Panethnicity or Stereotyping?

In my opinion, panethnicity is not an appropriate response to racial lumping and discrimination.  To me, panethnicity seems like a milder form of racism and stereotyping. In Asian American Panethnicity, Espiritu states that "Asian American primarily meant Chinese or Japanese American" (pg. 50).  Because Chinese and Japanese Americans are the two most recognizable groups due to both the size of their population and there relative history in the United States, the political issues and values that they raise are often misrepresented as the political views of the whole Asian American panethnic group, which includes several smaller nationalities such as Korean and Filipino. For example, Korean and Filipino women were very under represented during the Asian American women's movement, as the needs of Chinese and Japanese women were primarily attended to (Espiritu pg. 51). 

However, this kind of misrepresentation did not end with political issues. Chinese and Japanese Americans were primarily hired for jobs that required Asian American insight such as ethnic studies teachers for example (Espiritu pg. 51).  Panethnicity also became a problem during several of the wars fought throughout the 20th century.  Because of WW2, Korean, and Vietnam all being fought against nationalities that fell under the "Asian American" panethnic group, members of the group that were not of the enemy nationality struggled to convince Americans that they were not the enemy.  Racial slurs such as "gook" were used to demean all members of the panethnic group rather than just that of the enemy nationality.

Panethnicity

I think that panethnicity is a useful response to discrimination and racial lumping. It could help make people feel less hated because they wouldn't be picked on. However, I do think that panethnicity is still a problem. Like we talked about in class, certain ethnic groups may feel left out when being placed within other ethnicities. For a person to feel wanted and good about themselves they should be able to identify with whatever ethnicity they so choose. There are a lot of ethnicities that people mix up, like most Asian cultures. Because people can't tell the difference most of the time, they assume that they are all the same. If people were to gain the knowledge of different ethnicities I think this would solve the problem of racial lumping and panethnicity. However, I think that there will still be discrimination whether panethnicity or racial lumping is used. People are going to hate based on how they view others.

Does panethnicity work?

Like just about everything, panethnicity seems to be useful in some cases and detrimental in others. For example, in order to garner representation in the political sphere, it was appropriate for Asian ethnicities to unite panethnically. However, this often results in Japanese Americans and Chinese Americans dominating the Asian American demographic, whereas smaller groups like Filipino Americans became "unseen." As such, panethnicity can result in reinforcing the notions behind racial lumping, putting all Asian Americans into a group of predominately Japanese and Chinese representation and ignoring the individual (and often very different) concerns of groups like Filipino Americans (e.g. being a small ethnic minority and not getting the necessary welfare funding or being paid less despite having the same amount of education as J.A. and C.A.). Ultimately, panethnic formation does many of the same things racial discrimination does in not seeing difference and not acknowledging that different ethnic groups face different issues. While I'm tempted to say that panethnicity should be used only in cases in which those issues are common of all Asian groups, I don't think any such case would truly arise because there is always going to be variation among and between ethnicities.

Video on racial lumping--gets to his main point at 3:54: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2NH0o_Eb6DY

Cartoons and Children

 

One of the most important part of being a child is to sit in the mornings and watch cartoons and laugh at the silly pranks and jokes our favorite cartoon characters perform. But when does watching cartoons actually become a problematic concern for children. And what do cartoons these days actually promote  that Lehman see's as a problem for young children?

When I think about cartoons and how they teach young children I think some recent cartoons are inappropriate for handling race and stereotypes in television. Cartoons are suppose to consume time to keep kids out of trouble for a couple of hours, not teach kids how to curse or use race or sex as nuances for laughable purpose. This gets at the real issue that parents need to teach their kids the importance of what they see on TV and filter their minds. I think organizations like the Civil Rights Movement were right to boycott cartoons because they taught young children that blacks and other minorities were just silly, lazy, violent creatures, and children pick up on these ideas and carry them and spread them to friends and then they form wrong ideas about certain social class groups. The trend that's new in media is the use of sex in cartoons and how its the new norm, but this is just as bad as using overly rated racial stereotypes in cartoons. The problem is that this stuff sells not a lot but its want the audience wants and needs to see to make a show a hit. So it will be interesting to see where cartoons head in the future and what  problems they might encounter for their young audiences.

Animated movies and TV shows affect on children

To answer the question in short, I think that yes animated films and television shows have the power to shape the impressions of young children. When we are children we are all extremely impressionable, most things children see and hear tends to be modeled after something they saw done by someone else. When you are young most of the shows that are suitable for children that age are cartoons or animated movies. For me when I was young I think that I watched every Disney princess animated movie at least a hundred times as a child. (This is where I blame my silly idea of wanting to be a princess when I grow up!) So to use myself as an example, then yes animated movies and shows had shaped me into believing that I could actually be a princess when I grew up which I quickly learned was not the case.
Children seem to be the most impressionable because they are young and don't know what to believe. So it is easy to understand that the more children view any type of animated film, whether it is a Disney princess or the Tom and Jerry cartoons what they see on a regular basis can begin to loosely shape their actions. At the same time the cartoons are shaping their impressions and the way they act, it could begin to shape the stereotypes they believe in.

Influence of Animated Films

While I can definitely see how animated films would have the potential to shape a young child’s mind, I don’t think that it would be correct to say that they 100% do. What a child sees/interprets compared to what an adult sees/interprets, is going to be very different.  And even if the animated film creator has certain ideologies and beliefs that bubble into their creation, the probability of a child picking up on it is probably very small. But with all that said if a child is constantly watching shows and films with violent tendencies or inappropriate words, I can definitely see how that might affect their personality. Same thing goes with little girls wanting to be princesses and the idea that they have to find their prince. 

In the end, I feel, it all depends on what the child is watching and how long they watch it. If a child is sitting in front of the TV all day watching cartoons, then maybe they will be more likely to pick up on the subtle influences because that is what they are exposed to for such a large amount of time.

Cartoon's affect on children

Cartoons are animations aimed towards children and whether subconsciously or consciously it has a great affect on how they view things as they grow up.  Lehman describes that animators took the simplicity of a few certain black characteristics and focused on these racial-profilings to entertain children.  Cartoons like Bugs Bunny and Mickey Mouse were examples of this and black stereotypes of dimwitted, lazy, and comical troublemakers were emphasized.  A personal experience with the subconscious affect of cartoons involves a memory of my brothers making a joke about a certain cartoon that I do not recall at the moment. What I do remember was them laughing and saying "Oh you will understand someday!" At the time all I cared about was being in the know but in reality what my brothers could have been joking about some stereotype that the animator is using as a joke whether or not it was a black stereotype does not matter.  The fact that it was something I would understand one day exemplifies the power of reinforcing stereotypes. I found a picture that exemplifies the simplicity of cartoons of the time.  They use improper spelling to coorrelate with minimal education, sexual factors about the girl, and the typical black face with big lips.  I have learned through my education to question everything I see, but children do not think these things through. They except things at face value unless there is an outside force such as a parent to sit down and explain it