July 7, 2013
Racist trolls come out from under their rocks following Asiana plane crash
I shouldn't be surprised or disappointed anymore, and accept the fact that there will always be idiotic people in the United States who probably function perfectly normally most of the time, and then turn into stupid racist haters the moment there's some sort of tragedy in the world that involves people of color. Two years ago, I was dumbfounded that Americans would rant and rave about the Tohoku earthquake and tsunami in Japan and claim it was somehow "god's revenge" for Pearl Harbor. What?
But the glibness and ease with which such racist drivel finds its way from pea-brained individuals to the social webs is still shocking. Here I've been following the crash of the Asiana jetliner at SFO (an airport I often fly to and from) as a human tragedy, but a miracle with only two casualties. I've felt empathy for the families of the two schoolgirls who were killed, and the many survivors who were injured. But the fact that most of those onboard survived -- and that 123 survivors were able to walk away without being hospitalized -- is nothing short of amazing.
But of course, the human stories of the crash don't matter to the racists who immediately feel the need to respond with jokes about Asian stereotypes (we're lousy drivers, har har) and hateful cracks about North Korea (hellooo, Seoul is in South Korea, and this was not an attack by Kim Jong Un on the US).
That such a lowbrow, juvenile mentality switches on so quickly shows that racism and prejudice are still alive and well just beneath the veneer of political correctness that the haters always complain about. Scratch the veneer just a bit with a news event like this tragedy, and you'll see nothing but ugliness ooze out.
That's why I write about these issues over and over.
Erin and I got to see a really interesting traditional Korean dance and music performance last week.
Think about it -- you've seen taditional Japanese dancig in kimonos, and heard lots of traditional Japanese music, with the wood flute, koto and taiko drums. You've seen Chinese dance and heard Chinese music. And at events such as the Colorado Dragon Boat Festival, audiences have been intorduced to the traditional dance and music of Bali, Vietnam, Philippines, India and more... but not that much from Korea.
During the early years of the CDBF, a troupe of Korean seniors used to perform, but their act was mostly 20 minutes of the large group in traditional dress, circling the stage to no particular rhythm and randomly beating on drums. The festival has also featured a solo Korean dancer who did a slow and meticulous mask dance. Abd last year during the Miss Asian American Colorado pageant, one contestant performed a Korean fan dance with a bunch of cute kids helping out.
I'm not sure why, but there hasn't been much exposure, at least in my world, of a lot of traditional Korean performance. Maybe the noisy, sometimes chaotic nature of traditional Korean dance just doesn't appeal to Americanized tastes.
Whatever the reason, though, we got plenty on Saturday, Sept. 6, when the Korean Consulate General in San Francisco sponsored a rare U.S. visit by a Korean dance troupe, Festive Lands, for a performance at the DCPA’s Temple Buell Theater titled “
The Washington Post ran 