"let (s)he who is without sin cast the first stone"
-Little Hawk

Little Hawk, it's my position that the only way that the USA will reach its potential as the greatest land on earth is to face up to and work through its problems. Racism has been a problem for the United States of America even before this nation's legal founding. Because I love my country, I dare to speak about these issues even in a feel good thread such as this one.

**

Here's another facet of racism in the USA:      

DAVID CARRADINE'S LEGACY OF SHAME
by Guest Contributor (and regular commenter) Atlasien [a writer who has some Asian ancestry]

http://www.racialicious.com/2009/06/05/david-carradines-legacy-of-shame/#more-2498

..."For many Asian-Americans, tributes to Carradine's careeer feel like a cold and bitter insult. Bruce Lee was originally considered for the lead in Kung Fu, but the producers decided America was not ready for an Asian man as a heroic lead. David Carradine was chosen instead. His character, Kwai Chang Caine, was supposed to be half-Chinese and half-white. All the rest of the characters reacted to him as if he were Asian, when he was quite obviously 100% white. This confused the hell out of me when I first saw the show. Once I realized he was supposed to be Asian, it made me angry.

Why did I watch it in the first place? Well, Kung Fu was a pretty good show. It was plotted and shot and edited skillfully. It touched on important philosophical and cultural themes. It was ground-breaking, unique, and had some of the only respectful depictions of Asian culture available on American television in the 1970s. What were the alternatives? The servile, scraping, Hop Sing on Bonanza? Minor characters on M.A.S.H.? A scattered assortment of cackling Fu Manchu-type villains? It would be hard for Asian-Americans not to want to watch Kung Fu. But every time we watched it, we were reminded that it was possible for white people to take the best of what they wanted from Asian culture. Asian culture was mysterious and cool, but real Asian people were unwanted and superfluous. They could easily be replaced by the right kind of white man. And nobody remarked about it, nobody complained… at least it seemed that way.

I was very young when I saw reruns of Kung Fu, but I caught on quickly, and began to dread the sight of David Carradine's face. I still have some fond memories of sequences that didn't involve Carradine, such as the training sequences set in China. Then I stopped watching the reruns because the experience became too painful. Sitting there and watching was like… offering your body up to be erased. It's hard to explain."

-snip-

Here's a comment from a reader of that essay:
"The biggest reason for rejecting Bruce Lee was that ABC didn't want a prime time show with an Asian lead, even though the main character of the show was Asian and Asian cultural themes were being explored. They must have figured that there would have been less racist hate mail if the lead role was played by a white guy pretending to be Chinese. Guess that made it more palatable to people who liked Asian culture but not Asian people.

Kung Fu was similar to the popularization of Rock and Roll in that something that was exotic, underground, and outside the mainstream had to be given a white face. The dynamic in America has always been to separate the culture of non-white people, which white Americans like, from non-white people, who white Americas generally marginalize.

-Miles Ellison; Posted 05 Jun 2009 at 2:48 pm

[my italics for emphasis] ¶