Society & Culture / Social Issues / Race & Ethnicity

Aladdin’s Monkey Was a Human Slave: How Broadway Engineered Race

Oriental, Black, and White: The Formation of Racial Habits in American Theater

Josephine Lee

Did you know Aladdin’s beloved pet monkey, Abu, originated on the 19th-century stage as a mute, enslaved Chinese laborer played by an actor in blackface? Pop culture conditions us to treat entertainment as harmless fun, but modern racial biases were precision-engineered over a century ago under the gaslights of American theater. Long before movies or social media, popular stage shows served as a mass programming machine. They turned racial caricatures into societal muscle memory, deliberately fusing blackface and yellowface to justify imperialism abroad and legal oppression at home. From white audiences demanding Othello appear as an Arabian prince to violent laundry sketches conditioning crowds to cheer for real-world anti-Asian attacks, the stage systematically shaped how society perceives race. This breakdown draws directly from the groundbreaking work of Josephine Lee, a prominent Professor of English and Asian American Studies at the University of Minnesota, through her acclaimed book, Oriental, Black, and White: The Formation of Racial Habits in American Theater. Her research investigates how 19th-century American performance forged racial habits and physical stereotypes that still haunt contemporary media, uncovering the complicated web of shared exploitation, survival tactics, and hidden solidarity between Black and Asian communities. Look past the velvet curtain to see how marginalized performers subverted the system from within, why sanitized corporate diversity often conceals historical trauma, and how entertainment algorithms still dictate your subconscious habits today.