March 12, 2009

"Satirical" racism against Asians

A blogger named Angry Asian Man recently posted the following:

kim's appointment at dartmouth inspires racist emailThis is really unfortunate, but I'm not surprised in the slightest....Soon after Dartmouth College announced that it had appointed Dr. Jim Yong Kim as the school's next president--the Ivy League's first Asian American president--the racist comments started flowing, including a widely-distributed email from the Generic Good Morning Message (GGMM), a student-written/edited "tongue-in-cheek" daily news update: E-mail on Kim stirs controversy. Here's the email in question:

Date: March 3, 2009 11:06:39 AM EST
To: GOOD-MORNING@LISTSERV.DARTMOUTH.EDU
Subject: Good Morning

This is the Generic Good Morning Message for March 3, 2009.

Yesterday came the announcement that President of the College James Wright will be replaced by Chinaman Kim Jim Yong. And a little bit of me died inside.

It was a complete supplies.

On July 1, yet another hard-working American's job will be taken by an immigrant willing to work in substandard conditions at near-subsistent wage, saving half his money and sending the rest home to his village in the form of traveler's checks. Unless "Jim Yong Kim" means "I love Freedom" in Chinese, I don't want anything to do with him. Dartmouth is America, not Panda Garden Rice Village Restaurant.

Y'all get ready for an Asianification under the guise of diversity under the actual Malaysian-invasion leadership instituted under the guise of diversity. It's a slippery slope we are on. I for one want Democracy and apple pie, not Charlie Chan and the Curse of the Dragon Queen. I know I sure as shit won't ever be eating my Hop dubs bubs with chopsticks. I like to use my own two American hands.

The author of the original e-mail apologized for "inappropriate" and "insensitive" comments in an e-mail to the GGMM listserv on Tuesday, saying that the comments were intended to be satirical.
I learned about this on the Racialicious blog, where a lively discussion of this e-mail ensued:

Open Thread:  Of Racism, “Satire,” and Humor

Everyone seemed to agree: You can't make a bunch of racist statements and then claim it was a "satire." Not legitimately, anyway.

These postings are relevant here because the same thing happens in the Native American field. For instance:

Indian Casino in Family Guy
OutKast dances in fringed, feathered outfits at Grammys
South Park:  "Red Man's Greed"

Anyway, read the Racialicious thread for the comments on the subject, including mine. I did my own satire of the Dartmouth situation to show it could be done. It was a real laff riot, if I do say so myself.

Below:  More racism against Asians--from Dr. Seuss in World War II.

2 comments:

  1. "It was a complete supplies."

    What is it with racists and their bad grammar?
    I hope the person who had the audacity to post that gets what's coming to them, so to speak, from the college.

    ReplyDelete
  2. That isn't bad grammar, it's a racist "joke." It's supposed to be the Asian version of "It was a complete surprise."

    The person who sent this e-mail quickly posted an abject apology. I'm not sure he'll be punished for an act that was offensive but not criminal.

    ReplyDelete

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