Consequences of Racism (for the Racist this time)

(idea inspired by comment from Kai. And also by this guy)

Manager: Hello.

Senior Manager: Hi there. You know, I just had a meeting with Mr. Chang.

Manager: How was it?

Senior Manager: Great. We're going to ramp up the partnership with his company. That's what I'm calling about. We'll need a full-time person working on this project. I'm thinking about promoting one of your people into the role.

Manager: Sounds great. I have some good candidates. Can you give me a feel for what the role's going to involve?

Senior Manager: Managing a cross-functional team and coordinating closely with Mr. Chang. He's a very hands-on kind of guy. You know, he got started out working as a delivery man in his father's takeout restaurant. He's really proud of that. Keeps a close eye on the day-to-day running of his company. He's not too hard to get along with, but he likes to know he can trust the people he's working with. Say, what about promoting that Joe Bob whatsisname guy into the role?

Manager: Well, I was actually just going to call you about him...

Senior Manager: You don't sound too happy all of a sudden.

Manager: I just saw a video of him on the internet. He was half-naked, hopping up and down like some kind of seriously messed-up squirrel, making "ching chow ching chow" noises and talking about how he... um... had a small penis. The video had something to do with making fun of Chinese delivery men. I couldn't watch more than a 30 seconds of it though.

Senior Manager: (...)

Manager: Hello?

Senior Manager: FIRE THAT DUMBASS.

Manager: Sure, I'll have HR drop you a note once we get the ball rolling on that.

Why can't you take a joke, bitch?

Here's the answer.

Jenn at Reappropriate posted a link to us. Thanks Jenn for helping us out, and thanks to Angry Asian Man too! She also alerted us to a disturbing reaction to our effort.

I was in a conversation with a middle-aged White progressive the other night and the topic of grassroots Asian American activism came up. This progressive argued that race activists are too busy trying to gain media attention for issues that “don’t matter” and that we should let the little stuff like this — a racist YouTube clip — slide because it only makes us look like whiny ingrates to White America (more on this conversation later).

Of the many things one could say in response to such a perspective, not the least of which has to be how one can ask anyone of Asian descent to let the hatespeech apparent in “little stuff” like this not affect us. Another woman eavesdropping on the conversation compared hatespeech to a fundamentalist listening to swearwords and how one must just let others be stupid.

But what right do others have to tell us that this kind of ignorance should not affect us?

Exactly!

We will agree, this issue is not as universally concerning as global warming. For Asian issues, it's not as bad as, say, exploited sweatshop labor.

But this is not about our hurt feelings. It's about the children.

Rhymes about Asians have some kind of sick appeal. Remember this "oldie but goody"?

"Chinese, Japanese, dirty knees, look at these"

When the singer says "dirty knees", they point at their knees. When they say "look at these", they pull at their shirt around the nipples, or pull up their shirt.

A 7-year old little Asian girl is at the playground one day. Some girls run up to her and do the little song and dance. "Chinese, Japanese, dirty knees, look at these." They sing, they dance, they enjoy themselves. Then they laugh. What does the little Asian girl think?

"I'm different and they don't like me because I'm different. I'm not dirty but they think I'm dirty." (she's learning she doesn't have the right to define herself) "Maybe I am dirty, and I just can’t see it. What's wrong with my breasts? Look at them? But I don't have any breasts. It's supposed to be funny, but I don't feel like laughing, I want to cry. What's wrong with me?"

She cries. They laugh at her. "Why can't you take a joke?" If she complains to another person, they tell her to stop whining.

She turns in on herself. Or worse, when they do it to her again and again and again, she starts to laugh at the joke. If she doesn't take offense, if she appeases them, if she doesn't rock the boat... maybe everything will be alright. Her sexual and cultural identity are wounded and deeply traumatized. And this is one of the reasons that Asian women have the highest suicide rate of all American women aged 15-24.

Let's flash forward a few years. We've already seen on this blog that the Brandon Dicamillo Chinese Freestyle Rap is incredibly popular. People love this stuff. IT'S SO FUNNY. It's not just one video. There could be hundreds of slightly different versions. It's spread to Sweden. Little kids who look like they're 9 years old are uploading videos of themselves singing it. They build a whole sick community where racism is normalized.

A 7-year-old Asian boy is sitting at the playground.

Some boys run up to him and start rapping. "Who like my chopstick? Hit you when I shit with my little-ass dick."

Fill in the rest yourself.

Some Recent Consequences of anti-Chinese, anti-Asian hate speech

Why we "can't take a joke"...

Condemn anti-Asian hate crimes and hold MTA accountable!

On March 16, 2007 the New York Post reported that 17 year old Asian high school student, Marie Stefanie Martinez was assaulted in New York by a group of teenagers on a MTA B82 bus due to their perception that she looked "Chinese" even though she is of Filipino descent. Ms. Martinez was punched, kicked, and subjected to slurs in what can be categorized as a hate crime based on her attackers animus towards her perceived ethnicity.

Reportedly, the MTA bus operator who witnessed the assault did nothing to intervene during the course of the assault on Ms. Martinez and neglected his moral and ethical duty to ensure the safety of MTA riders and punctuated his negligent conduct by allegedly advising Ms. Martinez, who was still wearing her Catholic school uniform, to "go talk to a priest" after the assault.

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The Death of a Family Man

THE last time Xia Gui Ping spoke to her husband, Zhang Hongqi, it was Feb. 18, the first day of the Lunar New Year. The phone rang at 7 that morning in her house in Luoyang City, in eastern China. On the line was Mr. Zhang, making the call he had made every day for five years.

First, he chatted with the couple’s 14-year-old daughter, How Ran, instructing her to put on new clothes, as is Chinese custom on the first day of the year, and watch the firecrackers explode outside her house.

When he spoke with his wife, he wished her “Happy New Year” in English. From the other side of the world, she said she missed him as much as she did the day he left for America five years ago.

After blowing kisses into the receiver, Mr. Zhang turned back to the images of past new year festivities in China that he was watching on a DVD player in his tiny rented room in Flushing, Queens, an hour’s commute from Charlie Mom, the Upper East Side restaurant where he worked as a deliveryman.

The next evening, on the second day of the Lunar New Year, Ms. Xia awaited her husband’s call. It never came. Not until the following day did relatives tell her that her husband had been stabbed to death on a Flushing street corner in the early hours of Feb. 18 while returning home from dinner. He had been left to die on a blanket of snow.

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