Cartoon Racial Draft

When I get drunk I tend to talk loudly and extensively about things that no one gives a shit about. On one particular morning I decided to take issue with the some of the ethnic representation in some old school cartoons.

Hotwing from The Silverhawks: I really was not a huge fan of this show but even as a 9 year old, I remember wondering why the only black character on the show was named Hotwing. The other characters were scientists and pilots. Hotwing was a cotdamn magician! In a random piece of trivia, Adolf Caesar was the voice of Hotwing. If that name does not ring a bell. He played Sarge in A Soldiers Story and Mister's daddy in the film The Color Purple.

Every Ethnic Character On The Superfriends: In an attempt to make it seem like white folks were not the only ones capable of saving the world, the Superfriends introduced Black Vulcan, Apache Chief, Samurai, and El Dorado who is not pictured here but if you could not tell by the name, he was Hispanic super hero who drove a gold low riding Cadillac. Black Vulcan wasn't too bad but why couldn't they just call him Vulcan? They never gave El Dorado anything important to do so I can't really go in on him. I really feel for my Asian & Native American brothers and sisters who had to put up with Samurai and Apache Chief. What makes these characters so out of pocket that their super powers and their names were based on them being ethnic minorities. It would be like if they had an Italian female super hero who got her strength from a magical tanning bed and she was named Pasta Girl. The worst thing about the inclusion of these characters is that they do not actually exist in the DC comic universe. They ignored the few ethnic characters that were in their actual comic books and made these guys up just for this show. By the way El Dorado did not actually drive a gold Caddy. That was a joke, but it did not seem that far fetched did it?
Roadblock from G.I. Joe: I had no problem with the fact that everything he said rhymed. It did bother me that every once and a while he would have to cook dinner for all of the other G.I. Joes at the end of an episode. To G.I. Joe's credit they had a lot of black characters who did nothing even remotely stereotypical, including Alpine their mountain climbing expert and Iceberg their skiing expert.

Destro from G.I. Joe: I know he is supposed to be a Scottish arms dealer but if you did not read the comics and only watched the TV show, you know Destro was black all day long. Not only did he dress like a pimp. He had the only female member of Cobra in check for most of the series. The Baroness understood that a pimps love is much different from a squares love, and the rest of the Cobra organization was full of squares. He also lived by one of legendary west coast pimp Rosebud's biggest rules for pimping success which is, if you want to be respected in the game you must stay deep with white hoes. Note: I made a mistake, it was pointed out to me that I mispelled Rosebudd's name. It is actually spelled with two d's for a double dose of this pimpin'.
Blaster from The Transformers: Transformers was my show. I am still a Tranformers fan to this day. I remember saving up 17 bucks so I could buy this toy back in the day. The thing is Blaster did not get his name because he was good at blasting the Decepticons, but because he transformed into a giant orange portable stereo. For those of you who did not grow up in the 80's these radios were affectionately referred to by many as a ghetto blasters. There was actually an episode during season 2 where he pissed off all of the Autobots by playing his music too loud. He was voiced by Buster Jones, the same guy who voiced Black Vulcan. Panthro from The Thundercats: I can't front, Panthro was the man. He was the best fighter among the the Thundercats and he was their engineer. On top of all that he had a nose like KRS-One just in case suckas on 3rd Earth tried to get it confused. The whole time I watched Thundercats as a kid I never put it together that Panthro's voice was provided by Earle Hyman a.k.a. Grandpa Huxtable from The Cosby Show.
Black Manta from The Superfriends: I know he wore a mask whenever he was on screen but under the wet suit was a very angry brother from Baltimore who hated white people because of how they treated black people on land. He wanted to create a strong black nation under the sea, and bitch ass Aquaman was the only person standing is his way. For obvious reasons they never went to deep into Black Manta's criminal motivation on the show. He had been fighting Aquaman for almost 10 years before he even revealed he was black. That said his first comic book appearance was 1967, so it was probably a good idea to keep that under wraps.