Bell dog was pulled.
i’m not into conspiracies. what i said is what i see.
i live in socal near the border.
for two decades i’ve read the los angeles times, which in the 80s and 90s had good reporting from mexican correspondents,
and the san diego union tribune.
also, i know mexicans, and i used to get my rx and dental work done in tj and nogales.
$4 rx and the price of gasoline have made me stay here.
i just got a crown done here and they’ve messed up two temporaries. i prefer my mexican dentist.
thank you.
you did not read other things into my words.
The really funny thing is that, as a character in the comic book, Memin is the hero with a lot of good traits for the other kids to look up to. So, in the typical racist fashion, the racists decrying this comic ignore the content of the character and look on the color of the skin and appearance. Once more we have a bunch of folks ignoring MLK and going the Jesse Jackson route.
Your pop is the splitting image of my dad, or vice versa, heh.
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