“WHERE AM I IN THE MAINSTREAM”

I like to collect Transformers toys. I love the challenge of converting them and then doing it from memory. The older I get the more my mind will need to be challenged in order to keep it sharp or at least sharp where it needs to be. They are bright, colorful, and as much as I wanted to believe, the fact that they are so colorful meant that they aren’t anyone’s particular race. Yeah, I was willfully ignorant or feigning ignorance to keep my childhood innocence safe in the recesses of my mind. Also, I was keeping my inner child joyful.

OK, so yeah, the blue eyes of the good guys, the red eyes of the bad guys, and then eyes were yellow, and I think a few of them had silver and fewer had green. Nothing has changed. These were all white people, even blue-eyed Jazz who voiced by Scatman Crothers, a legendary musician. Just know, that Jazz lived through the great toy line genocide Hasbro used to promote a new season following the 1986 movie. Crothers died before the season was made and to show their respect, Jazz, who had been second in command, was in a race that he won. I get choked up thinking about that level of respect, especially since it would be decades before Jazz would be a character once more with a new voice.

When it comes to toy lines, how many are voiced on TV by People of Color? Not many. Often times, if it is a person of color, that person is an A-list actor, or the one black woman’s voice for any female with unwelcoming features or just some black woman. There are many people to find, and train in voice acting. A company…