Momentarily setting aside our overwhelming obsession with all things healthcare, let’s take a quick second to discuss the hot reform topic of yesteryear: immigration. President Obama may have put this issue on the backburner for now, but the Asian American Pacific Legal Center, along with dozens of other API organizations, are pressing the president to prioritize immigration reform with a week of action (August 17-22) designed to publicize the ways in which the “broken” immigration system is affecting API immigrants and their families. While immigration reform is widely (and understandably) regarded as Latina/o issue, this week of action reminds us how much our communities have at stake, as well. Not only do Asian-born immigrants make up more than a quarter of all immigrants in the US, Filipinos are the largest immigrant group in the US after Mexican immigrants (even in spite of the average 22-year wait for a visa).
In a perfect world, though, a 22-year wait for the sake of family reunification and the pursuit of the American dream wouldn’t land you in a place where…
But there is some good news for those who — even in spite of the above-mentioned bullshit — decide to migrate to our star-spangled shores in the hopes of joining our high-earning ranks: Thanks to Vonage, we now have free international calling!
Oh, and contrary to Ken Jeong’s sell-out example and an emerging generation of plastic people, there are still some (very hot) Asian men out there who have managed to make it big time without going under the knife or transforming themselves into a tired old steretype — check out this Tribute to the Top 10 Asian Sportsmen Around Today. Whether you stay or go, these cosmopolitan, Asian-born athletes are just a little reminder of what’s a-waitin’ back home!
Originally published at Hyphen on May 8, 2009, and cross-posted at Racialicious on May 18, 2009.
The New York Times commemorated President Obama’s 100th day in office last week with some optimistic reportage of race relations in the United States. Citing a recent New York Times / CBS News poll, the article asserted that Obama is positively influencing public perception of race relations, stating that
“Two-thirds of Americans now say race relations are generally good, and the percentage of blacks who say so has doubled since last July….”
If only the public’s perception of “progress” were motivated by actual progress. Even a cursory examination of the state of race relations in the US will reveal that we are still a very racially divided nation, in some ways even more so than before Obama’s election. The Southern Poverty Law Center, for example, just released a report which found that the number of hate groups in the U.S. has increased by more than 50 percent since 2000, and by 5 percent since last year. SPLC attributes the increase, in part, to growing anti-immigrant sentiment — a key point to remember, as Obama’s rise seems to have us thinking about race relations exclusively in black and white.
It wasn’t so very long ago that we were all too aware of the racism-infused anti-immigration sentiment that surrounded last year’s elections and talks of immigration reform. Back in those days, the Pew Hispanic Center found that half of Latinos believed their situations were worse than they had been a year before — and this year, the situation only seems to have worsened. Polls commissioned by New American Media now find that 82 percent of Latinas report that discrimination is a major problem for their families. And let’s not forget Committee of 100’s recent national survey, which found that Asian Americans still experience considerable discrimination.
And, contrary to apparent popular opinion and the cheery anecdotes featured by the New York Times, the situations of blacks haven’t improved markedly either, as Matthew Yglesias of ThinkProgress points out in his own analysis of the New York Times / CBS news poll results:
I’m surprised that as many as forty-four percent of blacks say that both races have equal opportunity. I think the evidence is unambiguously clear that they do not. African-American children have parents with lower levels of income and education. Their families, even when they have above-average incomes, tend to have less wealth than white families. And even controlling for parental income and educational attainment, black kids do worse in schools than white kids. Then beyond all that, there’s clear evidence of discrimination against job applicants with “black” names that tends to suggest a broader pattern of employment discrimination. There are inequities in the criminal justice system both in terms of more punishment being meted out to black offenders, and the police and the courts doing less to protect black victims.
Evidently, race relations haven’t improved quite as much as people want to believe. Clearly, in some situations, race relations have even deteriorated further. So what gives? Perhaps the (apparently unfounded) optimism uncovered by the poll has less to do with respondents’ personal observations of progress than it does with the overwhelming significance they placed on Obama’s election. Certainly the election of the first black/bi-racial U.S. president is groundbreaking — and many, I’m sure, hoped that the very possibility of his election signified a momentous shift in the way Americans think about race. But the misguidedly belief that everything is automatically better now has unfortunate repercussions.
What begins as a benign belief that things have changed for the better can quickly turn into the obstinate conviction that racism is behind us and need not be addressed any longer. I can’t count how many times, since Obama’s election, I’ve been advised to take my race relations commentary down a notch because, in post-race America, we are too “above race” to necessitate continued critical discourse on the matter. My own sister called me a racist recently for addressing race issues on the Hyphen blog because, according to her, doing so is an affront to everything that Obama has built for us. Such sentiments are shockingly pervasive, I’ve found — so much so, that I’ve taken to calling people who harbor them “(above-)racists” — people who think that race is so far beneath them that they can’t help but actually be racist. They are best known for their belief that Obama’s election means either 1) racism no longer exists or 2) white racism no longer exists and/or 3) pointing out racial differences (whether casually or critically) is, itself racist. Not exactly what Obama had in mind, I think, when he said this:
“…the path to a more perfect union means acknowledging that what ails the African-American community does not just exist in the minds of black people; that the legacy of discrimination — and current incidents of discrimination, while less overt than in the past — are real and must be addressed, not just with words, but with deeds…”
Clearly even Obama doesn’t think racism is behind us, and the rest of us would do well to get that straight too. We need to recognize that one man’s rise — however monumental — doesn’t in and of itself change the structural inequalities that have long defined and limited the experiences of people of color. Believing otherwise reduces Obama to a token — a misleading indicator of illusory social change — rather than correctly recognizing him as an important step forward on a (still) long journey towards racial equality.
Last week I received a scathing e-mail from my older half-sister, who alleged that my recent contributions to Hyphen have been nothing but “anti-white rhetoric” and that I, myself, am a racist. Against whites.
I knew instinctively that her comments didn’t have much to do with my actual writing, and probably more to do with something that she’s got going on in her own life, but I was shocked and hurt enough by her vitriolic remarks to re-read everything I’ve ever written for Hyphen, searching for any trace of prejudice, or semblance of anti-white sentiment (in spite of my confidence that the blog editors at Hyphen would never publish things of that nature).
What I found were familiar posts that questioned the “reverse racism” myth (that favorite fall-back of affirmative action opponents), criticized the white male fetishization of Asian women, and reproved another (white) writer’s admitted attempts to “edge out” her bi-racial daughter’s non-white heritage. None of that smacked of racism, to me; in fact, I regard my writing (and myself) as staunchly anti-racist, and my contributions to Hyphen evince that.
The real problem, I know, isn’t *what* i wrote…but, rather, the fact that I choose to write critically about race issues at all.
My sister is white; I am not. We did not grow up together. While she has spent the majority of her life in Alabama and Georgia, I have spent mine in the Philippines and Arizona. While she grew up in an all-white household, I grew up in a mixed-race household in mixed-race communities. Despite this, and our (at times) close friendship, we have never once spoken about issues of race — not even in the context of our own large, disjointed, multi-racial family.
I guess it just never came up.
And I can appreciate that, after years of never mentioning race between us, her discovery that I actually do have many mixed, complicated, and public thoughts on the topic must have come as a surprise. Perhaps she feels that my seemingly new criticisms of white hegemony group her unfairly - and according to race – into one homogeneous group, dismissive of her role as my sister, and her individual views on race relations.
While I can understand where she may be coming from, I’m still troubled by what I see as the crux of this issue: her intense disapproval of my generalization of “whites.” If I had said “some whites” or left “white” out of it altogether (despite the fact that I am discussing white hegemony), this would be a non-issue — she could go on believing that we are color-less, color-blind sisters whose relationship is uncomplicated by legacies of racism and differently-privileged positions in an inequitable society.
I’ve been asked on three separate occasions by three separate white people: “Can we just be friends (or lovers) without you being black and me being white?”
…I have always been dumbfounded and amused by the fact that the very people responsible for the creation of racial categories are the very people who can’t seem to handle racial categories anymore. [...] Having to deal with the fact that the brown and black world sees them as white people, rather than just people (as whiteness is supposed to be seen as the norm of humanity), is seemingly too much for white people to handle. The reality of their race creates a whole existential crisis in white folks.
The very recognition of race is a racist act, according to my sister. That’s asinine, but I get that about her. I just wish that she were as willing or capable of understanding my perspective, which is this:
My thoughts on race, racism, white hegemony, power and privilege, etc. aren’t new, despite my selective silence on the topic. They are the product of a lifetime spent as a PoC, as a mestiza, as a woman, and as a migrant.
What is relatively new, however, is 1) my level of comfort publicly articulating these views, 2) my understanding that doing so is absolutely necessary for my own contextualization, happiness, and sense of personal identity, and 3) my realization that the articulation of these views is potentially valuable to others like me, as well as relevant to ongoing discourse on race relations.
It took me a long time for me to be comfortable with my racial/cultural identities enough to begin thinking about them in a critical way, and begin really questioning my place in the world, and my mother’s, and my father’s…it took me a long time to stop regarding my mother and her heritage as inferior to my father’s (as my father did), and to stop regarding myself as a somehow “less than” my white peers (as my mother did). I’m 25 and only now beginning to figure out how to balance these seemingly oppositional identities, and learn how to be critical of the racism that infused my family household, while still loving and appreciating and respecting BOTH of my parents, and all of my siblings, regardless of their race and tacitly racist sentiments.
I have never felt so complete and comfortable with my ethnic/cultural identity as I have this past year or so that I’ve begun my reconnecting with my Filipino heritage. I’m finally able to contextualize myself, place myself here in the U.S. as well as elsewhere, as an American, a mestiza, a person of Filipino descent and multiple cultures. Despite some of the more hurtful things my sister states in her email, I don’t deny my white heritage, nor do I resent my white father. He, and his, are half of me. That includes the good and the bad stuff. Thinking critically about the power and racial dynamics within my childhood household, which were primarily defined and reinforced by my father, isn’t a crime against his name, but a reclamation of my own.
Why is this empowering process an affront to my white family? Certainly, it’s threatening; the recognition of and appreciation for my Filipino heritage is indivisible from the recognition of prejudice and racism that originally characterized that heritage as nothing more than “non-white.” …And this recognition inevitably brings to light my (both white and brown) family’s complicity in upholding gross racial hierarchies.
For my entire childhood, I was conditioned to believe that white was right, and brown was shameful and inferior. I’m so disappointed, and deeply hurt, that as an adult who has come a long way in developing critical race consciousness, I’m being told once again (albeit far more indirectly) that in order to be part of the family, I have to choose between being a whole person, and erasing one side of myself. That is, embracing my bi-racial identity with all of the complicated, uncomfortable strappings, or shutting up and pretending like race doesn’t exist.
Earlier this week, Racialicious guest blogger Thea Lim deconstructed a controversial NYT blog post which details a white woman’s experiences and concerns as she raises her mixed-race child. The author (and white woman in question), Nicole Sprinkle, very honestly describes her desire to incorporate her husband’s Colombian heritage into her daughter’s upbringing while prioritizing and carefully cultivating her white identity:
“Yes, she would learn Spanish and English, but to emphasize her Latina side, I felt, was somehow a disservice. Frankly, I didn’t want her to lose any of the privileges of being white. [...] I just wanted the eyelashes, and cheekbones, and that lyrical Spanish when appropriate. I wanted the good stuff, and from both sides.”
…It gets worse. Read the whole article to get the full effect. Lim responds somewhat emotionally to Sprinkle’s unabashed prejudice. As a mixed-race person myself, who was raised to value my (father’s) whiteness above my (mother’s) Filipina heritage, my initial reaction to the article left me too appalled to be articulate, so I asked another mixed-race friend of mine to break it down. She sent me the following thoughtful analysis:
[Sprinkle] lacks any kind of sincere introspection. Basically, she has fallen in love with a man who is Colombian but her main goal is to avoid having to integrate her self identity in a way that might threaten her white privilege…In trying to shield her daughter from identification with a part of the young girl’s self, she is sending a pretty clear message about what is important, valued/valuable. There is a distinct racial hierarchy being taught. A lack of race analysis also is problematic because, like it or not, as the mother and wife of people of color, she is a part of a multiracial community. She scrambles to use her money and whiteness — assets without intrinsic value — to protect her daughter from her own culture and affirmative race consciousness — assets that do have intrinsic value.
[Thanks, Megan!]
Many who have commented on Sprinkle’s narrative, including Lim and my friend Megan, focus on the potential effects of such prejudice on the child, but as I was reading the article, I kept thinking about how Sprinkle’s husband fit into the equation. She tells us that he is a Colombian immigrant who seems to have some classed ideas about the Spanish language, but apart from that we don’t get to hear from him very much — and we never get to hear his perspective on her determination to raise their daughter as mostly-white with just a touch of the exotic.
I’m kind of fascinated by this, because it’s new to me. Though I grew up in a similar environment, it was my Filipina mother who tried to cultivate my whiteness (not my white father), in part because having an “Americanized” child served as status symbol for her. While I don’t agree with it, I suppose I do understand her compulsion. However, the concept of the white parent insisting on “edging out” the child’s non-white identity is almost too much for me to comprehend…almost too imperialist to be real.
I’ve always appreciated interracial relationships because I thought they were a real and meaningful illustration of our great multiethnic, multicultural society, but Sprinkle’s article has made me rethink that a bit. Specifically, I started wondering (dramatically and hypothetically): What happens if, in mass numbers, our white partners begin to “edge out” our cultural heritage(s) because they, like Sprinkle, recognize the benefit of privilege and find it more expedient to play into the system rather than challenge it (for the sake of the children, of course!)? And thus, what we used to define as “racism” becomes nothing more than “pragmatism.”
It puts me in mind of an article I read in the Washington Post recently which asserted that a recent decline in interracial marriages is due to a desire among the U.S.-born children of immigrants to marry people of the same ethnicity. The article suggests that, despite conventional wisdom, greater immigration generates a greater desire to partner with people who share a similar cultural heritage. It certainly makes sense, but after reading Sprinkle’s article, I can’t help but wonder if a prevalence of prejudicial attitudes like her’s might have something to do with our generation’s newfound preference for partners from our own (or similar) communities.
But I suppose Sprinkle’s ideas about race and privilege probably shouldn’t be that surprising to me (or any of us). After all, her approach to childrearing is perfectly consistent with our Melting Pot ideal, a metaphor which we’ve been squawking ad nauseum since Obama was elected. We just don’t seem to realize the truth of that metaphor: that a “melting pot” isn’t about diversity or inclusion but about homogeneity, about heterogeneous groups melting into the dominant culture rather than enriching it.
Likely you’ve already seen this gem from Mixed Company of Yale — but in case you haven’t: it’s a racialized parody of Beyonce’s “All the Single Ladies.” Here it is for your viewing pleasure:
I’ve been trying to make sense of how I feel about this video since it came out a couple of weeks ago…and am still torn between what little of it I find amusing and the rest of it, which I find tasteless and insulting (Seriously: Are there really any AsAms who think that “me love you long time” is anything other than an offensive, sexist, racist trope?).
The arguably racist/sexist overtones of the video are obvious and have been covered pretty widely by other blogs, so I won’t go into that here. Besides, I’m less interested in dissecting why/how the piece is racist or sexist than I am in why the video is (meant to be) funny…particularly to the women who created it. Are these women poking fun at racists/racism by performing every stereotype associated with Asian women, a la “hipster racism“? Or are they simply making fun of Asian women? And for whom are they ultimately performing?
Humor performed by people of color about people of color isn’t anything new, of course. Comedians of color — Carlos Mencia, Dave Chappelle, etc. — have made careers out of making race jokes, lampooning their various cultural heritages by drawing on stereotypes that seem edgy when coming from non-white mouths but which have ultimately been constructed by white society’s interpretation of non-white groups.
The same plays out, I’ve noticed, within groups of people who share similar cultural/ethnic heritages. Whenever I’m in a group of young Filipino-Americans, for example, not ten minutes passes without a tabo joke made or a FOB-ish accent attempted — much to the delight of others in the group who seemingly never tire of hearing the same jokes made, arguably at their expense, on a regular basis. I’m guilty of it too.
And it seems harmless enough. At best, in-house race/culture jokes actually do speak to our experiences and/or serve as a way to bond (albeit tastelessly and superficially) with people who understand how you grew up or what kind of home you live in. We do it in life, and comedians do it on television.
But the very prevalence and popularity of this kind of humor makes me wonder why so many AsAms have taken offense to this particular video, despite an unwavering appreciation of Margaret Cho’s often self-loathing race jokes. I suspect that the difference has to do with Cho’s accepted role as an “insider”; we tend to think that she’s speaking to us, rather than to non-AsAms about us (though the latter is probably more accurate). The women in this video, on the other hand, don’t specify their intended audience — and their affiliation with Yale, a mostly white university, definitely doesn’t grant them insider status. As a result, we are perhaps hyperaware of the hackneyed, eurocentric stereotypes which they
perform.
And, while the stereotypes definitely are hackneyed and eurocentric, the underlying issue here is deeper than a common recognition of blatant prejudice. The bottom line is: It doesn’t matter if those jokes come from the mouth of an insider or not, because ultimately those jokes weren’t conceived by one. Jokes that poke fun at “Engrish” are understandly (though not rightfully) funny to white people, for example, because they point out aspects of Asian culture(s) that are so
apparently different from mainstream white culture that they seem ridiculous by comparison…and people like to point out difference as much as they love to affirm their normativity.
On the other hand, people of color who make similar jokes (the women in this video, for example) are just regurgitating
the same old shit that white people have been saying about us for as long as they’ve cared to recognize our existence.
I don’t mean to imply that we second and third generation folk are simply the unwitting victims of our hegemonic society, or that all of the jokes we make at our expense are self-loathing. Rather, I am critical of a particular kind of humor, constructed by whites, and adopted by us. I suspect that our compulsion to make those kinds of jokes has more to do with our own desire to affirm our own normativity by laughing at difference. When we associate Beijing with dry cleaning or posit the tabo as laughable, we aren’t, after all, making fun of ourselves, are we? We’re making fun of our
parents and grandparents, and a country and culture that we don’t really understand, because we’ve never really been a part of it.
Our adherence to and perpetuation of stereotypes likes those in the video seem to say less about our comical cultural similarities than they do about our own lack of cultural awareness and identity. They aren’t an expression of our cultural heritage, but a statement about our disconnection from it. And there’s really nothing funny about that.
***
Here are the complete lyrics:
Mixed Company of Yale
“Single Asians”
All the single Asians
All the single Asians
All the single Asians
All the single Asians
All the single Asians
Now put your hands up
Library and CDB
Test comin’ up next week.
You dropped a flask,
And now I’ve gotta ask
If you’re enough to be in a lab with me.
I need this grade.
I’ve never been late,
Because I live my life for med school.
I do bio-chem
On the weekends
You ain’t hardcore enough for me.
Cause if you like me
Then you shoulda got an A on it.
Cause if you like me
Then you shoulda got an A on it,
An A-minus
Ain’t the same as an A is it?
Cause if you like me
Then you shoulda got an A on it.
[lots of Oh's]
Let’s make some noise
For all the boys
Who have yellow fever.
I’ll be Lucy Liu
Or Sailor Moon
A geisha just for you.
At the restaurant
I’ll taste your sauce
And you can slurp my sushi.
I like it raw,
So bring it on,
And me love you long time.
We from Beijing,
We dry cleaning,
And practice Viorin.
We visit Yale,
We bring peace there,
And take picture at the Beinecke.
I make the rice,
(She make it nice)
Cause I’m in charge of Dim Sum!!!
I make Chai Tea.
I do Tai Chi.
And bring honor to our family.
Ben Hwang over at 8Asians recently took issue with my post “Reverse Racism at Princeton…” because, according to himself, the South, and the Urban Dictionary, “reverse racism” is a misnomer, or non-existent, or something along those lines:
“Hyphen’s recent blog post about Princeton University’s “Reverse Racism” was amusing to me, especially since the terminology was used incorrectly — it’s not reverse racism, it’s just racism. (Especially ironic since I learned this after I moved to the South.)”
Far be it from me to contradict the teaching of “the South,” but I get the feeling that Ben doesn’t exactly get it. Then again, his sources included the third (not to be confused with the first or the second) definition of “racism” provided by dictionary.com, as well as some of the less articulate definitions of “reverse racism” posted at the Urban Dictionary, which he describes as his “reference for all things slang this side of Wednesday.”
While I do appreciate the obviously extensive research he conducted in an effort to understand the tricky concept of “reverse racism,” I think his analysis would have benefited a tiny a bit had he scrolled down the Google search results page a little further to discover either of the following links:
Tim Wise’s essay, “A Look at the Myth of Reverse Racism,” tackles this topic in language accessible enough for even regular readers of the Urban Dictionary to comprehend. (FYI, Tim Wise is a leading anti-racism activist and educator in the U.S.)
If he had, he might see that these essays, like both his post and mine, question the validity of the notion of “reverse racism.” Unlike Ben, however, we don’t take issue with the concept because we find it equivalent to “racism” — on the contrary.
“Reverse racism” is a term used to describe discriminatory acts performed by non-dominant groups towards the dominant group in a society. It’s highly charged because 1) it implies that dominant groups
can actually be victims of racism despite the institutional power they wield over all other groups and 2) it is a rallying cry for opponents of affirmative action.
Tim Wise cleverly illustrates Point 1 with an anecdote about a group of Native American students who tried very hard to be “racist” against whites:
Indian students at Northern Colorado University, fed up by the unwillingness of white school district administrators in Greeley to change the name and grotesque Indian caricature of the Eaton High School “Reds,” recently set out to flip the script on the common practice of mascot-oriented racism.
Thinking they would show white folks what it’s like to “be in their shoes” and experience the objectification of being a team icon, indigenous members of an intramural basketball team renamed themselves the “Fightin’ Whiteys,” and donned t-shirts with the team mascot: a 1950’s-style caricature of a suburban, middle class white guy, next to the phrase “every thang’s gonna be all white.”
Funny though the effort was, it has not only failed to make the point intended, but indeed has been met with laughter and even outright support by white folks. Rush Limbaugh actually advertised for the team’s t-shirts on his radio program, and whites from coast to coast have been requesting team gear, thinking it funny to be turned into a mascot, as opposed to demeaning.
Of course the difference is that it’s tough to negatively objectify a group whose power and position allows them to define the meaning of another group’s attempts at humor: in this case the attempt by Indians to teach them a lesson. It’s tough to school the headmaster, in other words.
Objectification works against the disempowered because they are disempowered. The process doesn’t work in reverse, or at least, making it work is a lot tougher than one might think.
Without the power to define another group’s reality, Indian activists are simply incapable of turning the tables by way of well-placed humor.
[emphasis mine]
As for Point 2, “reverse racism” and affirmative action, I can put it no better than Stanley Fish:
“At this point someone will always say, “But two wrongs don’t make a right; if it was wrong to treat blacks unfairly, it is wrong to give blacks preference and thereby treat whites unfairly.” This objection is just another version of the forgetting and rewriting of history. The work is done by the adverb “unfairly,” which suggests two more or less equal parties, one of whom has been
unjustly penalized by an incompetent umpire. [...] The word “unfair” is hardly an adequate description of their experience, and the belated gift of “fairness” in the form of a resolution no longer to discriminate against them legally is hardly an adequate remedy for the deep disadvantages that the prior
discrimination has produced.”
I referred to “reverse racism” as a myth in my last post because I disagree with the term’s underlying assumption that all prejudice is equal. While we ought to examine race relations critically, never rashly justifying any kind of discrimination, we must also always be careful to place ourselves and our criticisms within an appropriate historical, social and political context that takes into account the legacies of racism that inform our current, and varied, personal experiences in the world of race relations. The Internet is great, because it means we can educate ourselves about these issues quickly and easily… but, as in the real world, we have to be careful where we go for that education. Google isn’t always the justest arbiter of knowledge.
[Originally published at Hyphen on March 18, 2009]
The Prox, a Princeton University blog hosted by the Daily Princetonian, published a piece earlier this week about an incident of purported racism in one of its classrooms:
Raphael Balsam ‘11, a Bloomberg Hall resident, was working on a computer in the third floor computer room when he noticed Chinese written on the blackboard last Sunday. He was surprised to learn that the writing translated to:”White people can’t see this / White people can’t read this / White people can’t understand this” and immediately notified an RCA, Carrie Carpenter ‘10.
Evidently the chalkboard scrawl has caused a bit of a stir, inciting an investigation into whether or not the message was a violation of the university’s Rights, Rules, and Responsibilities.
According to Roger Wang, a photographer for the Princetonian, most of those present when the message was deciphered treated it lightly, but, “I feel that there was a true concern regarding how the writing could be seenas a joke while an attack in English would suffer severe consequences.”
Perhaps more puzzling than Balsam’s initial reaction to the seemingly benign message is the clear subtext of Wang’s account: the shared perception of unfairness underlying the students’ certainty that the English version of such a message would generate a lot more (unjustifiable) outrage. The implication, of course, is that ethnic minorities enjoy a certain amount of joke-privilege that not only excludes white people, but is often exercised at their expense. After all, if Miley Cyrus is shunned for referencing a particular race while innocently “goofing around,” why should anyone be able to reference any race in any way ever?
While I often have the pleasure of hearing white folks around me decry “reverse racism” when confronted with their own prejudices, this case is particularly close to heart because it so clearly illustrates a major flaw of the “reverse racism” myth: That it fails to take into account the inherently asymmetrical connotations of different prejudicial acts.
The students were concerned that a message written in Chinese which said “White people can’t see this / White people can’t read this / White people can’t understand this” would not be taken as seriously as a similar message written in English. To be clear, a similar message in English would be “Chinese people can’t see this / Chinese people can’t read this / Chinese people can’t understand this.” Obviously these two “similar” statements, similarly written on a chalkboard at Princeton, have disparate implications.
The first — written in Chinese in a place where Chinese is not widely visibly recognized, read, or understood by whites — could very well be a statement of fact. Would I expect cleverer graffiti from Princeton students? Yes. Does that mean it’s racist? No. On the other hand, the second message — written in English in a place where English is widely visibly recognized, read, and understood by Chinese — implies that Chinese students at Princeton don’t know English. See the difference, there?
Now, I know the second message is only hypothetical but — well, actually, wait a second… doesn’t it kind of remind you of that time when the Princetonian published a joke article lampooning a particular Asian American student who had been denied admission? It went something like this:
“Hi Princeton! Remember me? I so good at math and science. Perfect 2400 SAT score. Ring Bells? Just in case, let me refresh your memories. I the super smart Asian. Princeton the super dumb college, not accept me.”
That’s almost… straightforwardly racist. Nevertheless, the Princetonian’s Managing Board justified the article, saying:
“Using hyperbole and an unbelievable string of stereotypes, we hoped to lampoon racism by showing it at its most outrageous… We embraced racist language in order to strangle it.”
Kind of makes the whole Bloomberg Hall chalkboard incident seem rather trivial, doesn’t it? Perhaps those leading the investigation which it sparked will come to think so too.
On a side note: They “embraced racist language in order to strangle it?” Really? Don’t these kids go to Princeton, for crying out loud??
I'm a disillusioned former feminist activist who is trying to make sense of my shattered ideals...via modern technology and the global distribution of the Internet.
Catherine A. Traywick