Hyphen magazine - Asian American arts, culture, and politics

Earlier this week, Racialicious guest blogger Thea Lim deconstructed a controversial NYT blog post which details a white woman's experiences and concerns as she raises her mixed-race child. The author (and white woman in question), Nicole Sprinkle, very honestly describes her desire to incorporate her husband's Colombian heritage into her daughter's upbringing while prioritizing and carefully cultivating her white identity:

"Yes, she would learn Spanish and English, but to emphasize her Latina side, I felt, was somehow a disservice. Frankly, I didn't want her to lose any of the privileges of being white. [...] I just wanted the eyelashes, and cheekbones, and that lyrical Spanish when appropriate. I wanted the good stuff, and from both sides."

...It gets worse. Read the whole article to get the full effect. Lim responds somewhat emotionally to Sprinkle's unabashed prejudice. As a mixed-race person myself, who was raised to value my (father's) whiteness above my (mother's) Filipina heritage, my initial reaction to the article left me too appalled to be articulate, so I asked another mixed-race friend of mine to break it down. She sent me the following thoughtful analysis:

Likely you've already seen this gem from Mixed Company of Yale -- but in case you haven't: it's a racialized parody of Beyonce's "All the Single Ladies." Here it is for your viewing pleasure (lyrics after the jump):

I've been trying to make sense of how I feel about this video since it came out a couple of weeks ago...and am still torn between what little of it I find amusing and the rest of it, which I find tasteless and insulting (Seriously: Are there really any AsAms who think that "me love you long time" is anything other than an offensive, sexist, racist trope?).

The arguably racist/sexist overtones of the video are obvious and have been covered pretty widely by other blogs, so I won't go into that here. Besides, I'm less interested in dissecting why/how the piece is racist or sexist than I am in why the video is (meant to be) funny -- particularly to the women who created it. Are these women poking fun at racists/racism by performing every stereotype associated with Asian women, a la "hipster racism"? Or are they simply making fun of Asian women? And for whom are they ultimately performing?

Ben Hwang over at 8Asians recently took issue with my post "Reverse Racism at Princeton..." because, according to himself, the South, and the Urban Dictionary, "reverse racism" is a misnomer, or non-existent, or something along those lines:

"Hyphen's recent blog post about Princeton University's "Reverse Racism" was amusing to me, especially since the terminology was used incorrectly -- it's not reverse racism, it's just racism. (Especially ironic since I learned this after I moved to the South.)"

Far be it from me to contradict the teaching of "the South," but I get the feeling that Ben doesn't exactly get it. Then again, his sources included the third (not to be confused with the first or the second) definition of "racism" provided by dictionary.com, as well as some of the less articulate definitions of "reverse racism" posted at the Urban Dictionary, which he describes as his "reference for all things slang this side of Wednesday."

While I do appreciate the obviously extensive research he conducted in an effort to understand the tricky concept of "reverse racism," I think his analysis would have benefited a tiny a bit had he scrolled down the Google search results page a little further to discover either of the following links:

• Tim Wise's essay, "A Look at the Myth of Reverse Racism," tackles this topic in language accessible enough for even regular readers of the Urban Dictionary to comprehend. (FYI, Tim Wise is a leading anti-racism activist and educator in the U.S.)
  
  
• Stanley Fish's essay for The Atlantic, "Reverse Racism, or How the Pot Got to Call the Kettle Black," examines the relative nature of "racism" and what "reverse racism" means to opponents of affirmative action.
  

If he had, he might see that these essays, like both his post and mine, question the validity of the notion of "reverse racism." Unlike Ben, however, we don't take issue with the concept because we find it equivalent to "racism" -- on the contrary.

The Prox, a Princeton University blog hosted by the Daily Princetonian, published a piece earlier this week about an incident of purported racism in one of its classrooms:

Raphael Balsam '11, a Bloomberg Hall resident, was working on a computer in the third floor computer room when he noticed Chinese written on the blackboard last Sunday. He was surprised to learn that the writing translated to: "White people can't see this / White people can't read this / White people can't understand this" and immediately notified an RCA, Carrie Carpenter '10.

Evidently the chalkboard scrawl has caused a bit of a stir, inciting an investigation into whether or not the message was a violation of the university's Rights, Rules, and Responsibilities.

According to Roger Wang, a photographer for the Princetonian, most of those present when the message was deciphered treated it lightly, but, "I feel that there was a true concern regarding how the writing could be seen as a joke while an attack in English would suffer severe consequences."

The makers of Slumdog Millionaire told the press this week that they have made last-minute arrangements for the entire cast of the film (children included) to attend the Oscars this weekend, where it's up for seven Academy Awards.

The film has been controversial for a number of reasons, from the pejorative nature of its title to the cringe-worthy salaries paid to its child actors, Rubina and Azharuddin, (who played the youngest incarnations of protagonists Latika and Salim, respectively). While surely not all of the criticism is valid, the issue of the children's salaries remains a validly contentious one -- particularly given the wild and unexpected success of the film.

Since writing my last entry on the Asian Fetish Myth, I've received some interesting responses. Most of them have implied that, while Asian women are fetishized by white men, Asian women perpetuate the fetish by favoring white men in the dating game (I believe Neela commented on this as well).

That Asian Fetish Myth thing is making news again -- though this time no one's debunking it.

After eight years of disappointment, my nihilistic veneer is cracking. It's been less than two weeks since Obama's inauguration but he's already signed executive orders to close Guantanomano, seal CIA detention centers worldwide, end torture, institute transparency at the highest level of government, and repeal the Global Gag Rule -- in effect, making the world a better place. Who knew that pen-wielding could have such superheroic implications? (says the journalist).
 
Last week, our new pres kept up his hyper-progressive momentum, with the signing of the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, a bill that restores individuals' ability to challenge unequal pay.