I will not even go into my honorable colleague, Jerry's, implication that Africa was not a land of kings. I will not discuss how disappointing it is that you, as a Latter-day Saint, are apparently convinced of this 'best interest' of the [white] 'race' doctrine, especially given the checkered history of the LDS Church on the subject of race. I do, however, take issue with your obviously selective perspective of the African problem. It is important to realize that: a) The West effectively gets back all bilions of dollars it 'dumps' in aid. How? (i) Repayments of said aid, which comes in the form of loans. Those repayments, in the case of many or even most African countries, can take up more than HALF the national budget. (ii) Weapons purchases. Or did you think those Kalashnikovs, M-16s and F-4's were made locally, what with the vibrant industrial economy? (iii) Imports. Mercedeses and BMWs aren't made in Africa, either. b) It is, has been and will continue to be the case that it is the very participation of external forces in Africa that is the cause of at least half the African problem, and the lack of a 'minimal level of...security and respect'. The other half is, admittedly, the complicity of a small number of Africans. Nevertheless, Africans do not need a Messiah, sir, they need the West to stop meddling in their affairs. The West is not, as you may have come to believe, a benevolent parent preventing purpotedly savage and semi-human group of people from dying from more war and famine, rather, it is at the root of those wars and famines. You must be asking how I can even begin to assert that, and I will answer with a little illustration: The Democratic Republic of Congo contains, for one thing, at least a third of the world's cobalt reserves, in addition to great abundancies of gold, diamonds, copper, and other such valuable minerals. Chad has uranium, Angola has oil. The list goes on. Now, really, Jerry, do you think it would be in the immediate best interests of certain elements in the West that resource-rich countries such as these should get organized and exercise real, OPEC-like control over their natural bounty, and by extension, control over the *entire* global economy? That is not all there is to it, but it is an outline. Finally, while poverty and instability in Africa suits the interests of a few, poverty and instability anywhere can never be of long-term benefit to us as a planet, indeed, they may be our downfall.
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Name : Jared, Gender : M, Race : Human, Age : 19, City : Logan, State : UT Country : United States, Occupation : Student, Education level : 2 Years of College, Social class : Lower middle class, Assimulation is a battle for many Asians. It is hard to admit the rejection of your own culture. It involves uncouncious 'doublethink' and shame. In this world of American economic and media domination, the American ideal is projected on to everything. It is obvious when we look at Asians who are considered beautiful that many have the straight nose, big eyes and thin lips typical of Caucasians and definatly not of Asians. So, about the Japanese animation topic, the artist creates what the appeals to the public. The anime shows how much the typical American image is glorified and desired.
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Name : Kayla, Gender : F, Sexual Orientation : Straight, Race : Asian, Age : 17, City : Banff, State : NA Country : Canada, Occupation : student, Education level : High School Diploma, Social class : Middle class, I've often thought this was a marketing strategy to allow easy sale of this material to both American and Asian media outlets. Because it was not offensive to local Asians it just made business sense to the creators.
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Name : S. Bowyer, Gender : M, Sexual Orientation : Straight, Race : White/Caucasian, Religion : Catholic, Age : 59, City : Vancouver, State : WA Country : United States, Occupation : engineer, Education level : Over 4 Years of College, Social class : Middle class, Do anime characters really look white? With the exception of the big eyes, all anime charaters seem to have japanese features. BigRound head, spikyhair, small nose, and small mouth. As for the hair color, the anime characters seem to have it all(pink, blue, purple). I don't know any white people with those colors. Getting back to the 'big eyes' of anime characters, it seems so unjapanese to have characters with big eyes. But then if you really start to think about it, even characters drawn by american cartoonist have eyes that are proportionally bigger than real humans. I think the big eyes are really an attempt to hyper-eccentualize(sp?) child-like features in the anime characters. Hyper-eccentualiaztion is done every where. Think of barbie, barbie could not exist in real life with her measurements. But her features are hyper-eccentualized to make her more appealing to little girls. And anyone who knows japan knows that they have a huge lolita complex(child porn wasn't illegal until only a few years ago!). they try to make everything cute and child-like and the big eyed anime charaters help with that. As for Japanese wanting to be white, I think they want to be whatever other people think is cool. They are very much into fads. Hip-hop and black culture is really big over there with girls getting dreds and dressing like lil kim. Its quite hideos(sp?). Also, I think it would be more accurate to say that they wanna be more american like(black & white). But Japan isn't the only one guilty of this. Go to western europe, east europe, s. america and everyone wants to be american. There are irish boys thinking they're black and rapping and russians heavy metal bands. Everyone loves our movies and music. I've seen quite a few animes that have brown skinned characters, but it would be correct to say that there aren't many. I would also agree that there is large number of characters with blonde hair. Lets face it, nothing compares with the blond-blue eyed look. Even other whites who have dark hair and hazel (really just brown) eyes like the blond hair/blue eyed look. So, I don't think it should be surprising that they have quite a few blonde hair and blue eyed anime characters. Lastly, I think they are actually racist towards all their blonde anime characters. They are disproportionately made out to be these big clumsy friendly idiots or evil plotting bad guys. They never seem to have any redeeming qualities. At least blonde jokes aren't big japan yet.
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Name : jake21072, Gender : M, Sexual Orientation : Straight, Race : White/Caucasian, Religion : Agnostic, Age : 27, City : seattle, State : WA Country : United States, Occupation : it field, Education level : 4 Years of College, Social class : Middle class, I hear a lot of white people talking about this. They're always saying how anime characters look like white people and not the Japanese. Well, when was the last time white people had eyes on their face that were 3 inches wide and 2 inches high? When was the last time white people had tiny noses (white people have HUGE noses compared to East Asians) about 1/2 inch long that even entirely disappear their faces display certain expressions? Or what about those tiny anime mouths? Asian people have much smaller (horizontally narrower) mouths than white people on average. When was the last time white people succeeded in styling their hair as spikey as the likes of some of our favorate DBZ characters or as random characters in really any anime you run across. When was the last time white people had green hair and purple irises? I could go on and on. Anime characters look like anime characters, not real people. They are animated PICTURES representing characters, but if they were supposed to look white then white aren't japanese comics drawn the same way as American superhero comic books are? Now those people look really Caucasian. If anything anime features represent a mixture of the features of many races. I'm sorry but there are plenty of dark skinned and dark haired characters in anime if you just cared to look. Anime characters reflect what japanese culture thinks is cute or even beautiful in people, especially girls. Large eyes denote innocence and youth (kids have proportionally bigger eyes). Same thing with shorter and rounder faces, characteristics usually NOT found in whites. Convention also very strongly affects how anime artists design characters. I am not sure of the exact origins of the anime look, but the look is well established so most anime artists follow it without thorough consideration about what race the characters might most resemble. Anime characters are not meant to look like real people, though some Japanese animations have very realistic looking characters that very strongly resemble asians. I do admit that some of white features are covetted by the Japanese, but do not be so self-absorbed to think all are. The perfect east asian beauty does not look white but a blend of asian and white features. I will admit that white cultural influences are very strong in Japan, but do not think that all Japanese want to look white.
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Name : Jonath, Gender : M, Sexual Orientation : Straight, Race : Asian, Age : 19, City : Boston, State : MA Country : United States, Occupation : Student, Education level : 4 Years of College, Social class : Lower middle class, 
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