Gasoline Alley Charged With Racism

Jim Scancarelli has revised a Gasoline Alley storyline after readers at one paper complained about the chartacter of Teeka Tok, an Asian Pacific Island woman married to Adam Wallet. The character, originally introduced by Scancarelli in 1987, is a childlike woman who wears a flower in her hair, mispronounces English words and expresses amazement about American ways. She was brought back in a sequence that began Sept. 9, in which she takes naturalization classes. Many of the gags in those strips revolved around the immigrants' misunderstandings of the English language.
Sharon Medea, head of a consulting firm that produces multi-cultural awareness classes for the workplace, complained to the Seattle Times that the Teeka strips were "disgusting" and "without redeeming value." She said they portrayed "a real sexist sort of relationship between the white husband and Asian wife." When the Times published her complaint, it asked other readers to comment; 40 percent of those who replied found the strips offensive.
While Tribune Media Services reported no complaints from any other regions of the country, the syndicate and Scancarelli agreed to bring the story to an early conclusion, dropping three weeks' worth of strips in the process. In one of the now-canceled episodes, Teeka is told to dial 911 to report a mugger but replies, "I can't! Is no eleven on dial!" Tribune Media managing editor Evelyn Smith had felt the story "ambled along" and "could benefit from tightening, but also that while they personally didn't find offense in the strips, "we certainly had our consciousness raised by someone else's opinion that it was." In Smith's view, Teeka is "a sweet, gentle, warm person, generally... I can see how the docile wife could be seen in a negative light. She's a loving mother and wife, and a charming character. We don't mean to laugh at her in a negative way."
Scancarelli still believes the strips were sensitively handled and positive, according to Smith. After Teeka's original appearances in 1987, Scancarelli said he was surprised at the intensity of some of the complaints he received then, but noted that the first Teeka story was used in a literacy manual.
Gasoline Alley's original creator, Frank King, included a highly stereotyped black "mammy" maid in the 1930s.