Esther Ku Not Funny

Cross-posted from Double Consciousness.

Offensive, sure, but not funny. The only people who think she’s funny is white folks who feel good when they hear their racist humor spouted back at them by an Asian person and feel vindicated in not being racist.

Sunny Vergara, a former Asian American Studies professor at SF State and whom I’ve had the privilege to hang with on a few occasions writes this in the American Pop section of Asian Week…(Read More)

Juno Don’t Like Chinese Babies

Cross-posted from Double Consciousness.

Read this good article in the San Francisco Chronicle a few weeks ago. It touches up on some good issues:

San Rafael real estate agent Lo Mei Seh was shocked when she saw a theatrical trailer for the hit movie “Juno” in December. In one scene, the title character sarcastically tells the rich suburban couple hoping to adopt her unborn child, “You shoulda gone to China. You know, ’cause I hear they give away babies like free iPods. You know, they pretty much just put them in those T-shirt guns and shoot them out at sporting events.”

Seh, the mother of two adopted Chinese girls, noticed a young Asian girl sitting behind her getting noticeably upset and muttering, “That’s so mean and unfair.”

“I calmed myself down, saying these things are just going to happen, and as a parent I have to teach my children to be strong,” she says. But after that particular scene was shown on televised award shows like the Golden Globes and the Screen Actors Guild awards, she became angry all over again.

“I know some people will say ‘lighten up,’ but that’s not the point,” Seh says. “The trailer is misleading” about the complexities of adopting infants from China.

“It’s not only hurtful, but harmful,” she says.

…

The irony of the “Juno” line is that adopting from China is very difficult.

…

The parents also say that the “Juno” line also plays on racist Asian stereotypes in an unacceptable way.

“Could you have made that joke with any other minority?” Scott says. “I don’t think so. You’d catch hell.”

No News is Good News?

Cross-posted from The Blog and the Bullet.

Bhupinder blogs on an article he read about content in the news media:

The research indicates that TV news today is no longer political. It has become abjectly insensitive towards issues concerning health, education, environment and public interest. It has become flooded with sports, entertainment and crime stories. This has become integral part of news bulletins. It is not surprising that a decrease in the number of political stories has coincided with a rise in the number of sports, entertainment and crime stories. Even a little shift in favour of human interest stories seems to be again trapped in meaningless trivia and selective and obsessive 24-hour coverage of issues like ‘Prince in a hole’ or a ‘naagin’ out to take revenge.

read the complete story at that excellent site Hardnews

Ike says “it’s water under the bridge. I have no regrets of my life.”

Cross-posted from The Blog and the Bullet.

But the Angry Black Woman blogs:

I am tired of people using the “But he was a great artist” line whenever someone who is, otherwise, a despicable human being, writes a song or a book or a poem that they like. I hate to break Godwin’s Law here, but even Hitler wrote some nice poetry and drew some pretty pictures (and he was nice to animals).

The Bishop!

So I get to be the Bishop’s assistant on Sunday during the service at my church.  I essentially carry his staff and sit next to him and do other traditional practices as such.  It’s good to get some face time with him though due to the fact I will be going in front of the Commission on Ministry and am going to be interviewed by the Bishop early next year.  So it’s good that he’ll know me when I see him.

However.  Whenever I hear the term “Bishop” or the phrase, “The Bishop” I always think of Monty Python’s Flying Circus

Pull Your Pants Up!

Darian writes about a campaign by Dooney Da Priest and his tactic in trying to get people to stop sagging their pants:

If you allow yourself to get caught up in the hard beat of this song when you hear it then it’s very possible to miss the homophobic punches by Dooney Da Priest in an attempt to scare the young men “straight” who’ve adopted sagging as their personal style. In one verse and a chorus he questions their masculinity, accuses them of being gay and on the down low and is personally offended along with all of the other “real men” at the sight of their boxers outside of their pants.

I guess when legislation fails to criminalize sagging and stern lectures from authority figures fall on deaf ears the only option left is to pull the gay card. What’s sad is this campaign has good intentions but it relies on stereotypes and fear to achieve the desired result.

Underground White Hip-Hop Snobbery

Dective Mat writes (the link isn’t working as of now):

Oh hip hop…what has happened to you…I really don’t know what to expect out of you anymore. At least I know what crap to expect from the commercialized mainstream. But the underground? I completely give up. It’s not a flourishing culture that addresses the needs of urban youth anymore. Now, it’s just a pissing contest between suburban snobs to see who knows the most unknown underground artists. The underground is depressing. At any given underground show, the crowd will be filled with college-aged suburban guys who somehow discovered their consciousness in school, and now dive blindly into anything labeled as “underground”. You must like Hieroglyphics, Atmosphere, and Aesop Rock or else you “aren’t hip hop”. They’ll always come at you with their collection of trendy underground groups, telling you “this is REAL hip hop”, when in actuallity, theres little diversity in the styles they listen to.

Racism, Sexism and the Video Game Industry

Latoya Peterson, from Racialicious, blogs:

To illustrate the issue of racism, let’s play a little game. Off the top of your head, name 5 black video game characters. Now, exclude any characters that were not main characters. Now exclude any that appear in a sports game or hip-hop based game. Finally, exclude any characters that embody stereotypical representations of African Americans. (Yes, that means excluding CJ from Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas.) How many are left in your list?