Commentary: What's in a Ninja's name? Undercurrents of racism

By Karen E. Quinones Miller

Yes, I'm saying it! The cartoon featuring those green, sewer-dwelling amphibians that everyone loves is racist. Subliminally racist. Insidiously racist.

I know. People are tired of folks accusing movies or television series of having racist content or undertones. Because, come on, if you look hard enough, you can convince yourself that anything can be racist. Right?

But let's look at some cold hard facts here.

Raphael, Donatello, Leonardo, Michelangelo - the stars of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows - are the good guys.

Bebop, Rocksteady, and Shredder - members of the Foot Clan - are the bad guys.

Raphael, Donatello, and Michelangelo are named after great artists of the European Renaissance era. Leonardo, one might easily surmise, is meant to represent Leonardo da Vinci - the great artist, inventor, mathematician, and writer whose genius epitomized the Renaissance humanist ideal.

They are, of course, figures to be admired, even worshiped, as role models for our children - figures with whom we would all want to identify and whose success we hope they would aspire to emulate.

But now let's look at the bad guys, shall we?

Bebop is a form of music developed in the 1940s - some say invented by jazz icons Charlie "Yardbird" Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, and Coleman Hawkins - but identified with all the African American jazz musicians of that era.

Rocksteady is a musical form that came out of the Caribbean, mainly Jamaica, in the mid-1960s. Made famous by Alton Ellis, who was called the "Godfather of Rocksteady," it even spawned a dance craze that reached the United States in the 1970s with "Rock Steady," the hit by Queen of Soul Aretha Franklin. Johnny Nash hit number one on the Billboard charts with his rocksteady song "I Can See Clearly Now."

Shred guitar, or shredding, is defined as a virtuoso style of electric guitar soloing based on various fast-playing techniques. A friend of my father's always talked about musicians and their titles. Frank Sinatra was "The Chairman of the Board." Ray Charles was "The Genius." And Jimi Hendrix - who died in 1970 after only a four-year mainstream career in music - was "The Shredder." Search the Web and you'll find numerous mentions of his magnificent shredding at the Woodstock music festival. His stirring rendition of "The Star-Spangled Banner" there is still considered a shredding classic. Though the style is greatly identified with heavy metal, Prince was also considered one of the great shredders, and he cited both Hendrix and Carlos Santana as influences.

I don't think it's overly sensitive to look at a cartoon that names all the smart good guys after European culture and all the stupid bad guys after black culture. Do you?

What bothers me the most is that it's subliminal and therefore insidious.

Subliminal because most of the children watching wouldn't yet know about the European Renaissance or be familiar with the names of musical genres like rocksteady and bebop. They're just watching a funny, action-packed cartoon. Thus the idea is insidiously planted in their brain: European culture good and black culture bad.

Karen E. Quinones Miller is a Philadelphia author. authorkeqm@gmail.com