"Yellow Ranger"

Even since I was a little kid I loved the Power Rangers. The show was so entertaining to watch. With the Power Ranger’s karate moves and cool weapons, the show was never boring. It never occurred to me that a show I grew up watching would be racially charged. I came across a article that was published in the newspaper a while back about how the show was racist. The Power Rangers were under a lot of controversy because of the fact that the skin color of the characters matched the uniform color. I chose this topic because I believe it fits in well with our class. The fact that the Power Rangers was such a popular show and was under racial controversy was too big of a topic to pass up.
Growing up, everyone wanted to be a Power Ranger. I was always a fan of the white power ranger. He was the leader of the group and the strongest. I never realized until now if that was on purpose or not. The white ranger was white, the black ranger was black, and the yellow ranger was Asian. The yellow ranger was under the most controversy as the network changed the yellow ranger from Asian to white after so many Asian Americans argued against it. It is hard to think of the situation to just be an accident. Clearly, the characters and colors were planned out. Was it racially charged? I believe so, but not in a negative way. All of the Power Rangers were stand up citizens and were heroes in their community. Asian Americans were just offended that the only Asian on the show was the yellow ranger. This was a problem for the Asian community because they are always considered to have yellow skin. They believed that having one of their own be the yellow ranger was almost making fun of the fact that they were made fun of. Clearly, Asian Americans would be upset and being made fun of for the color of their skin.
Why didn’t the African American’s complain as much as the Asian Americans? The Asian American community complained more to the point because their skin is not yellow. However, the African American community openly calls themselves black. Being called black is not an insult to African Americans where being called yellow is an insult to Asian Americans. This topic related to class because once again, the media is creating an image for the public eye of what it feels is what Asians should look like, just like with Cheif Yahoo and the Native Americans. Is it wrong? Yes and the network did the right thing in changing the characters and colors.
This was a troubling story to read because I was such a big fan of the Power Rangers. It is upsetting to know that people got their feelings hurt and felt that they were getting made fun of. The network did change the character and the color. Since the controversy there has never been another African American black power ranger and an Asian American yellow power ranger. I believe the network created the characters on purpose but not in the negative way in which people are calling them out on. The network did change the colors and I believe they did the right thing in doing so.