Ignorance, racism, and prejudice is everywhere and towards all sort of people for really no reasons. But that being said I find racism towards asians is much more accepted and not taken as seriously. Even people who say things like “but people are not really racist against asians, they are usually treated as model citizens and do well in school and work” is a huge issue in the underlining problem of racism towards asians. Statistically, yes, Asian Americans do well compared relatively to other minority groups in the US. But we all know most asians don’t consider themselves as asians as their identity. They are Korean, Japanese, Taiwanese, etc in their minds. And when you break it down to countries, you notice a sharp drop off in academic and social economic well being of south east asians compared to east asians and it really has a negative impact on south east asians.
One of the biggest issues is still that racism towards asians is not always malicious, but used in humor as “good fun”
Here are some examples.
During the rise of Jeremy Lin ESPN wrote on the title of one of their articles as “Chink in armor” after a loss. As a pun. As much as they tried to play it off as a mistake and that it’s a common phrase, anyone who write professionally or even wrote a essay knows the title is pretty important, they obviously thought this was a amusing and even in their minds “creative”. And it’s a bit crazy that ESPN, the biggest sports news outlet put that out there. They had to have multiple people give the go ahead to put that as the title.
Also, Jeremy even said in a recent interview that he and John Wall (another point guard) were the fastest and most athletic guys coming into the NBA that year. But Wall is always commented as fast but Jeremy is also commented as “deceptively fast” Whatever that means.
Here’s a quote from a guy thats a expert in scouting players. “He lit up our model,” said Morey. “Our model said take him with, like, the 15th pick in the draft.” The objective measurement of Jeremy Lin didn’t square with what the experts saw when they watched him play; a not terribly athletic Asian kid. Morey hadn’t completely trusted his model - and so had chickened out and not drafted Lin. A year after the Houston Rockets failed to draft Jeremy Lin, they began to measure the speed of a player’s first two steps: Jeremy Lin had the quickest first move of any player measured. He was explosive and was able to change direction far more quickly than most NBA players. “He’s incredibly athletic,” said Morey. “But the reality is that every **** person, including me, thought he was unathletic. _And I can’t think of any reason for it other than he was Asian.”_
Jeremy Lin - Breaking Stereotypes and Asian Masculinity - YouTube
Here’s what Fox news put out…it’s pretty hard to watch but you see how bluntly racist it is but it’s covered up as humor…
Here’s another example of how Asian racism is put up as humor on TV…it’s pretty bad.
Even Spain’s National basketball team going into the olympics took a photo like this…they saw nothing wrong with it. Not one person thought it was racist or in poor taste. It took tremendous backlash before they even acknowledge it, and they really still understand why its racist after that. Can you imagine if they took the photo with black face…it would have blown up all over the news yet this was not really in the headlines and was credited to the team having fun and not meaning it’s offensive.