Why are butlers in American movies usually British?

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And how come it is never racist?

I've seen lots of American movies and cartoons where rich characters have butlers who are snobs with a posh British accent. The actor playing them is usually American.

Why isn't this ever racist? Why doesn't this offend British people? Why would it be offensive and illegal if the butlers were black or Asian, or even other white nationalities such as German?

It's like the British are stereotyped to be snobs with a weird posh-sounding cockney accent that hardly exists these days in England.

I don't understand. Even Google won't answer my question.

These might help.

https://movies.stackexchange.com/questi ... -in-movies

https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimf ... in_movies/

Also, english people are often stereotyped as fancy, well-mannered and polite, like a butler is supposed to be.

It's not usually considered offensive because the english generally held a position of power throughout history, and weren't exploited and enslaved and forced into lowly servitude as blacks and asians were.
But it is pretty cliche.

Positive discrimination?
With apparently way less negative connotations? There's a trope called hyper-competent sidekick.

Or maybe it's more "acceptable" because of some historical mess of a context?


This is just a rapid guess.

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Better butlers than villains, which is more common in my memory.

Some years ago we went to our nephew's college graduation. It was at a college in the U.S. south.

One of the students who spoke at the graduation was an exchange student from Britain.

One of the first things he said was that he found it useful that Americans confused a British accent with intelligence.

I like all the above stereotypes of us. We are intelligent, sexy, sophisticated, classy, evil villains .

The cockney accent and RP accents are separate though, I really don't understand why the yanks combine them into one in a person.

Maybe a yank can confirm, I *think* it's British men's accents that are considered attractive to American women. I haven't heard of a British female accent be considered attractive to American men.

Am I wrong?

Yep

We're particularly good at very polite obedience, with a generous side helping of malicious compliance.

Have you seen Yes, Minister?

Yes Minister - Foreign Policy

It's just that even if you use positive or harmless stereotypes for black people it's still racist.

If movies used a black person to be a snobby rich butler, it would be controversial, even though being rich is a good thing and the butler is being paid, it would still be controversially viewed as slavery.

It's like there is no political correctness when it comes to the British, but we're under serious pressure to be politically correct to most other nationalities, except for Americans and Australians and a couple of other nationalities.