Was there any reason why Bebop was black as a human?
 

It was stated the reason Baxter Stockman was changed into a white guy in the old toon was to avoid making the only black character in TMNT into a villain. Apparently this would have been viewed as racist back in the late 80's.

Yet at the same time, Bebop was black. Granted we only see human Bebop for two episodes, (aside from later Season 3 eps where we see human Bebop/Rocksteady in "Shredderville" and in their hologram disguises in Season 4's opener).

So why change the race of one character (Baxter), yet make another villain black?

I guess they just wanted to make that gang more diverse. I tend not to read into race too much, I really can not stand baseless racial sensitivity.

I doubt Baxter's white-washing had anything to do with racial sensitivity. It was just the design they made for the character. I think it's been discussed before that it was really done on a whim.

Racial sensitivity was definitely the last thing the early Fred Wolf cartoon had on its mind. Check every single time they deal with Japan on that show.

Lol, I was just thinking the same thing while watching "Beware Lotus Blossom" today, that asian lady selling flowers had a terrible accent.

Because we would've had Spike Lee directing an episode.

I guess for the same reason Rocksteady was white

You know, many people tend to forget that Shredder was voiced by Uncle Phil. :lol:

My guess is that they also wanted to be diverse about it. Maybe they were just being realistic. I mean, for Baxter Stockman, for me it's hard to imagine a crazy black guy being bossed around by Shredder and eventually being turned into a fly...and having that voice. Ha ha, this conversation reminds me a quote from Mean Girls. "Oh my God Karen, you can't just go around asking people why they are white!"

Just racial diversity... How long was it before we saw another black person in that series past Season 1?

He should've been voiced by Mr. T.

While I've no proof of this what so ever, but I always just chalked up the white washing of Stockman to be a reference to "Seth Brundle" from The Fly.

It's not open to speculation -- it's fact.

That it did or didn't?

The former. Unless Laird himself is a liar.

There were a bunch of pedestrians with speaking roles that were black, then Carter, and.... Wow, I guess that's it.

Films
 

There are many films, especially from the late 1980's and early 1990's, like that: White police officer and black police officer work together as a team using the same police car. The same with the bad guys.

I think Baxter Stockman was made white for the 1987 cartoon to let him look like the stereotype mad scientist in popular culture.

He was actually supposed to be white, but the artists couldn't see through their hoods and picked the wrong color by mistake.

White Baxter became a fly.

If he was black, he would've been a cockroach or something.

No, you're thinking of Hispanic Baxter...

Wow, that was in bad taste. I'll show myself out.


There was also that one professor dude who invented the protein computer in the episode "Mobster from Dimension X".

But wasn't Bebop made white later on? And if they didn't want too look racist they could have had a good black guy granted the comics didn't have one. But they could've made one up working at Channel 6.