8 Asians

American Martial Arts Culture’s Roots in the African-American Community

By Jeff | Thursday, November 12, 2009 | Comments


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Jaden Smith, the next Karate (Kung-Fu?) Kid

Some fans of the original Karate Kid movie are appalled by the remake starring Jaden Smith as the new Karate Kid and Jackie Chan as his teacher.  Some are very explicit about their displeasure to a having a black kid play the role.    But as Jeff Yang points in this article, the story of an African-American learning self control and discipline from martial arts is “less of a perversion than it is a correction.”

Yang says that African-Americans were the first non-Asian community in the US to embrace martial arts, and without them, Asian fighting disciplines might never have taken root.  “The story of martial arts in black communities is part of a much bigger narrative of African American interest in Asian culture,” says Amy Obugo Ongiri, assistant professor of English at the University of Florida and author of the forthcoming book “Spectacular Blackness.”   White flight, she says, made inner city theatres become spaces for people of color, and cheaper, less marketable films like martial arts movies were often shown.  “We’d go and watch films all day,” recalls Warrington Hudlin, the producer behind films such as “House Party” and “Boomerang.”

Bruce Lee has been particularly influential.  In the documentary “How Bruce Lee Changed the World,” a number of African Americans, like Wu Tang Clan rapper and producer RZA and actor and rapper LL Cool J, talk about how Bruce Lee influenced them.  While filming certain scenes, LL Cool J thought about how Bruce Lee would have done the scene and acted accordingly.  Interestingly enough the new movie is being filmed in the Wu Tang mountains.

I am not sure that this new version of the Karate Kid (shouldn’t that be “Kung Fu Kid” if he is learning from Jackie Chan in China?) will be better that the original (although the reimagined Battlestar Galactica certainly has its plusses).  In any case, check out Yang’s article – it’s interesting, and I hope the Karate Kid remake is at least as good!

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  • Linda
    I think it's cool that Jaden was picked to be the new kid, and I had no idea that African Americans were the first non-Asians to embrace martial arts.

    That being said, with Jackie Chan as the instructor, I hope the point is raised in the movie that "Yes, he is a Chinese person teaching a Japanese martial art in China." Even if it's just one line in the movie. So people don't see this and think Japan/China/karate/kung fu are all interchangeable.
  • Ghost Dog: Way of the Samurai addressed martial arts in the African-American community before, and it would have been brilliant to see that theme continued in a non-conventional American setting with a AA sensei/sifu. Possibly even with Forrest Whitaker again (the RZA also cameo'd in Ghost Dog). But no, lazy casting: the son of one of the handful of default African American actors, and the first Chinese actor any white person thinks of. And there's no way the depth of the original film is going to be reproduced, not in this day and age, not for the mainstream audiences.

    Having said that, at least they did cast an AA kid, regardless of who his father is? Who knows how it will turn out.
  • bison
    what's bazaar is an italian-american boy starring as the lead in the film. i thought it was odd in '84 (when i was 9-years-old) and i still think its odd to this day.

    many folks (not all) give blacks no credit at all.
  • JC
    I don't mind a black boy being the Karate Kid at all, since black people actually respect Martial Arts. As long as it's not another white boy seeking new-age enlightenment from old grumpy mysterious Asian elders played by an excellent actor forced to speak with a fobby accent, then I'm all good. The Karate Kid is probably the film which produced this new generation of white Asian fetishists we see running around our women everyday. It is also the fracking movie which gave white hollywood fuckfaces the balls to make "The Last Samurai (who is white)". Screw that racist crap - this is one remake that's almost certainly much better than the original.
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