Racism in humor: It’s no longer cool to tell an “Oriental” joke

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I grew up in an era before political correctness, when racial jokes were a staple of standup comedy. I’m talking jokes by white comics about minorities. It took until the ’70s when black comics like Richard Pryor started turning racial humor on its head, making fun of white people as well as blacks.

These days, there are Asian American standups who tell some hilarious jokes about AAPIs, and our sometimes peculiar cultural values and traditions.

But it’s been a long time since I heard a joke about Asians told by a white person.

So imagine my bemusement when a co-worker whom I’m friendly with (as opposed to a friend with whom I might socialize), came up to me in the office kitchen today.

“I’m sure you heard this, but I’m going to tell it anyway,” he said excitedly, chuckling to himself.

“So this Oriental man goes to the doctor (first wince) to have his eyes looked at (second wince, since I just heard about Miley Cyrus’ ‘chinky-eyed’ photo). The doctor looks at him and says, ‘I have some bad news… you have a cataract.’ ‘I don’t have a cataract,’ the man replies. ‘I have a rincon continentaru.'”

Ba-da-boom.

Big wince. And, a laugh. Or two.
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Miley Cyrus caught in “chinky-eyed” pose

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Singer and actress Miley Cyrus with friends in a racist "chink-eye" pose. The photo is making the rounds on the Internet.

From Angry Asian Man: Miley Cyrus, the super popular teen pop star for her Hannah Montana song-and-dance act (she’s also the daughter of country singer Billy Ray “Achy Breaky Heart” Cyrus), is shown with a group of friends in a photo making the rounds online, pulling back her eyes in a “chinky” or “slanty-eye” pose.

It’s clearly a racial stereotype, the same kind of stupidity practiced in photos last year by the Spanish Olympic basketball team and the Spanish national tennis team team.

What kind of role model is that for young girls?

What’s a young Asian American girl supposed to think when she sees the photo? That she deserves to be the butt of racial stereotypes? Or a young European American girl? That it’s perfectly fine to make fun of people who don’t look like you?
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Japanese American identity pt. 1 – How do I feel when someone says “Gil-san”?

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I had an interesting thread of conversation the other day on Facebook, after someone sent me a friend request that ended with the person (he’s Caucasian) calling me “Gil-san.”

He wrote this in good cheer and good faith, and as a sign of collegial respect. I know that. But it struck me odd somehow, that non-Japanese people (usually Caucasians) throughout my life have assumed that it’s perfectly normal to call me “Gil-san,” or to say “konnichiwa” (“hello”) or “sayonara,” as if I speak Japanese, or better yet, that I appreciate someoe else assuming that I speak Japanese.

I do — a little. But I’m not Japanese, and the only time I try to mumble and stumble my way through a conversation in Japanese is when I’m trying to speak to Japanese people… from Japan.

So I posted this on Facebook and Twitter: “Is it culturally sensitive, condescending or just plain goofy for a Euro-American to call me ‘Gil-san’? I’m Japanese American, not Japanese.”

As is often the case, I got a flurry of responses right away on Facebook. Interestingly, Japanese Americans and other Asian Americans, as well as European Americans, had different perspectives on this topic.
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“Slumdog Millionaire” opens in India, nominated for 10 Oscars

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The British film "Slumdog Millionaire," a rags-to-riches story about an orphaned child in Mumbai, India, has been nominated for ten Academy Awards.

On the eve of its release today in India, the British independent film “Slumdog Millionaire” was nominated for 10 Academy Awards. It’s already won four Golden Globes: Best Picture, Best Director, Best Screenplay and Best Score. The movie’s up for all of those categories at the Oscars, and may well win some if not all of them, and then some.

We saw the film just last weekend and I was stunned by its power and eloquence, and for me, its sheer entertainment value in spite of the grimness of the life it portrays. It deserves its kudos.

If you haven’t heard of it, it’s the story of a two orphaned brothers from the slums of Bombay — now Mumbai — and their relationship as they survive their childhood and grow into their destinies. One, Jamal, played as an adult by the boyish Dev Patel, falls in love with an orphaned girl, Latika (luminously played as an adult by Freida Pinto).

Poster for "Slumdog Millionaire"Jamal’s devotion to Latika, even though they’re repeatedly separated, sometimes for years, and his dedication to finding her again, is the film’s narrative thread.

But “Slumdog”‘s visual leitmotif is the chaotic and tragic backdrop of modern Indian life. The story follows the characters from childhood through their teen years and into adulthood, in and out of the utter poverty that pervades the teeming slums. It’s structured as a series of flashbacks with Jamal, who’s been arrested for suspicion of cheating after winning 10 million rupees on India’s version of “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire,” explaining to a detective how he came to know all the answers he was asked on the show.

His life experiences coincidentally gave him the knowledge and prepared him to reach the next day’s final question, for a possible payoff of 20 million rupees.

Almost immediately, viewers are taken on a breathless tour of the shantytown as a group of kids are chased by police, the camera moving as if the audience is one of the fleeing kids, looking for the next escape route. Then the view shifts to the cops’ perspective, or others in the alleys, even a sleeping dog who’s not the slightest bit fazed by all the commotion. The colors, the clatter and closed-in settings convey claustrophia … and incredible excitement.

The movie opens up visually and feels pastoral only when the brothers get out of town atop a train and live like hobos, then spend some time scamming tourists at the Taj Mahal, and in one striking scene where the grownup Jamal meets up with his brother Salim (played by Madhur Mittal), now a low-level gangster, in a skyscraper construction site high above where their shantytown had been located.

Modern Mumbai’s financial wealth has paved over the poverty and pushed the poor elsewhere.
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Discussion of race in America is black and white — even among journalists

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I missed this column by Howard Kurtz the other day in the Washington Post: “Little Diversity at White House.”

The first part of the column is about the lack of journalists of color in the White House Press Corps, and focuses on TV and newspaper reporters assigned to cover the presidential beat. It’s an important topic, but it saddens me that as usual, the dialogue about race in America is all about black and white. No Hispanics, no Asians, no Native Americans — the spectrum that’s included in the mission of Unity, the uber-organization of Journalists of Color, which just last summer was graced at its convention by a visit by then-candidate Barack Obama.

I understand the point is that we now have a black president and there could be more black reporters covering the White House.

That’s fine for the members of the National Association of Black Journalists, who are probably happy to have gotten their perspective in with Kurtz. But Kurtz dances around the topic of other minorities, hinting at a broader color spectrum but never taking the time to call and quote someone from the Asian American Journalists Association or National Association of Hispanic Journalists or the Native American Journalists Association.
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