Last year it was Alexandra Wallace, a UCLA student, who posted an amazingly racist rant on YouTube about all the Asians at her school. The video went viral, led to a bunch of satires by Asian Americans, and she got blasted for her insensitivity. She subsequently apologized for the video, then dropped out of school.
Now, the 2012 sequel to Alexandra Wallace’s video is by a 16-year-old secondary school student in Brampton, Ontario, Canada.
This video is outrageously racist. She goes off on the South Asians in her town and at her school, and equates them all with terrorists, calling them “turbanators.” She complains that walking down the hall at school, all she can smell is curry, and ends the rant by urging anyone who’s “brown” watching the video to “go back to your own country. I’m getting really tired of you guys taking over my city.”
The video is so over-the-top, I had to wonder if she was mentally stable. At one point, the 16-year-old spells out her name and invites other white people to connect with her on Twitter and Facebook (I’m not going to use her name here).
Phil Yu of Angry Asian Man posted a full text transcript of the video (some of the audio is hard to understand):
I have something I need to talk about. And I can’t talk about it to anybody at my school, because you know what? Everybody at my school is brown. Okay? Brampton, man. Bramp-ton. Do you have enough turbanators? I mean, I walk down the street, I don’t see any white people. I see these turbans. Man, I swear they had shanks in there, by the way. Man, why do I have to live here? Why couldn’t I live in Toronto where I used to live? Why I gotta come back to Bram-ladesh? Man, I live in Canada. I don’t live in a terrorist country. Why’s there so many turbans? Turban, terrorist. Terrorist, turban. They go together, man. Canada’s supposed to be… [sigh] …you know, safe? No. Tell me why I walk down the halls and all I smell is curry. Smell curry, brown. Brown, curry — they go together. Man, that smell kills me on the inside. Anyway, can we get some more white people at my school? Brampton, come on. Seriously. Anyway, if you’re white and you’re watching this, and you feel the same way I feel, please message me. Add me on Facebook. [Spells her name]. Or follow me on Twitter. [gives her Twitter handle]. And please help this situation. ‘Cause it’s starting to really cheese me. That was really ugly. But anyway, if you’re brown and watching this, go back to your own country. I’m getting really tired of you guys taking over my city. Anyway, bye.
Her Twitter and Facebook accounts have apparently been closed down. The young girl’s father was interviewed by the Toronto Star in a story headlined “Teen truly regrets making racist video, dad says.”
Her father told the Star that the girl has non-white friends and that she isn’t racist.
But her father says his daughter is truly sorry she made the video, which is “totally out of character,†and that she has struggled with depression and is now in hospital.
The article also reports that the girl has received death threats and, according to other students, was attacked and that police were called to escort her out; she hasn’t returned to school since.
Although her video is outrageous and offensive, I feel bad for her. She’s younger than Wallace, who (I think) should have known better and who should have been more worldly, attending UCLA. But this 11th-grader comes across as not just ignorant, but immature. One two-minute blast of ill-conceived hate speech may have irrevocably affected the trajectory of her life. She’s been slammed with counter-hate messages on YouTube from both South Asians and others, and I think that’s the wrong response. We can all be angry, but I do’t think someone like this misguided young women learns from being attacked for something she blurted out. It’s better to start a lot of dialogues online, and get the issue of racism out in the open and start educating ignorant people.
What concerns me more than the girl and the video itself is the apparent ease with which her viciousness towards South Asians came out. Of course her father’s going to say she’s not racist.
And she may not be — most of the time. But when push came to shove, these hateful words came pouring out of her mouth. I have to wonder where she learned them, if her friends use them, if she overheard them at home. She didn’t come up with the words and the thoughts. And she’s not the only one who’s exposed to this kind of thought and values that condone hate speech. She’s not alone.
That’s what I’m worried about.
UPDATE APRIL 23, 2012
On the other hand, I’m heartened by the many responses to the racist video, many of which are made by non-Asians. So despite my worries, maybe there’s hope after all. Here’s a thoughtful YouTube response from a South Asian Canadian:
These races should be assimulating this is not india, china or iran its canada. You came here because you want to be canadian so please be canadian. Other cultures became canadian as soon as they landed here. Speak english too….not your native tongue- only speak that at home. Have respect for the country you decided to travel across the world to live in like it has given respect to you….stop treating canadian as second best !
Sorry Jane, I completely disagree with you, but thanks for your comment. Diversity only makes countries richer, and wishing to stay one flavor of culture leads to the racism exhibited by this girl. This happens in the U.S. too, as well as in various countries throughout Europe. There’s unfortunately a very fine line between nationalism and racism sometimes….
Gil: as a Canadian, I have to say something. When people immigrate to Canada, they need to learn English or French, or both. They also need to leave behind certain customs (such as FGM, wife-beating, so-called “honour killings”, caste systems and religious intolerance and/or extremism) which are unfortunately still common in some cultures in the Middle East parts of Africa and on the Indian subcontinent.
To their credit, most of the immigrants to Canada have been doing these things. However, some have not. Whether it’s an “honour-killer” like Mohammed Shafia (please google “Shafia murders”) or a white European (either an immigrant or a Canadian-born one) who assaults non-white people in the street, extremists need to learn what is acceptable in Canada and what is not.
Correction: To their credit, most of the immigrants to Canada have NOT been doing these things” (What I meant was, nost of them have been leaving these awful customs behind).
I should also add that I don’t object to people speaking, say, Urdu, Hindi, Punjabi, Arabic, Tagalog, Spanish or whatever in public in private conversations, but everyone in Canada should be able to converse in English, or French (or both) as I have mentioned. Those are the two official languages of the country.
Thanks Phil, good points. I do think there are levels of assimilation that are taken for granted, especially if you’re moving from a very different culture. Yeah, things that are acceptable in some cultures can be just wrong in others.
phil: please try to learn Hindi or Russian and see how long it will take. I am not saying that the immigrants should drop the language completely(they’re not), since their Children are educated in either English or French, but you should consider how hard it is to learn a language after early teenage years when demanding people to speak fluent English or French.
Why stop at English? Why arent whites willing to learn to speak Native American languages? If whites dont want to learn Native American languages (in the case of Hawaii, Hawaiian) they should go back to Europe.
Remember the tragedy that is Hawaii….the US invaded it…
when whites immigrate or retire to Asia, no one tells to their face to learn the language or gtfo. The locals try hard to accomodate foreigners…all the while while white foreigners never bother to learn the language and just live among the expat community.