Transformers: Racists In Disguise?

When I was growing up, the animated Transformers show theme had the line “Transformers, more than meets the eye…Transformers, robots in disguise!”

Now it appears that some are accusing the robots of being racist stereotypes in the new movie “Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen”.

Well, at least twin robots named Skids and Mudflap. They are a couple of unassuming hatchbacks–until they transform like their Transformer kin into robots with personalities.

Some have accused the filmmakers of creating racial stereotypes with these two cars/robots. You see, apparently they speak jive. The humor stems from these two constantly fighting using fast talking slang.

Maybe it was just growing up in San Francisco, but I witnessed ALL races talking in jive and slang. It wasn’t a BLACK thing. It was a SLANG thing. Jive is spoken by all races (just ask Mrs. Cleaver in the original ”Airplane” movie!).

My beef stems from the lack of anger and criticism of the ACTUAL practitioners of slang and jive. Why criticize two robots who supposedly learned how to speak from studying the Internet.

According to Reno Wilson, the black actor who provides the voice of Mudflap, the two robots talked this way because they were “wannabe gangsters”. By the way, the voice of SpongeBob SquarePants–Tom Kenny–is the voice of Skids.

Millions of American youth–AND adults–talk like this everyday. Why are we focusing on MAKE BELIEVE??

And why is there never any pressure on ethnic comedians who present themselves as racial stereotypes to clean up their act and behave better? I don’t get it. I won’t name names, but there are some comedians who talk like the WORST RACIAL STEREOTYPES from uglier days in America.

And people think that is SO funny. I don’t get it, I guess.

But what do you expect from a guy who drives a Buick and Honda that don’t turn into mighty robots?