“Boat Racism” Part I: When Professed Satire on Racism Turns into Racist Parody
Jian Li immigrated from China to the United States at the age of four. Now a freshman at Yale, he is taking legal action against Princeton university for rejecting his application last summer, claiming the elite university favors other minority groups and discriminates against Asian-Americans in admissions.
Is Li racializing his individual setback for personal gain or do Asian-Americans indeed face a higher hurdle in the fierce academic competition? A lot of worthy discussions emerged. Things heated up quickly though when on January 17th Daily Princetonian, the campus newspaper, published a parody of Li on their annual joke issue. The op-ed, bylined “Lian Ji”, opens with:
“Hi Princeton! Remember me? I so good at math and science. Perfect 2400 SAT score. Ring bells?
Just in cases, let me refresh your memories. I the super smart Asian. Princeton the super dumb college, not accept me. I get angry and file a federal civil rights complaint against Princeton for rejecting my application for admission. They rejected me because I’m not blond or blue eyed and my name doesn’t end with Ockefeller IV or Osworth. I try convince my mom and dad to change my name to Jack Bauer (they could keep their own last names if they wanted to), but they told me Jack only graduated from Berkeley. Not my faults…”
In an idiotic sort of way you can probably call it funny in its absurdity. But that broken English gag gets tired pretty fast, and by the time I got to this, it was anything but amusing:
“…Princeton claims that it increase diversity by rejecting an Asian-American. You make joke? My mom from same province as General Tso. My dad from Kung Pao province. I united 500 years of Rice Wars. I invented Asian glow — new color, new race. Hey, what about yellow fever? Heard that’s hot on this campus. This is as diverse as you can get…”
Whoever wrote the piece was clearly unimpressed with Li’s complaint and decided to have some fun at his expense. Instead of coming up with anything original or substantial, the piece resorts to antediluvian stereotypes about Chinese people for laughs. This is something the white-dominated media has been doing ever since they invented Charlie Chan. Could it be the fact that Asians have never been enslaved in America or been sent en mass to the gas chamber in Europe makes them the last ethnic group socially acceptable to be poked fun at?
Two days later, an editor’s note appeared on top of the column. Chanakya Sethi, editor-in-chief, is surprised by the criticism the parody has received and defends the piece as having a purpose of “using hyperbole and an unbelievable string of stereotypes” to “lampoon racism by showing it at its most outrageous”. As if we were not seeing enough stereotypes around us, about us, every single day already. And a lot of good it’s doing this world. There is a theory that if you purposely bombard people with false stereotypes long enough, people will eventually confront them by drawing their experiences from real life and dismiss the typecast. Sadly, for too many people the mass media is the synonym for real life. The whole William Hung affair was so odious not because Hung’s a horrible singer/dancer. What turns our stomach is that American entertainment industry uses him, a perfect endorsement of every Asian stereotype Hollywood has been implanting into our day-to-day perception, laughs behind his back and makes a profit out of it. “We embraced racist language in order to strangle it”, insists Sethi. If the op-ed was indeed conceptualized with such a profound and honorable mission, it was all staggeringly lost in its realization.
On the 22nd of January a joint statement by the Daily Princetonian and the Asian-American Students Association was issued:
“…We understand that the Asian authors of the op-ed hoped to satirize harmful stereotypes of their community. This intent, however, was unclear, and we deeply regret that this lapse in judgment caused some readers pain. We recognize that the race of the authors does not lessen the op-ed’s impact… “
I am certainly baffled by the authors’ intent. Where is the satire exactly that makes it different from a racist joke? Because it’s printed on a prestigious university newspaper instead of being told in some seedy bar? By caricaturing a real person but giving them characteristics they do not possess, it’s third-rate parody at best, deceitful misrepresentation at worst. When you consult a cheap catalogue of Chinese stereotypes to mock a Chinese immigrant, when you make them speak Engrish, you’re not satirizing harmful stereotypes. You are perpetrating them.
On the editor’s note appeared on the 19th of January, the authors were referred to as”a diverse group of students including several Asians” whereas the followed joint statement speaks exclusively of “the Asian authors of the op-ed”. Honestly at this stage I am more interested in who actually wrote this shtick than their ethnicity. Why don’t they either stand up, defend and exculpate their misconstrued writing, or step forward, admit their folly and apologize? How else can we best “move the conversation forward” when we’re left in the dark second guessing? By drawing attention to the common ethnic background of the authors and their creation, they are trying to discredit any accusations of racism. After all, can Asian-Americans discriminate against other Asian-Americans?
(Part II follows next Friday)
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