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you call yourself a chinaman?
Dec. 14th, 2006 08:50 amOkay -- I wanted a chance to check out this new posting interface, but I didn't think it would come about in such an annoying way.
I dunno how many of you watch The View (not that I would recommend it, as I loathe that show like poison), but I was horrified to discover through a link on an lj comm that Rosie O'Donnell made a godawful racist 'impression' of Chinese and I haven't seen news coverage on that AT ALL. I don't really know which part of that to be more disgusted with.
Casual, 'well-intended', meant-to-be-a-joke racism like this is what makes prejudice against Asians so hard to define/fight, because it's not as dramatic as police brutality or gay bashing. It's passed off as harmless or funny most of the time (Chinese drivers, anyone? Or how 'bout Indian call-centres?) because these aren't 'big' isses, they're not 'serious' enough to count as racism. Well. If you have enough people:
1) ask if you're going to have an arranged marriage
2) tell you how good your English is (despite it being your only language)
3) say "i bet your mom makes good curry" five minutes after meeting you (which she does, but that's beside the point) -- and my personal favourite,
4) try to explain to you what an archangel is (despite the fact that you WENT TO A CATHOLIC SCHOOL CALLED ST. GABRIEL'S)
-- then you eventually start to understand what racism means when you're part of the 'model minority'. I mean, dammit, I'm not saying that prejudice against us is *greater* than it is against people who are black, gay, Jewish or Latin; I'm just saying it's different. Michael Richards and Mel Gibson were publicly shamed, and rightly so -- why isn't that happening with Rosie? So far it's mostly a bunch of pissed-off Asians flooding her blog and being told they don't understand her sense of humour and what she did wasn't mockery of the Chinese language but awesome funny comedy and a Chinese 'accent'. Hey, I get that Chinese sounds funny sometimes; my friend Margaret did an impression once of the Mandarin-speaking kids who lived next to her that still makes me laugh to remember it. But Margaret is ethnically Chinese and can speak & understand Cantonese, so it's very, very different. From what I've read of her blog posts, Rosie doesn't understand that difference at *all*. Or care to.
Ugh. I feel sickened.
I dunno how many of you watch The View (not that I would recommend it, as I loathe that show like poison), but I was horrified to discover through a link on an lj comm that Rosie O'Donnell made a godawful racist 'impression' of Chinese and I haven't seen news coverage on that AT ALL. I don't really know which part of that to be more disgusted with.
Casual, 'well-intended', meant-to-be-a-joke racism like this is what makes prejudice against Asians so hard to define/fight, because it's not as dramatic as police brutality or gay bashing. It's passed off as harmless or funny most of the time (Chinese drivers, anyone? Or how 'bout Indian call-centres?) because these aren't 'big' isses, they're not 'serious' enough to count as racism. Well. If you have enough people:
1) ask if you're going to have an arranged marriage
2) tell you how good your English is (despite it being your only language)
3) say "i bet your mom makes good curry" five minutes after meeting you (which she does, but that's beside the point) -- and my personal favourite,
4) try to explain to you what an archangel is (despite the fact that you WENT TO A CATHOLIC SCHOOL CALLED ST. GABRIEL'S)
-- then you eventually start to understand what racism means when you're part of the 'model minority'. I mean, dammit, I'm not saying that prejudice against us is *greater* than it is against people who are black, gay, Jewish or Latin; I'm just saying it's different. Michael Richards and Mel Gibson were publicly shamed, and rightly so -- why isn't that happening with Rosie? So far it's mostly a bunch of pissed-off Asians flooding her blog and being told they don't understand her sense of humour and what she did wasn't mockery of the Chinese language but awesome funny comedy and a Chinese 'accent'. Hey, I get that Chinese sounds funny sometimes; my friend Margaret did an impression once of the Mandarin-speaking kids who lived next to her that still makes me laugh to remember it. But Margaret is ethnically Chinese and can speak & understand Cantonese, so it's very, very different. From what I've read of her blog posts, Rosie doesn't understand that difference at *all*. Or care to.
Ugh. I feel sickened.
