Asian Majority

This is ridiculous portrayal of a Chinese person. I don’t even know where to start about the actress that agreed to do this. I try to withhold judgment, but this is a job no Asian should accept. I’m not sure what the situation is there…

Regardless, the real perpetrator is Pete Hoekstra who approved this ad.

This ad shows a person riding through rice fields on a bike and stopping to speak some really bad broken English. It’s not even the kind of broken English that makes any sense. Her words are perfect and without accent, but she just skips words and sounds stupid. You go all the way racist, and she would at least have some sort of accent with her English words.

Regardless, most people don’t even know what it’s really like in China. This rice paddy, riding bikes crap is really offensive. Are there parts of China that are still like that? Yes, but there are parts of America that some may consider “backwards” as well.

The best part is always looking at comments left by articles. It’s amazing where you get these comments of “I don’t see why it’s racist…and I’m Asian!” In many cases, these are brain-washed by the media Asians. Then there are the people of other races that don’t understand it at all…but in many cases these people have never felt racism. Not the “they don’t think I can dance because I’m white” racism but real racism where you feel not accepted in the country you were born and grew up in.

Enough for now. On a positive note, Jeremy Lin shattering stereotypes by playing some great basketball with the Knicks!

Huffington Post article

The rumor mill has it that Jeremy Lin will be starting in tonight’s game. Good luck Jeremy! There are high expectations so hopefully he can just settle in and become a solid contributor at the least.

In case you missed his last breakout outing, here are the highlights:

Jeremy Lin had a huge game Saturday Night against the NJ Nets helping lift them to victory off the bench. Will he start seeing a lot more playing time? Give him the playing time. If he can deliver the numbers, let him do his thing.

25 points, 7 assists, 5 rebounds, and 2 steals.

See highlights here:

ESPN clip
NBA.com clip

Article:
New York Times

There has been the resurfacing issue of Asian-Americans not being treated fairly. With these articles, I always find it interesting how non-Asians try to actually defend that people should just suck it up or that other minorities are treated poorly too. Yet, many just can’t relate since they have not felt the brunt of that burden.

I think a recent example is the top 10 report by Steven Colbert: racist video.

I’m disappointed the Steven has a Ching Chong Ding Dong character. Again, if he tried to impersonate Africans, I think the outrage would be much greater. And yet, the general US population lets the Asian character slide.

Just listen to how hard the people in the audience laugh and clapping when either Rush’s or Colbert’s character make fun of Chinese by trying to imitate the language. Now listen again to the audience when Rush imitates his version of “African American”. Much more silent. The right answer? Outrage for both. It’s not entertainment for one and outrage for another.

Bill Hing writes an excellent post about the recent suicide of Private Danny Chen and other atrocities throughout US history in this article here: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bill-ong-hing/ching-chong-chinaman-the-_b_1176564.html

After spending a few months living in China, I know that many of the stereotypes that Americans think of the country are not true. Even as one who prides myself on being as understanding as possible, it is impossible to know what to expect until you get there. I stayed mainly in major cities, so that in itself is exposing myself only to a sub-culture within China as you would expect if you only went to major cities in the US but none of the small towns.

Anyhow, there is a lot more order than I remembered yet a lot more chaos too. There are a lot more liberties there which is probably due to not having the same sort of litigious society. You want to jump on the ice on a lake at a tourist location? The guard didn’t stop people even with the signs that forbade it. You fall through the ice? Well, you’ve been warned. Don’t think you can sue for your own actions.

You want to drive your scooter on the sidewalk? No rules against that. But, on the highest level of expression, it does get trickier. Yet, day to day people are actually very nice people, but the power holders are the ones who are limiting what can and can not be shown and said as seen in this article.

There is a breakout hit TV show in China called “If You Are the One” which is a sort of dating show which is considered racy by standards of Chinese TV. Note that I say Chinese TV and not Chinese culture. In many ways, US is a lot more repressed except for in the media. One is not necessarily better than the other, but we are not as different as people would have you believe.

At the end of the day, I see that change is coming. As Americans, we believe it should just happen immediately and quickly, but given the nature of the number of people, how people have grown up, the need for a smooth transition, I don’t think a country like China can do that without a phased approach. I think that is what we are seeing.

Now there still may be some things the government does that are not ideal, but change is coming. Change is happening. I really hope some of the more negative practices disappear as well.

Article about If You are the One: NYT Article

Not much to say here but wanted to share an article about Jeremy Lin in the New York Times. The only comment is that I can only imagine the pressure he must get being one of the few Asian Americans to make it to the NBA…one of the few Harvard grads to make it to the NBA. It’s good, and it’s bad. He definitely gains a lot of media attention because of it, but hopefully it will not distract him from developing his game to play well and be a solid contributor to the NBA. Good luck Jeremy!

Note that there is a list of other Asian-American NBA players throughout the history in this article.

NYT Article

What a turbulent year so far for Jeremy Lin. After waiting a while for the NBA season to start up, Jeremy is cut by the Golden State Warriors on the first day of training camp in order to make room for Charles Jenkins. Fans worried that Jeremy may not find another team.

BUT…Jeremy was quickly picked up by the Houston Rockets. Many in Houston rejoiced until…Rockets released him on Christmas Eve right before the start of the season to make room for veteran Samuel Dalembert.

BUT…the New York Knicks picked up Jeremy Lin shortly after that! Wow! What a dizzying array of events for Jeremy. All I can say is keep your head in the game and keep playing hard. Coincidentally, he joins in time to play against his former Golden State Warriors. Now whether or not he will get playing time depends on the other two guards Toney Douglas and Michael Bibby.

I’m hoping that Jeremy finds some time to shine and earn some more playing time. Congrats on staying in the NBA!

In an area that I thought would take a long time to penetrate, Asian-Americans are making big strides. There has been more and more participation by voters along with a record number of elected and appointed officials. Another surprising tidbit is that Asian Americans are the fastest growing minority population. Of course when you are working with a smaller base, your percentages increase much quicker.

Let’s keep providing positive role models, changing stereotypes, and be heard!

Article here

At least 3/4 of an applause to Chick-Fil-A for firing an employee who used derogatory terms when doling out receipts to Asians at the US Irvine location. Two customers were provided receipts with Ching and Chong as the names and not even asked their real names. There are a few interesting things to note about the article.

The first is the reaction of the customers who were offended. I applaud them for not being passive and actually calling attention to this issue to the manager. Sometimes I wonder though whether being irate and loud are more effective though in this case they got their point across and taken seriously.

Shifting focus, maybe I’m reading way too much into the reaction, but Chick-Fil-A seems to excuse the behavior as stupid, young-person behavior. I do applaud the decision to fire the person, but there does seem to be some downplay of the offense in their wording. I always try to imagine if this had happened to an African American whether reactions and wording would be exactly the same. I generally find that it’s more of an offense to be racist to African Americans than to Asians in this country. They should both be equally unacceptable.

Full article here: Chick-Fil-A Racism

For those who have been following, we are big fans of Harry Shum, Jr, and the positive role model he provides in the huge hit show Glee. After not much of a story line since the whole conflict with his father surfaced, we were happy to see that it was finally revisited. This gave him some more screen time and some singing lines as well. It would have been nice if they allowed him to flex his dance muscles more though it’s tough when he’s part of a bigger number to get a lot of solo dance time.

In the end though, the story line was dissatisfying unfortunately. Rather than stretching it out a bit and developing the story more as they have with other characters. Yet this one ends very abruptly with the father turning around 180 with little struggle or explanation. So, although grateful for the story line, it would have been nice to have more attention on it. It was more of a “let’s get this story over with so we can focus on others.”

On that front though, I must say that aside from the “positive” stereotype that Asians are smart and good at math, people should start thinking that Asians are great dancers as well. When you look at other shows such as America’s Best Dance Crew, a lot of the champions have been all Asian or have Asians on the crew.

This got us thinking about what other “positive” stereotypes there are. Here is a partial list:
- Smart
- Great dancers
- Successful
- Great with cars (?…the fast and furious types are considered cool by many)
- Good at playing pool
- Good at poker

Maybe others? Sorry if this last list annoys people, but I’ll take some positive stereotyping to get off the negative first. It is of course best to have accurate presentation. One step at a time.