Today Ken Tanaka, author of the video I blogged about in my post “Korean American Woman Turns The Stereotype Table On White Man (VIDEO)” sent me a note about the new follow-up video he released with the actors Stella Choe and Scott Beehner. They detail in a rather amusing manner some of the funny and terribly racist responses they got to the video.
jahseedbeatz505: I like her a lot. She is healthy. A lot.
iranoutofgoodgames: Ching Chong
Someone on I-am-Bored.com: This video is actually racist against white people. Any white person who asks an Asian person’s heritage would know his own heritage. He would never say regular American. That’s just stupid and downright prejudice to assume white people think that way. That video was written by someone name Ken Tanaka.
Jay Budd: I am racist and I find this offensive.
Linh Tran: This video was literally the story of everyday of my entire life.
YaqoHomo: You sound anti-white to me.
JMitchellUK: That’s racist.
ShockPopStudios: That was so funny. Loved it. White guy.
LookAt Me: His character, albeit a clumsy and politically incorrect guy simply wanted to find out the woman’s heritage. Her character on the other hand was deliberately vindictive and went out of her way to visually and verbally mock his heritage through a series of low brow stereotypes. I don’t think the producer of this clip thought it through very well.
Eventhorizon1122: And the moral of today’s YouTube video is attack racism with more racism.
Eric H: O well F**ing dumba$$.
bokol: You are an idiot.
Wat Izit: You know right guys, this is a commie video.
The response that is the microcosm of the misunderstanding among people is the one by “Someone on I-am-Bored.com”. He claims the video is racist stating a white person would not infer a prejudice thought or action yet he ends on a note that one is likely to infer has racist connotations. The author’s name is Ken Tanaka, he sure could not have gotten it right.
The previous video went viral because in some form it spoke to the inner most prejudice of some by forcing them to visualize themselves. For others it presented a resented reality. That is a good thing because sometimes scars are healed on the outside but a putrid infected mess on the inside. Break the scar, expose the infection, go through the pain to clean it, and then let it heal. America needs that.
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I find it disappointing that these actors approach this subject with two regrettable attitudes.
Firstly they label every negative comment about the video and the issues as ‘Racist’ when many are simply prejudiced and biased. This tells me that they are as obsessed with, and misunderstand the meaning of racism as the commenters. Secondly they focus only on the negative and ignore completely the positive. This only magnifies the exposure and perceived significance of real racist thinking without really helping the problem of racism.
A chance missed.
@ Howard Brittain, I’m really over trying to explain the technical definitions of racism, prejudice and bias to almost everyone ever and I feel like many folks who know the difference feel the same way. I would wager that most of the folks involved with this video know the difference but like me are just using the coloquial definition of racism in order to have a conversation in the first place. The worst way to get someone to talk to you is to start out by lecturing them on how ignorant they are of their own language. Instead it often makes more sense to use the vocabulary they know and somewhere down the road once they’re comfortable with the conversation it’s self you can talk about the nuance of definitions. Also not sure if you’ve ever been to the internet before today but it’s pretty damn negative (especially on a Youtube comments thread) so I feel comfortable assuming that that 1.) they actually filtered out some of the MOST hateful comments and 2.) this is a more or less accurate sample of the over all tone of the comments.
Andrew: if you find the internet negative, then being less patronising tends to help. Just a bit of free advice from someone who has been on it personally and professional since modems were 14.4k.
“I would wager that most of the folks involved with this video know the difference but like me are just using the coloquial definition of racism in order to have a conversation in the first place. ”
That may be the case – in which case I would say that lazy use of important langage like this just destroys the whole basis of anyone’s effort to battle real racism. Language is IMPORTANT, and using it accurately is critically important. Otherwise the message gets diffused, distorted and loses it’s potency.
Your confidence in their process appears to be based on nothing except your apparent tiredness, it would seem. I don’t share your confidence. But hey, we don’t disagree about the fundamentals so let’s not come to blows 🙂