Icebox.com is currently promoting a cartoon that
propagates offensive and tasteless racial and ethnic stereotypes of Asian Pacific
Americans. Despite the feedback from viewers who registered their protest of the
animation, Icebox.com CEO Steve Sanford publicly stated that he has no intentions of
pulling the cartoon. We are asking Asian Pacific Americans to write a letter of protest of
the financiers of Icebox.com, eCompanies.
BACKGROUND INFORMATION
On June 9, 2000, Icebox.com (www.icebox.com) released the first episode of a series
entitled Mr. Wong. Mr. Wong is an 85-year-old hunchbacked Chinese houseboy in the service
of a Caucasian socialite. He is depicted as a lemon-yellow buffoon with slanted eyes and
bucked teeth. He speaks with an accent, and mispronounces L's and R's. Icebox.com claims
that it provides creative and fun entertainment. However, Mr. Wong's exaggerated Asian
features are clearly based on negative racial stereotypes that the artist(s) uses out of
convenience as opposed to any creative invention. In addition, the "humor" is
provoked by de-humanizing Mr. Wong over and over in the three episodes, entitled
"Urine Trouble" (Parts 1 and 2) and "Yellow Fever."
According to 10,000 respondents to a poll run by AsianAvenue.com, 53% said that the
cartoon was offensive. Despite the protests, Icebox founder and CEO Steve Sanford defended
the site's content as an exercise in artistic freedom and staunchly refused to discontinue
it. He said, "We are going to keep Mr. Wong up. Everything I've seen in all [of our]
shows has been done in good humor." Without your vocal protest, 10 more episodes of
Mr. Wong will be released in the future. Furthermore, there is a possibility that Mr. Wong
and similarly racist comedy sketches will enter the mainstream media since Icebox.com is
marketing animation pieces for television viewing.
CALL TO ACTION
Write to Mr. Jake Winebaum, Co-Founder of eCompanies (the parent company and primary
sponsor of Icebox.com) to discontinue the Mr. Wong cartoon at his e-mail address (cbergseld@ecompanies.com).
Alternatively, you can send a letter via fax (310.586.4005) or via mail to the following
address: eCompanies, 2120 Colorado Avenue, 4th Floor, Santa Monica, CA 90404 to both Mr.
Winebaum and Mr. Sky Dalton, Co-Founder. Finally, if you prefer to call eCompanies, the
phone number is 310.586.4000.
Send a duplicate copy to Peter Kim at Ptrkm@aol.com or fax to the attention to Peter Kim,
National Asian Pacific American Legal Consortium, at 202.296.2318, so that we can keep
track of the complaints.
If you watch Mr. Wong at www.icebox.com, please register a complaint with the
company on their message board. Otherwise, your visit to the website will boost the number
of hits to the website. A website's popularity is rated by the number of visits logged
onto the website.
If you have any questions regarding this matter, please direct your inquiries to Peter Kim
at Ptrkm@aol.com or
call the National Asian Pacific American Legal Consortium office at 202.296.2300.
The National Asian Pacific American Legal Consortium (NAPALC) is a
Washington, D.C.-based non-profit, non-partisan, civil rights organization
dedicated to preserving the civil and legal rights of Asian Pacific Americans through
education, advocacy, litigation and public policy. You can learn more about NAPALC at www.napalc.org.
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