The Brett Kimberlin Saga:

Follow this link to my BLOCKBUSTER STORY of how Brett Kimberlin, a convicted terrorist and perjurer, attempted to frame me for a crime, and then got me arrested for blogging when I exposed that misconduct to the world. That sounds like an incredible claim, but I provide primary documents and video evidence proving that he did this. And if you are moved by this story to provide a little help to myself and other victims of Mr. Kimberlin’s intimidation, such as Robert Stacy McCain, you can donate at the PayPal buttons on the right. And I thank everyone who has done so, and will do so.

Tuesday, February 28, 2012

Christina H. Vents on Anti-Asian American Racism

This Cracked article isn’t very funny, but I think for the most part it is pretty insightful: 4 Things the Jeremy Lin Story Reveals About Modern Racism.  Actually I think the title is pretty misleading.  It is really pretty focused on anti-Asian American racism, and I don’t think most of it is highlighted by the Lin story, but it’s still an interesting perspective from someone who grew up facing this crap.

Here’s one of my favorite paragraphs from it:

[I]f someone called me a "gook," for example, my immediate gut reaction, before even thinking "racism," would be "THAT'S NOT EVEN THE RIGHT RACE." I know that critiquing the accuracy of a racist joke seems sort of like criticizing the construction quality of a cross being burned on someone's lawn, but in a weird way, someone not even being informed enough about you to use the right slur is a sting in its own right.

You want to annoy a Chinese-American? Make some sushi jokes, or kimchi jokes, or maybe even some sweet and sour pork jokes. Apparently not a lot of people know this, but there's a number of dishes that Chinese people really don't eat a lot of, and they're mainly for appeasing the mostly white clientele of many Chinese restaurants. Sweet and sour pork is one of them.

If you want to do a "This is what Chinese people be like" joke, you probably want to talk about how they can't get enough of the tapioca tea or something. That'll hit a little closer to home.

There is some nits to pick.  For instance in modern taxonomy, the Vietnamese are not a separate race from other Asians, but only a separate ethnicity—although it is worth noting that about a hundred years ago, what we call ethnicities they called “races.”  So they believed there was a “French” race, an “English” race and so on.

And talking about the piece as a whole one of the big things she leaves out is the “perpetual foreigner” stereotype, that somehow Asian-Americans, however long they live in America, are assumed to be FOB (Fresh Off the Boat).  And it’s a really big oversight in her article.  For instance, she talks about how sentiment against Asian countries often bleeds into sentiment against Asian Americans.  Which is obviously true, but you can’t really convince people to stop disliking China or something like that.  I mean it is a dictatorship after all, so while this is really pretty clumsy...


…you can’t exactly take criticism of China off the table.  What really has to be done is an uncoupling in our minds between an American and their “mother country.”  I mean I am almost 50% German, and none of my family spent a day in an internment camp.  If memory serves a few Germans and Italians were rounded up, but it was extremely selective, based on things like individualized suspicion and evidence.  You know as opposed to our policy with the Japanese, which was to say “frak it” and round up every man, woman and child.  With Germans and Italians it was generally assumed that they had broken ties with the “mother country” that indeed now America was their “mother country.”  On the other hand, it was assumed that Japanese Americans were still ready to go all kamikaze for their Emperor-God.

And it leads to strange results.  To talk about another group that is unfairly maligned as perpetual foreigners once I was in an airport talking to an acquaintance of mine and she mentioned off-handedly that her family came to America relatively recently from “Persia.”  Well, I am not a fan of B.S. even when I sympathize with the reasons, so the exchange was something like this:

“You mean Iran, right?” I said.

“Yes,” she said, probably a little nervous what I would say next.  (She didn’t know me that well.)

“It’s sad that Iranian Americans feel like it is necessary to do that,” I said, “I mean the fact your family left the country suggests that ya’ll weren’t fans of the way things were being run over there.  We thought it was great when a Russian defected during the Soviet era, or when a Cuban escapes that country today, but somehow the people fleeing Iran are still under suspicion.  For my money, I tend to think recent immigrants to the United States are the most patriotic because they know what they are missing.  That goes double if they are fleeing an oppressive regime.”

So the solution isn’t to stop denouncing China, North Korea, or even Iran, but to combat the thinking in too many people that assumes these kinds of ethnic groups have more loyalty to a foreign country than America--even when they are apparently fleeing that country's oppression.

My other nitpick is that she seemed to condemn the famous “Chink in the Armor” headline, when I think the evidence that it was meant in a racist way is kind of thin and the parties deserve the benefit of the doubt.  But even with all those critiques, I think it is an excellent piece.

Now some conservatives really don’t like to talk about racism.  That feeling has increased, not decreased in the last few years, and I get the reason why.  These days it is all about using it as a weapon.  So you get Keith Olbermann claiming the Tea Party is racist because he looks at a crowd of multi-ethnic Tea Partiers and concludes that everyone is white and because of their insufficient pigment, they must be racists (which is actually a pretty racist thing to say, on several levels).  We get to the point where even the word “break” is claimed to be a racist term.  And then there is the almost certainly fabricated claim that a Tea Partier spat on Congressman Cleaver and called him a racist term (we know he wasn’t spat on, we can only assume that he is lying about the other part as well).  These are not sincere attempts to ferret out racism, but to demonize people who have genuine and sincere disagreements about policy as bigots.  So I think we can understand why conservatives are sick to death of hearing of it.

But that is only a proper reason to ignore it when the charge of racism is used as a weapon to browbeat everyone into agreeing to policies that we wouldn’t otherwise accept.  But it’s not a reason to ignore the problem of racism, when it is really there.  We shouldn’t say it is okay to use bigoted terms toward Jeremy Lin just because someone else has been abusing the concept.

Besides Anti-Asian-American racism can be downright useful.  Like remember how Olbermann accused the Tea Party of racism?  Well, consider this.  Of course, it shouldn’t shock us that Olbermann would say something that smacks of racism in relation to Michelle Malkin, but it does put things into relief.  As does some of her hate mail from so-called liberals.  (And I have pointed out before, there is more than a little bit of sexual wish fulfillment in their hate.)  I can't tell you how many times I have seem smug, self-satisfied liberals who suddenly break out into the ugliest stereotyping of Asian Americans.  Its illuminating.

But the more important thing is that it is just plain wrong.  As I say to friends and coworkers, it pisses me off to see it.  And the misuse of claims of racism and racial discrimination shouldn’t blind us to that fact.

But then again I warned liberals for years that crying wolf on racism would have the effect of harming genuine claims of racism and racial discrimination.  So to a certain extent this is the chickens coming home to roost.

---------------------------------------

Follow me at Twitter @aaronworthing, mostly for snark and site updates.  And you can purchase my book (or borrow it for free if you have Amazon Prime), Archangel: A Novel of Alternate, Recent History here.  And you can read a little more about my novel, here.

6 comments:

  1. >> So the solution isn’t to stop denouncing China, North Korea, or even Iran, but to combat the thinking in too many people that assumes these kinds of ethnic groups have more loyalty to a foreign country than America--even when they are apparently fleeing that country's oppression.

    Too bad that argument didn't fly with the tea partiers and their ilk when it came to the Ground Zero mosque

    *************

    Look, the right has a racism problem, and it is a real problem, not a perceived one. Keith Olbermann may be engaging in hyperbole (clearly, literally "everyone" in the Tea Party isn't racist), but he does hit upon an undeniable racially-tinged sentiment that possesses many on the right.

    To be sure, the racism at issue isn't the racism of decades ago, complete with epithets and white hoods and burning crosses. It's quite easy for racists to avoid appearing that way.

    But Tea Partiers DO operate on a nexus of class and race, and there are undercurrents of racism everywhere, most notably in birtherism with its not-so-subtle message that Obama isn't one of "us" (He's not! He's a Kenyan!)

    It's not a huge surprise that among whites who approve of the Tea Party, their views toward blacks is -- shall we say -- more harsh (PDF) than whites who oppose the tea party or even those who are middle of the road.

    Is that "racism" (or, as some call it, "the new racism")? I guess one can quibble about semantics. But clearly, many on the right are out of the mainstream when it comes to fundamental beliefs about race, and out of the mainstream on the subject of attitudes toward minorities, and that cannot be ignored.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Ken

    > Too bad that argument didn't fly with the tea partiers and their ilk when it came to the Ground Zero mosque

    I am sure some people stereotyped the whole thing, but when it was led by an imam who openly advocated for Islamic theocracy and wanted to rate nations for their compliance with Sharia… http://allergic2bull.blogspot.com/2010/08/about-that-moderate-ground-zero-imam.html

    > Keith Olbermann may be engaging in hyperbole (clearly, literally "everyone" in the Tea Party isn't racist),

    Was it hyperbole when he looked on a multi-ethnic tea party crowd and saw only white people? Or to argue literally that you can judge a group’s racism by the color of their skin?

    Its funny how you walk right past those blatant examples of racism, to hallucinate one about the right or the tea party in 5… 4… 3… 2… 1…

    > But Tea Partiers DO operate on a nexus of class and race, and there are undercurrents of racism everywhere, most notably in birtherism with its not-so-subtle message that Obama isn't one of "us" (He's not! He's a Kenyan!)

    And thus you illustrate my point. Has it ever occurred to you to look for a non-racial reason for this. Birtherism has always been, imho, about the hope of finding a way to save us from the disaster of the Obama presidency, nothing more.

    Also your theory that this is about prejudice is kind of undermined by the fact that once he released that long-form birth certificate, birtherism pretty much died. It turns out that all he actually had to do was actually, you know, present the evidence.

    And please, do not bother to cite lame faux scientific study #20123. These things are always sucky examples of science that have no purpose but to give guys like you a talking point. And indeed your study doesn't prove that tea partiers are racist, just that they believe that racism is less of a factor than you do and indeed might be contaminated by the very racial brow-beating I mentioned in the post. They might be downplaying the effect of race because they are sick of hearing that opposing socialized medicine is racism or something.

    ReplyDelete
  3. >>...when it was led by an imam who openly advocated for Islamic theocracy and wanted to rate nations for their compliance with Sharia

    Yeah, well, you have to extrapolate and assume he was calling for an Islamic theocracy HERE. He wasn't; in fact, he specifically said he wasn't.

    >> Was it hyperbole when he looked on a multi-ethnic tea party crowd and saw only white people? Or to argue literally that you can judge a group’s racism by the color of their skin?

    I don't know what Keith Olbermann actually said, but it is undeniable that the tea-party racial makeup did not correspond to the national demographic. And that does MEAN something.

    >> Birtherism has always been, imho, about the hope of finding a way to save us from the disaster of the Obama presidency, nothing more.

    Well, the opposition to ANY president always tries to find a way to save the country from the "disaster" of the one holding office. But birtherism is (yes, present tense -- it's still around) a laughable attempt to carry on with the meme, or wishful thought, that the president isn't actually the president.

    >> And indeed your study doesn't prove that tea partiers are racist, just that they believe that racism is less of a factor than you do and indeed might be contaminated by the very racial brow-beating I mentioned in the post...

    Apparently, you didn't read the study that closely. (For starters, it wasn't a study about attitudes towards racism, but attitudes toward race). But you can't evade what it says, or some of the more overt examples of racism that, while not necessarily attaching to EVERY SINGLE MEMBER of the tea party, tend to permeate the tea party generally.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Ken

    > Yeah, well, you have to extrapolate and assume he was calling for an Islamic theocracy HERE

    Um, isn’t it bad enough to advocate for it ANYWHERE? Or are you under the impression that Iranians don’t deserve democracy? Iran is not equal to America, hence why it is valid to criticize Iran, but all persons are born equal with an equal right to freedom and democracy, even if they aren’t born here.

    > I don't know what Keith Olbermann actually said

    Then get off your butt and follow the links.

    > Well, the opposition to ANY president always tries to find a way to save the country from the "disaster" of the one holding office.

    Which only tends to prove my point.

    > Apparently, you didn't read the study that closely. (For starters, it wasn't a study about attitudes towards racism, but attitudes toward race)

    Actually, you need to. Read the questions. Its stuff like: “Generations of slavery and discrimination have created conditions that make it difficult for blacks to work their way out of the lower class.” That isn’t a question about race but about the effect of racial discrimination. On race it follows a similar course. You simply took their summary phrase as gospel, as opposed to looking at what the data actually shows.

    By the way, for bonus points I like how the study uses the dehumanizing term “blacks” instead of black people. It is as though in the authors’ minds a black person is literally nothing but a color, so it’s not even necessary to call them “black people.”

    But you can't evade what it says, or some of the more overt examples of racism that, while not necessarily attaching to EVERY SINGLE MEMBER of the tea party, tend to permeate the tea party generally.

    Actually, you can’t establish that ANY of them were actual tea party members. There were many documented examples of liberals putting up signs like that in an effort to defame the tea party. At the same time, Keith Olbermann and Chris Matthews DEFINITELY said racist things, and kept their jobs, but somehow that doesn’t reflect on the entire left.

    I won't say that there are no racist tea partiers. But i have seen no evidence that they are less likely to be a racist than, say, an MSNBC host.

    ReplyDelete
  5. >> Um, isn’t it bad enough to advocate for it [Islamic theocracy] ANYWHERE? Or are you under the impression that Iranians don’t deserve democracy?

    I'm under the impression that each country should be able to self-rule in whatever manner the majority of people see fit. I PERSONALLY wouldn't want to live under a theocracy (Islamic, Christian or any other stipe), but if the people of a nation choose otherwise, then what's wrong with that? Some of the religious sects that came to America in the 17th century wanted to start theocracies, too. Anyway, an imam merely advocating the idea doesn't make a threat to America.

    >> Then get off your butt and follow the links.

    I did. It just lead to another post here, and no link to what Olbermann *actually* said.

    >> By the way, for bonus points I like how the study uses the dehumanizing term “blacks” instead of black people. It is as though in the authors’ minds a black person is literally nothing but a color, so it’s not even necessary to call them “black people.”

    That's ridiculous. It's shorthand; the "people" is superfluous, because everyone understands what is being talked about. Your post talks about Germans and Italians and Japanese -- you don't talk about German PEOPLE and Italian PEOPLE and Japanese PEOPLE.

    >> There were many documented examples of liberals putting up signs like that in an effort to defame the tea party.

    Documented examples? Or just theorizing? Right, they're all plants.

    >> I won't say that there are no racist tea partiers. But i have seen no evidence that they are less likely to be a racist than, say, an MSNBC host.

    You have seen evidence, but you dismiss it out of hand, in part because you don't see colorblindness as the new racism.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Ken

    > I'm under the impression that each country should be able to self-rule in whatever manner the majority of people see fit.

    Ah, so you believe that non-democracy is okay so long as it is chosen democratically.

    You lack of logic makes my head hurt sometimes.

    By the way, how often does this election to determine whether there would be elections occur? Is it like a once-only thing where then from then on a royal family can rule indefinitely. Or is it more like once every 30 years?

    > Anyway, an imam merely advocating the idea doesn't make a threat to America.

    He doesn’t have to be a threat to America to make it reasonable to denounce him and his whole project.

    > I did. It just lead to another post here, and no link to what Olbermann *actually* said.

    First, Ken, the post was fisking him and thus quoting him repeatedly. And it had a link to a full transcript. You just got caught criticizing lazily again.

    > Documented examples? Or just theorizing? Right, they're all plants.

    Didn’t say they all were, but the burden is on you to prove they are really a part of it.

    > You have seen evidence, but you dismiss it out of hand, in part because you don't see colorblindness as the new racism.

    Right, so if you don’t pay attention to race, you are a raaaaaacist. And slavery is freedom, too.

    ReplyDelete