Racial portrayal in Glee: POC characters

First to understand the depths of racial portrayal in Glee we have to discuss some critical and cultural theory concerning race. There's a lot to cover so I shall try to keep it brief. 

Whitewashing in Hollywood is a long running practice. Whitewashing in terms of painting means 'to try to clear (someone or their name) by deliberately concealing their mistakes or faults.' Whitewashing in Hollywood and on screen is when most of the characters in TV shows, films etc are predominantly white. Whitewashing is when non-white characters are roles then given to white actors. This places non white actors in the place of those "mistakes" or "faults" and is therefore highly unflattering. 


POC characters in Glee are often under-developed characters that remain on the outskirts. Many are portrayed via negative stereotypes. 


POCs in the Glee Club during Season One were Mercedes (raised the point she's always shoved in the background and used to simply add high notes at the end of songs), Tina (forever in the background) and Matt (you know, the student that was constantly consigned to the background and vanished for no reason?)

You have characters like Principal Figgins, a man who is shown to be somewhat incompetent and seems to only be brought into episodes to create tension or comic relief in the plot and rarely turns up otherwise. Roz Washington, shown to be bitchy and vicious. Ken Tanaka literally acts as comic relief, a character not to be taken seriously by the viewer, and apparently when Ken vanished from the show Brad Falchuk from the production team said nonchalantly that Ken 'died of a heart attack' - but no one mentioned it or even seemed to care on the show. Nice one, Glee. 

Then there's Sunshine Corazon, a promising singer that even threatened the 'golden child', Rachel Berry. Rachel sends her to a crack house, endangering her life, but is hardly punished for it. Sunshine appeared at McKinley and eventually transferred schools when she wasn't brought into the New Directions. At Nationals she was so anxious in the run up to the competition that she was apparently planning on begging the Philippines Embassy to revoke her green card to send her back home (thus poking slight fun at emigrants/immigrants/those who have relocated to another country) but when Rachel, the girl who endangered her life, tells her to suck it up and deal with it... she does. Just like that. As if her poorly-crafted, stereotyped worries weren't to be taken seriously. She then vanished from the show like so many POC characters before her.

It is clear that Ryan Murphy and the writers of Glee don't really care for characters of colour. Characters are  whittled down to simply being a product of their race (e.g Tina's superhero alter-ego is "Asian Persuasion") 
The narrative of the show not only goes out of the way to screw up Tina as a character, but then has to reduce her time and time again to her race and little else (having her referred to as 'harajuku girl'/'Asian horror movie', looking at episodes such as "Asian F")
Glee make it abundantly clear that they don't care about reducing characters to mediocre, negative or harmful stereotypes whilst keeping them in the background after promising to give them more screen/singing time. Jenna Ushkowitz, why do you put up with this? Is the pay really that good? I don't know why someone would continue to put up with such treatment...


Here are more links to a critic on Tumblr who has gone through and provided criticism of the treatment of POC characters on the show by going through all POC characters on Glee.

Post One on POC characters in Glee
Post Two on POC characters in Glee
Post Three on POC characters in Glee
Post Four on POC characters in Glee
Article on Whitewashing in Hollywood