more racism?

On Thursday I was sitting in a classroom on the second floor of Mudd when someone walked by saying 'that fucking asshole' really loud. My solid state professor didn't even flinch and we continued with our final. Turns out it was Sasha talking to Christ Cheng.

Anyways, they were quoting from a piece written in the Columbia Asian Journal known as Tablet. The article in reference was titled 'Yellow boy starts a ruckus" or something like that. While I was eating lunch Sasha told me to look the article over... apparently it is starting the same racist sentiment amongst some people on campus in the same way the Fed cartoon did last year. I'd really like to know what people found so racist about this article... because if anything it was a commentary (albeit it didn't really do any interesting analysis) on how racism is still prevalent and can come from anyone given the right stimulus. The irony was the racism stemmed as a retaliation to other perceived racism.

Just wondering if anyone read it and what they thought. If this sparks another 'we are being silenced' protest, I'm going to have to protest the protest, because it's in my view illegitimate.

edit:
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i just reread "A yellowboy starts a ruckus" by peter kang. i knew there was something disturbing about this when i first read it, but it was so subtle in my quick reading that i completely missed it.

he begins the story with a kid asking another korean on the subway if he was Asian or Chinese.

ok whatever, and then Kang decides to shift to acknowledgement of his fellow Korean subway rider's puzzled look. He states it would have been bolder to call himself "american". this is a legitimate statement but one that i think has been taken out of context over the years, especially when people are asking about your ethnicity purely based on physical appearance, you know what they are asking.

In Kang's story what sets the korean kid off is when the black child asks 1. why he isn't chinese because he has "chinky" eyes and 2. if he has a small penis.

Like Mike said, there are a billion ways to go about dealing with this and the recounted action was absolutely not it.

Let me ask you something" he said to the boy, "I could never figure it out. What's the difference between a black person and a monkey?" This is the part when the entire train goes apeshit and tries to beat the fuck out of the korean guy.

What Kang was trying to do with his article was show that everyone can be racist when prompted. No shit. The stereotyping of asians as squinty eyes, small penises, "ain't never seen a chink like that, they usually quiet and don't speak english much". Kang tries to make himself seem like he is a third party objective arbitrator, "Was he racist? Who was more so? I couldn't quite figure it out".

The fact of the matter is, if you read this article and get the subleties, it is incredibly biased in favor of the Korean guy's racist remarks simply because it was retaliation. After a quote comparing Black people to monkey's a flashing light went off in my head saying that he should address that somewhere, because a statement like that is ABSOLUTELY ridiculous, especially given that it was in response to a little kid. What really hit me is that 1. the black people in this story are portrayed as a bunch of urban thug ass kids and ignorant and racist (maybe showing that racism is prevalent even in blacks) but all of the korean kids comments are addressed not through Kang, but through the responses of these 'ignorant' blacks.

What was actually addressed by the author? I was glad the Korean guy wasn't passive and wasn't afraid to reply when called a "chink". In fact, I was annoyed just because the little kid was so damn ignorant. What do they teach these kids at school anyways? No wonder rich white people always opt for taxis"

Mike has a problem with that last sentence. I have a bigger problem with the weight that Kang places on ignorant blacks. The blame is completely shifted to racism that is perpetuated by ignorance, where is the chastising of the korean guy, the older, wiser, nicely dressed intern whatchamahoosit, who should have known a lot better than to make his retaliatory remarks? where was it? instead Kang pats him on the back for standing up to a little kid who called him squinty eyed and small penised.

I didn't think this was a racist article at first, probably wasn't intended to be (just like the fed cartoon wasn't) but ... the subtleties dropped into the writing of Kang shows a lot. Way to be sublety racist when you are making a commentary against it.