“Lazy  Mexican”

            In a Veggie Tales film called “The Pirates Who Don’t Do Anything”, there is an extremely racialized character.  Though I am not sure which type of vegetable this character is supposed to be, he is given a Spanish accent and the persona he is given is even more troubling.  The movie is based on three vegetables who would like to be pirates, one is the Spanish male, assuming to be Mexican, and two other American vegetable characters.  In the beginning of this film the veggie characters are introduced, the two American veggies are failed pirates who have the desire to succeed as pirates but are just prone to failure.  My whole issue with this film begins with the Mexican character, who also does nothing but not because he is prone to failure, rather because he is lazy.  His vegetable wife, who also speaks with a Spanish accent, even complains to another one of the pirates wives about how lazy he is.  She states that she has to do all of the housework and works many jobs while he just sits around and does nothing.

            When I fist viewed this scene I was flabbergasted by how racial stereotyped this vegetable character was.  These socially constructed racial stereotypes are available in all types of media, however; I was shocked to see that a popular Christian children’s broadcast was so blatantly racist.  By making these types of stereotypes available and pushed under children’s noses, how will it ever be possible to eliminate negativity that is geared towards a group of individuals based on race and ethnicity?  The creators of this movie have obvious ideologies that they wish to uphold and teach society, specifically at a young age, in order to keep the unequal status quo that is now prevalent in the western world (Miles, 1989).  Socio-economic factors force minorities, specifically in Canada and the United States, to accept low paying, high labour jobs.  Mexicans are often stereotyped as lazy and unable to find skilled working jobs because of their lack of ambition.  This is completely untrue and when analyzing the types of struggles that minorities, specifically those from Mexico, face on a day to day basis it easy to see that these people are not choosing a life like this, rather it is the only viable option that society allows them to have.  Racism is portrayed in all sorts of institutions and is present in everyday life even with numerous attempts and efforts to eliminate it.  Unfortunately, elimination of racism seems to be a quite far goal considering children today are still blatantly being taught racial and ethnic stereotypes.

Work Cited

Miles, R. (1989). Racism (pp. 69-98), London & New York: Routledge.