Black Race Coding in Animation

7 minutes read time

Overview

The television shows that we watch as kids truly do have an impact on us. The characters on these shows felt like friends that I’d welcome into my home for 22 minutes at a time. Animated cartoons caused higher levels of excitement for me because the rules of the world could drastically depend on the show. With animated shows, you can have characters that go off to far places in minutes, have amazing adventures where they meet new people, and face dangerous situations where they bounce back from injury within seconds. Something about the realm of possibilities for Bugs and Daffy versus Zach and Cody interested me. While live-action media held my attention just fine, animated cartoons really captivated me. Characters that weren’t even human had a way to appear the most like me.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Raphael

Television shows like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2012) are clearly centered around characters that are not human and technically don’t operate on the same cultural, racial, and sometimes even gender structures that humans do. It’s amazing how even when I’m watching Leonardo, Donatello, Raphael, and Michelangelo move in the shadows of New York City, I can feel as if I share similarities to them. With Raphael specifically, I always felt that he exhibited characteristics that align with the black community.

Raphael, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2012)

Naturally, he and his brothers are turtles and don’t have a specific race associated with them that is canon. However, that doesn’t mean that race coding isn’t taking place. Fanlore defines race coding as “the practice of adding implicit cues or subtext to either individual characters or entire groups of characters within a form of media that lead the audience to draw associations with particular racial or ethnic groups”.

In the live-action TMNT movies that were released in 2014 and 2016, I felt that Raphael’s mask design was the only one that resembled more of a durag compared to the designs of his brother’s masks. Granted, white actors played all turtles but again, it was still an interesting design choice.

Raphael, Donatello, Leonardo, and Michaelangelo (live-action)

The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is a franchise that began in the 1980s and has had many different renditions which has allowed for new interpretations of the four brothers and their story. As an eleven-year-old girl watching the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (TMNT) on Nickelodeon, Raphael’s race was an identity that I prescribed to him. The late Stan Lee once said the following about Spiderman: “What I like about the costume is that anybody reading Spider-Man in any part of the world can imagine that they themselves are under the costume. And that’s a good thing”. I apply this same thing to animated characters like the TMNT.

Sonic, Knuckles

This next character is one that I have long believed to be race-coded as a black character. Growing up, I loved Sonic. My brothers and I played video games (my favorites being Sonic Adventure and Sonic Adventure 2) and watched the series, Sonic X. It’s been a joy now to see the Sonic movies that have been coming out in the last 5 years. In my opinion, Knuckles the Echidna is one of those characters that are way more overtly coded than others.

From his earliest conceptions, Knuckles seemed to be a character with Jamaican roots. People have long speculated from the colors of his shoes to the way his spikes fall like locs to his use of common Jamaican vernacular in the 1994 Sonic & Knuckles Game Book.

Knuckles using Jamaican vernacular in the *Sonic & Knuckles Game Book*

More so than that, we also must discuss the theme songs that have been created and used for Knuckles. The widely famous Knuckles song tracks from Sonic Adventure 2 featured rapper Hunnid P. To this day, the songs from the Pumpkin Hill level and the Wild Canyon level will always have a special place in my childhood and the overall Sonic fandom.

Verse 1 of the Kick the Rock (Wild Canyon) lyrics below:

Echidona, that’s what I’m representing

Never seen a mic-hog spit like a menace

Wild Canyon fun, I gotta chase a bat, huh

Yeah, Rouge, she’s sexy and smooth

A double-cross spy-thief that’s out for my jewels, uh!

I’m feelin’ her in mysterious ways

That’s why I stay on point like, every single day

I gotta protect this place, I do it for my race, uh, uh!

More recently, Knuckles got his own Paramount series. Imagine my surprise and delight when viewing the trailer and it featured a song that is very prominent in black popular culture: ‘Knuck If You Buck’ by Crime Mob. And of course, we can’t forget that Knuckles is currently being voiced by English actor, Idris Elba.

The use of race coding with Knuckles has been very effective in my opinion. Especially since Knuckles is part of a whole ensemble of characters within the Sonic universe, his diverse portrayal pulls in new audiences which has allowed him to remain a stable character in the series despite the constant addition of new characters. Hosts of Sonic characters have been left behind in the earlier Sonic works such as Big, Cream and Cheese, Vector, Rouge, and more. The Sonic the Hedgehog Fandom page describes Knuckles’ character as one with an emphasis on “[breaking] walls”. I believe his character has been able to do that and much more, partially due to the creator’s choice to race-code him.

A Deeper Discussion on Black Race Coding

As a whole, I believe race coding is a great way to allow people of different groups and backgrounds to see themselves reflected on the screen. However, when doing race coding, it is of the utmost importance that research is done and members of the group being perpetuated are either in the writer’s room or heavily consulted. Race-coding characters in animated television involve imbuing non-human or fantastical characters with traits, behaviors, or cultural signifiers associated with specific racial or ethnic groups, however, it may also perpetuate stereotypes if not handled thoughtfully. Stereotyping characters in television leads to the portrayal of characters that use oversimplified, exaggerated, or inaccurate traits, which can reinforce harmful biases and limit the complexity and diversity of representation. This only leads to more harm rather than good.

Historically, minorities were rarely depicted without the presence of a stereotype. Research conducted by various parties (see sources) has found that African Americans are historically promoted in a few different ways within the media. First, in sporting coverage, the images promoted “reinforced hegemonic notions of primitive athleticism among African Americans”. While in general television commercial content, black males were shown as aggressive and black women as inconsequential. While this research reflects studies done in the early 2000s and late 1990s, it is still important to note that these practices have not fully gone away. The television shows that I grew up watching could still showcase shadows of those earlier practices.

Race coding isn’t stereotyping and the minute it turns into that, it should be corrected. Characters like Piccolo (Dragon Ball Z), Darwin (The Amazing World of Gumball), Wilt (Foster’s Home For Imaginary Friends), etc. “created a generation of kids who learned to ‘code’ characters, assigning them a race, sexuality, or other identities that weren’t specifically prescribed but that was no less real to those of us who wanted to see ourselves reflected in a media landscape that wasn’t interested in us”.