Whites stereotype Asians, Asians stereotype blacks
by Carmen Van Kerckhove
Check out this old Jell-O ad from the sixties that mocks an Asian baby trying to eat Jell-O with chopsticks. It has just about every offensive stereotype you can think of: the dreaded Asian font and a presumably white dude narrating with an awful fake accent and dropped words: “Chinese motha bling baby Jell-O. Famous western delicacy!”
And then on the flipside, check out this (by the looks of it, fairly recent) Japanese (possibly Thai?) toothpaste commercial, featuring a big black guy who helps a Japanese child retrieve her balloon, only to have her mother snatch her baby and run away, screaming. He’s just misunderstood and uh… somehow ends up sleeping on a giant toothbrush and morphing into dark toothpaste. You kinda have to just watch it.
Props to Adrianna for finding this site!
Carmen Van Kerckhove is co-founder and president of 
Jay wrote:
The commercial is not Japanese (don’t attribute _everything_ to the Japanese…) it’s Thai, I think, from the looks of it. Carmen, you should do better research. I remember the commercial on YouTube at least half a year ago, so it’s not that recent.
Posted 03 Nov 2006 at 11:37 am ¶
Carmen Van Kerckhove wrote:
Oops, thanks Jay! I’ll update the post with a correction.
I think I automatically assumed it was a Japanese commercial because black man + toothpaste made me think of Darkie toothpaste:
http://www.prmuseum.com/kendrix/abroad.html
Also, I mean recent as in, not from the 1960s.
Posted 03 Nov 2006 at 11:44 am ¶
dcase wrote:
Strange world we live in.
Posted 03 Nov 2006 at 12:00 pm ¶
Jay wrote:
Cool, Carmen. It’s just a peeve of mine that everyone attributes anything Asian to the Japanese.
On the other hand, “Darkie” came from Hong Kong, not Japan. see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darlie. Hawley and Hazel was the original company who made it, before it was bought out by Colgate, so that’s not Japanese either.
Here’s a link saying that it’s Thai (and has a great analysis): http://danm.ucsc.edu/web/ancarrol/segment
Posted 03 Nov 2006 at 12:04 pm ¶
Carmen Van Kerckhove wrote:
Oh that is a great analysis - thanks for posting, Jay!
And that’s so bizarre about Darkie/Darlie toothpaste. I actually blogged about growing up in Hong Kong not thinking that the image and name was offensive in any way:
http://www.mixedmediawatch.com/2006/04/13/blackface-outside-the-us/
But for some reason I’ve always been under the impression that it was a Japanese brand sold in Hong Kong. Maybe that was just HK folks trying to shift the blame.
Posted 03 Nov 2006 at 12:13 pm ¶
Gandalf Mantooth wrote:
Kevin Willmott even talked about the toothpaste during the CSA q&a. It’s of American origin; White folks selling prepackaged racism abroad. Yay colonialism!
Posted 03 Nov 2006 at 12:54 pm ¶
Y. Carrington wrote:
Orientalism=white supremacy
Negrophobia=white supremacy
Who’s dehumanized in commercials like these? All people of color. It’s high time we figured that out.
Posted 03 Nov 2006 at 1:42 pm ¶
James wrote:
Well, I feel nauseous.
No, nothing more profound than that, just nauseous. That Jello ad imposed a racist sensory overload; who designed it, Steve Oedekerk’s role model? Although, it never ceases to amaze how diverse people the world over can share their unflinching fear of the Black man without social sanction.
Posted 03 Nov 2006 at 3:47 pm ¶
justin wrote:
The spoon was invented for eating jell-o ?
Some people grow bacteria on agar-agar and then go home to slurp down the distilled remains of a fruit flavoured cow. Damn westerners and their technological determinism. . . .
Darlie is pretty much a Pan-Asian thing. I know lots of people who will go half way across town to find it not for novelty or kitsch., it’s just really good toothpaste. It’s super minty. I hope agar-agar is pan-asian too, cause its so much better than jell-o. It’s not just for vegans ,ya know?
Posted 04 Nov 2006 at 12:11 pm ¶
deb wrote:
Those commercials were so racially insensitive. Yet, I wonder if the producers were blind to the racism, or just didn’t give a crap.
I like Anthony Hamilton, but in his latest video he briefly portrays an Asian man. I guess it’s supposed to be funny, but it’s more caricature and stereotype than anything.
Posted 04 Nov 2006 at 4:58 pm ¶
Ziadie wrote:
I think it doesn’t really matter who did what here, the fact is these commercials exist and still do under more sparkly formats. Sadly these images are passed to our children. Dehumanizing people of color as animals or even products such as the man in the second commercial. And once again the “white” man teaching “civilization” of the baby….
This images are disturbing and they are a reminder of how media and advertisments continue to use similar images that contribute to racism.
Posted 05 Nov 2006 at 10:35 am ¶
Dorothy wrote:
The only thing that cracked me up about the J-E-L-L-O commercial was that it actually ended with the narrator saying, “very good commercial, no?”… uh, NO!
Posted 07 Nov 2006 at 3:24 pm ¶
deb wrote:
Re: the Jello commercial…what’s a “chinese-type baby”?
Posted 08 Nov 2006 at 4:37 pm ¶
Sai wrote:
Hello! Everyone, I’m Sai from Thailand. I saw this ad on T.V. in my country, but I don’t know Darlie is belong to what country. However, the theme of this ad is don’t judge people from their looks.^^
Posted 02 Dec 2006 at 6:37 am ¶
stefan wrote:
i saw the darlie commerical to in thailand if it . it is the worst commerical i have ever seen. if that commercial aired in the u.k. or america there would be mass riots. while it is a little bit true that the ad does say that good things come in other packages. its totally not the way to do it. and what was the need to speed him up climbing the pole like a monkey?
they need to constantly put down all foreigners to put themselves up. and yet if anyone ever dares insult the king of thailand he can be put in jail for life. i have one friend from america whose thai girlfriend wanted to get back at him and told the police that he spoke bad about the king, he was deported from thailand declared a persona non grata.
then there was the one by caraboa dang that has the thai army of before killing in cold blood burmese that have already surrendered. the ad goes on to say that all burmese are only bad. the thais constantly need to tell themselves they are great. it something that is going thru their head every second. all stems from the fact unlike the rest of asia they were never colonised. many thais have told me the worst think a thai can do is listen a foreigner. total hypocrites.
Posted 07 Dec 2006 at 6:27 am ¶
alice wrote:
as a thai-american living in thailand, i agree that the commercial was insensitive and not the best way to convey their message. thai media has not been scrutinized in the same way the american media has, nor does thailand have the level of cultural, ethnic, and racial diversity of the u.s. (tourists do not count, especially those who come in search of Thai girls - disgusting). issues of stereotype and race representation simply haven’t surfaced yet. yes, these issues will have to be addressed as Thailand becomes more international.
stefan:
you are stereotyping an entire nation, a country of millions of people based on a couple assumptions or experiences. i don’t know if you realize that what you just said is simply racist in another form.
Posted 10 Dec 2006 at 11:14 am ¶
Sai wrote:
I agree with Alice’s comment on Stefan.
Stereotype always bases on limited experience.^^
Posted 21 Dec 2006 at 11:03 am ¶