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An awful relic from less enlightened times, or a sign that the attitudes from those times have not gone away completely. A comic relief character in the Small Annoying Creature or The Scrappy mold whose strangeness in appearance and behavior is put down to his/her being of a different race or ethnicity to the heroes. Highlighted by being an extreme gonk in an otherwise normal cast.
Fortunately this is now a truly Discredited Trope, fit only for knowing subversions. It is, however, still sometimes used straight in foreign countries (see picture), usually due more to ignorance than malice. In modern remakes, the racism will be entirely removed, as will the comic relief nature; indeed, it may be replaced by Badassery.
See Also: Uncle Tomfoolery
Examples:
- Charlie the cook from the original 1933 King Kong is a definitive example of the Comedy Chinaman, mandarin suit and all. Made a little bit less awful because he does show some competence in spotting the bracelet dropped by one of the islanders.
- Chop-Chop from Blackhawk. All the Caucasian characters are tall and good-looking. The Chinese is three feet tall, as wide as he is high with lemon-yellow skin, teeth like a radiator grille, tiny, slitted eyes behind milk-bottle glasses and a silly accent. They all wore uniforms and caps, he wears a multi-coloured Qing dynasty outfit and a ribbon in his pigtail.
- The later issues, however, as early as the Silver Age, made him look like a normal Chinese guy, took away his stupid accent, and gave him a uniform.
- Deconstruction: Howard Chaykin's 1988 reworking of Blackhawk, which even gave him a real name, showed him to be insulted and angered by his team-mates' use of the derogatory nick-name. In fact, the miniseries doesn't shy away from depicting any of the racism and sexism of the World War II era.
- Ebony White in The Spirit. Yes, he got better lines and a more serious role as the story went on, but to have a comedy black character half the white guy's height with big, red, rubber lips and huge, wide staring eyes was not the finest idea in Will Eisner's great career as a cartoonist. This was so common among Golden Age heroes that Ebony is probably the least racist example.
- Eisner discusses this problem, and his reaction to it, in the introduction to Fagin the Jew, the comic he made to vindicate the character of Fagin in Oliver Twist.
- The 2007 Darwyn Cooke version makes him into a street-smart kid, with the added precaution of excising Jive Turkey.
- The Silver Age Green Lantern Hal Jordan had an Inuit sidekick called Pieface who served as his mechanic. Today, he is strictly called Tom Kalmaku and depicted with respect as an engineer.
- In a recent retelling of Hal's origin, the "Pieface" nickname is used by a Jerkass rival pilot.
- Tom gets his in The New Frontier, Darwyn Cooke's (there he is again!) reimagining of the dawn of DC's Silver Age. Hal Jordan calls him Pieface when they first meet. Tom responds by calling Hal "whitebread" and threatening him with a wrench, and that's the last time Hal uses that nickname.
- There was a certain time period where any team of heroes that had reason to visit a vaguely Arabic or Asian country would be stuck with a young, pidgin-English-speaking boy. Children always tended to do marginally better in this role than their adult counterparts, as they were intended to be endearing and cute.
- Probably the most famous was Short Round, Indy's sidekick Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. He just escaped being a Scrappy by virtue of being somewhat of a son figure to Indy, and driving Indy's car.
- Jonny Quest has Hadji. The Real Adventures of Jonny Quest greatly updated the character, giving him a p; however, he retained essential aspects of the Ethnic Scrappy- ridiculous accent despite years of living in the US, "ethnic" attire no modern Indian man would wear, magical powers.
- The accent, at least, can be Truth In Television. This troper has met several people who spent the majority of their lives in the U.S. but still speak heavily-accented English.
- The 13 Ghosts of Scooby Doo had Flim-Flam. Despite being a parody of this character type, he was a worse Scrappy than Scrappy himself.
- In the 1996 movie adaptation of The Phantom, the Phantom rescues a young boy who becomes his Ethnic Scrappy.
- Oddly, cropped up in a mild form in the 2007 Transformers movie, with the Qutar kid who existed mostly as a walking Pet The Dog for the US soldier characters. Also, his dad's cellphone saved the day.
- This troper, having actually lived in Qatar, would like to point out that actual Qataris aren't like that.
- In Defenders of the Earth, Mandrake The Magician had a Japanese apprentice named Kesshin.
- Parodied on The Venture Brothers with Kano, a member of the original Team Venture, who despite his "racial handicap" is powerful enough to crush a boulder, yet gentle enough... to crush a butterfly.
- The Dick Tracy animated series from the '50s/'60s had "Joe Jitsu", an Asian kung-fu master/detective, and "Go-Go Gomez", a lazy Mexican who solved crimes from his hammock. Both were drawn just about as stereotypically as you might imagine. Gomez could be fairly active, although he did so with lots of "Arriba! Arriba! Yeeha! Yeeha!" yells that turned him into a human Speedy Gonzales.
- The Africans in Tintin in the Congo are better left unmentioned. However, the later Blue Lotus was written with input by a real Chinese, and worked hard to remove some of the Yellow Peril stereotypes. This did not, however, apply to the Japanese villains were mostly depicted as disgusting racist mockeries with protruding teeth and thick glasses.
- this editor points out that the stereotyping of the japanese was most likely due to the anti-japanese colonialism theme that was a part of the storyline.
- Herge expressed great regret later on for the racism in his early work and actually requested Tintin in the Congo not be republished. The last few Tintin adventures are still prone to Ethnic Scrappy, but tend to have fairly realistic minor characters.
- Seen most recently in "Anacondas: The Hunt for the Blood Orchid", in which the cast has a cameraman who's a jive-talking, incompetent, wise-cracking, loudmouth black guy who spends the entire movie fearfully hiding behind his white bosses. As one reviewer put it (to paraphrase): "Weren't characters like these supposed to have died out in the 1940s?"
- One of the best known examples among the Mexican population is Memín Pinguín
 ◊, a stereotypical black kid with the trademark huge eyes and big rubber lips. However, many people in Mexico don't look at him as something specifically racist, as many have never encountered black people in Mexico anyway.
- The unspeakably awful Tabletop Games FATAL had actual, equippable items which literally turned the wearer into Ethnic Scrappies - of Jews, black people, Asians and Greeks. The RPG was not played for laughs, and would probably have been even more offensive if it had been. Particularly offensive sample:
50. Nigrous Nincompoopery, of: Whosoever dons this armor experiences a loss of 1d100 points from each sub-ability of Intelligence, Wisdom, and Charisma. The ass of the wearer will grow by 50% and be abnormally high. If the wearer is male, then those around him are 80% likely to believe that his manhood has increased, though it has not. The skin of the wearer becomes cursed and dark as night. Disposition turns to Unethical Immoral. Temperament becomes phlegmatic. The eyes of the wearer are visible 3 miles away at night. The wearer will have a body odor for 1d10 feet. On the bright side, the Physical Fitness of the wearer increases by 10%. The armor may be removed at will.
- Wham Bam Rock, the boss of the Great Cave Offensive in Kirby Super Star, is made up entirely of a leafy crown, huge round disembodied eyes, huge red disembodied rubber lips, and disembodied stone hands he beats you around with. Yeah, yeah, most Japanese people haven't seen a black person in their life and as such don't know they're being offensive, but still. They got their act together for the DS Video Game Remake (where Wham Bam now resembles a clay totem) - well, partially. The "king of all the Wham Bams", Wham Bam Jewel, has both basic Ethnic Scrappy characteristics (huge staring eyes and rubber lips).
- Afro Samurai had Ninja Ninja, an obnoxious, jive-talking sidekick who pretty much existed to point out the similarities between the word 'ninja' and the N word. Of course, Afro Samurai was black as well, and they were both played by the same actor, Samuel L Jackson. Also keep in mind that Ninja is just a figment of Afro's imagination.
- Has anyone seen the token black kid in the old Young Allies comics? Go to superdickery.com and click on any of the pictures where the Allies are mentioned. Exactly. And they gave him the incredibly PC name of Whitewash. I wish I could be making this up but I'm not.
- Jar Jar Binks manages to apply here, even if he it's unsure if it's a REAL ethnicity, or an ethnicity that only exist in Star Wars. Other Gungans are shown as competent, brave warriors who kicked Jar Jar out for being an idiot, so the problem was him simply being the most prominent in the franchise.
- Snails from the first Dungeons And Dragons movie is a textbook Ethnic Scrappy.
- Mr. Popo the servant/slave of God from Dragonball has an infamous and distinct look from the other characters, but is usually not considered a black stereotype. For one, he doesn't resemble any other darkskinned characters, and he's also pretty obviously supposed to be a genie.
- Any pro-wrestler not from the USA or Canada. Continues to this day - see Umaga, for example.
- The Japanese are particularly susceptible - Tajiri, Mr. Fuji, and Kenzo/Hiroko Suzuki in the WWE/WWF stick out in this regard.
- Subverted or averted by Ring Of Honor and other independent promotions that have working relationships (often strong) Japanese pro wrestlers and their home promotions.
- Despite some occasional slips on this mark, TNA's Samoa Joe actually exists to subvert this trope, being a perfectly normal, in fact exceptionally skilled, wrestler.
- Of course, the aforementioned Umaga seems to have been created as a Take That for Joe, as though to say, "This is how Samoans act in wrestling." Some of us are still not pleased.
- Shockingly, Manu, a recently debuted Samoan wrestler in WWE, speaks plain English and does not appear to have any "native" leanings. Then again, they also recently debuted R-Truth, a black ex-con who now raps and dances his way to the ring... so...
- And let's not forget Hamchuck from The Green Beret.
- Anyone remember Hop Sing, the Chinese cook on the old television show Bonanza?
- To be fair, the Hop Sing characterization had Values Dissonance. Bonanza was set in the 19th century and the depiction of the Chinese people on the show was not entirely inaccurate for that time period.
- Chada from Nie A_7 at first appears to be a walking, talking stereotype of an Indian convenience store owner, complete with broken English. However, he's actually an alien who adopted this stereotype as his appearance and identity.
- In the TV show Sliders, Rembrandt Brown started out with at least one foot in this territory, but fortunately the character displayed drastic improvement as the series progressed.
- Many early cartoon characters, which usually highlights interesting arguments between meme insensitivity and deliberate racism. Animation fans usually defend characters like Bosko, who was obviously a racial charicature of a sort, but isn't treated maliciously and is always the hero.
- Killerbee from the Naruto manga comes off as an Ethnic Scrappy born out of cultural ignorance. He is apparently a painfully stereotypical anime black man who raps nearly everything he says.
- However, it should be noted that this doesn't stop him from outwitting both Hawk and the Akatsuki with what can only be described as sheer brilliance, so he's much more capable than most examples. It helps that he kicked Sasuke's ass too.
- There's also the fact that the manga introduced four other (largely normal) black characters a couple chapters after him (Jei, Omoi, Karui, and the Raikage).
- Connie (George Webster Confucius), the Chinese comic relief character, from the Terry And The Pirates comic strip.
- Prissy from Gone With The Wind. Oh god, Prissy...
- The Plastic Man Comedy/Adventure Show had "bumbling Hawaiian sidekick" Hula-Hula.
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