YouTube Wire: conservatives, yellowface, and white teachers in the ghetto

by guest contributor Luke Lee, Racialicious’s senior YouTube correspondent

Check out Luke’s own blog at real men are not

Recently Michelle Malkin has been trying to finagle a piece of the YouTube pie by posting a bunch of crappy videos from her “Hot Air” series. Latest on the list is a staunchly conservative version of “The View” where she talks with some other women about current events as well as some of the comments they receive as women bloggers and women bloggers of color. Michelle and La Shawn Barber,specifically, mention how they’ve been called “race-traitors” and “sellouts” in addition to (though this applies more to Michelle) all the physically and sexually violent threats that they receive. Now, I loathe Michelle Malkin as much as anyone else because of her comments about Japanese internment, about racial profiling and such but I think it’s a sad comment when people will make the most vile sexist and misogynistic attacks at her not for her screwed up politics and baloney ideas but rather that she’s a woman and a woman of color saying her opinion (however much you may disagree with it).

And speaking of conservatives…

There’s an interesting collection of clips of Ann Coulter spouting off her trademark hyperbole and hate. Some material about “illegals” and “democrats are the real racists”…

I understand that given any political/global climate, the comedians and the impersonaters are going to come out and make fun. So when North Korea starts to dominate the breaking news, what do folks do? Impersonate Kim Jong-Il and make videos called “Spam fly lice.” That’s all fine and good and I almost expect people to crack the usual jokes about how he’s crazy and about how he’s got a funny haircut but I mean seriously, do we really have to make the usual Breakfast At Tiffany’s joke again? MrCook, the creator the video, is trying to entertain along with his god-awful “cooking” instructions so expectedly the quality of the video, the food, the humor, everything is just rock bottom…

Remember MrPregnant from last time? Well, he’s back again except this time he’s decided that the world must know this: MrPregant doesn’t like dark skinned women. MrPregnant likes women who look like his mother (blonde hair, light eyes) and this doesn’t make him prejudice because, uh, he only has “a preference.” What an idiot. In the beginning, I think people (as I admittedly did) assume that he’s talking about lighter skinned Black women but of course as he goes on, he gets all Freudian but wont really say that he likes white women specifically. I imagine mixed race folks get a ton of crap like this (this, “oh, your dad/mom is X so that must mean that you naturally prefer X’s!”) and this only heaps onto that stereotypical way of thinking. Honest to God, I don’t know why people feel compelled to tell others (strangers, I might add) information like this…

Touted as a “YouTube EXCLUSIVE!!” this movie trailer got a lot of views recently and it’s a story that you may have seen a few times over in film and TV. Well, OK maybe not this exact story but you know what i’m talking about. I think films like these always have the potential to make some really important statements about race, class and gender (as well as the ‘isms of our public education systems) but seems like things have always been going downhill since Dangerous Minds and, my personal favorite, The Substitute where the Black school principal turns out to be, uh, a giant dealer…

YouTube can be funny too! YT personalities “minouye” (Mikey) and “abbegirl” (Abbe) are pretty popular and though they make their own separate videos, they really started getting views when Mikey brought Abbe on board to which a horde of “you’d better have hit that you p****” comments ensued. And while their videos are usually completely non-serious and pretty funny, it’s interesting to note that because Mikey is an Asian man and Abbe a White woman (and Mikey even tags his videos with Abbe with words like “hot” “white” “girl” “asian” “boy”) and because they’re both seen as attractive and friends spending time together, the immediate racist/sexist assumptions made by many viewers (through early comments though they do a bit more moderation now) is that Mikey A) “must be gay” or B) is straight but isn’t “hitting that”…