Dispelling the ‘ZOMGGG THE POWER RANGERS WERE RACISSST!!!’ myth

Its often brought up, how Mighty Morphin Power Rangers were ‘racist’ because the Asian character Trini was the ‘yellow ranger’ and the Black/African American character Zack was the ‘black’ ranger which the idea of being ‘racist’ is a whole bunch of bullocks to me (and ironically, out of the new 3 new characters, the new Black/African American character Aisha was the yellow ranger and the new Asian character Adam was the black ranger). Thats just a case of extreme paranoia. First off, I’m sure most of the people who hold these beliefs don’t realize that Power Rangers derive from Super Sentai, a Japanese series (which where all the ‘morphing’ footage of the rangers come from). In every season the yellow ranger is always Asian, does that make it ‘racist’? lol. And honestly, it may be just my opinion but…they’re just frickin colors. Americans are so paranoid by race they actually think this was racist?

But moving on, the character Jason the Red ranger would probably be viewed as the ‘[white] American jock’ when Austin St. John was born in New Mexico and is of German, Native American, Irish, Japanese, Italian, and Spanish descent. (But I guess for the picky ones, they can point out he was Native American and he was the red ranger, lol). The original yellow ranger casted was black/french, the actress name was Audri DeBois and she was in the pilot episode. She left because she did not think the show would be popular (crap). In the second runner up group cast, Trini was white.

Finally the Vietnamese Thuy Trang (RIP) is casted, and now everyone thinks its ‘racist’. Mind you, the Power Rangers only have 5 in a group. In Japan, it is only the Pink ranger that is a female (hence the skirt). The yellow ranger is male, which is why a) no skirt b) yellow isn’t considered a ‘feminine’ color over there, I don’t think c) So who else would Saban use for the Trini character to be? One could argue that the second runner up group of the cast Zack was still black, but I very much doubt the powers that be had it in mind that they were going to make him the ‘black ranger’. I think these things are figured out later on. Jason was anointed leader, thus red is out. And can you really imagine Billy as the black ranger? lol. So that went to Zack. Yeah, basically. Tommy the 6th ranger was the Green ranger who later was the White Ranger. Nobody made much noise about this, but I did here one quip about how ‘did anyone notice how the white ranger was the most powerful one? omg lolz’. Okay, Tommy was Native American. After Mighty Morphin’ it was Zeo, and when Tommy was the red ranger (har har har) they had an arc where he found his long lost brother, who is actually Jason David Frank’s real brother (RIP) and indulged a little bit into his Native American background. I for one, could always tell Tommy wasn’t white but Native American. Sure he wasn’t that dark skin (his brother was) but that long hair (especially when he used to wear it in a pony tail) and that face? It was pretty obvious to me.

To watch the pilot episode and look at the audition footage I’m talking about, its from the Morphicon 2007, you can watch some of them here

Tony Oliver’s Documentary

Part 1 http://youtube.com/watch?v=J8tGfxyX-qU
Part 2 http://youtube.com/watch?v=iEKilL5p9jo
Part 3 http://youtube.com/watch?v=swovtc_wqpc
Part 4 http://youtube.com/watch?v=HhpPKOMK5PA
Part 5 http://youtube.com/watch?v=RA8-YR1B6m8
Part 6 http://youtube.com/watch?v=_rDR2JecH7k

Yeah, don’t ask me how I know this much about Power Rangers. Leave me alone.