Pre-Reading Note: I’m half Asian so I don’t know how much I get to comment on the Asian experience. But this week I’m going for it, so you can write me angry emails if you don’t think I can. Remember, I once wrote a piece about what it’s like to be a white girl in Hong Kong so I’m probably going to go all over the place.
The Oscars premiered last Sunday night and were a spectacle for all: Ali G! Leo for the win! Chris Rock and his brilliant commentary of racism in Hollywood! And a singular, crude, Asian joke, which has been blowing up my interwebs. And I thought, hmm, I agree.
In case you missed it, Rock said that there would be three PWC accountants coming up on stage and three adorable Asian kids in suits showed up. Because Asians are good at math. Apparently predicting the backlash, Rock then said, “If anybody is upset about that joke, just tweet about it on your phone, which was also made by these kids.” So I guess it’s two jokes: 1) Asian stereotypes abound! 2) Child labour – it’s hilarious! I groaned. Partially because I’m not a fan of racist jokes, and partially because the joke sucked. And this is Chris Rock. That guy was my joke idol, even though I don’t close to fully appreciate the problem of race relations in the US.
So I’m watching this and I’m thinking, this is sad. Sad because Asians will be up in arms about this. Sad because most people don’t care. Because anti-Asian sentiment is nothing new, and neither is not caring about Asian plight as well. Extreme AZN pride people will try to argue that Asians coming into Western countries – like the US – were treated basically like slaves, forced to build railroads. But that’s not correct. They were treated absolutely horribly, but not as horribly as slaves.
Today Asians are discriminated against by negative stereotypes about masculinity and penis size (for males) and fetishisation and submissiveness (for females). But being the “model minority” (in the West) and the “model majority” (here in Hong Kong) means you’re going to take your licks and keep on trucking. Because I believe most of us Asians take things differently: instead of railing against systemic injustice, we decide to overcome that by working hard, getting good jobs, and being awesome. In Europe it’s all, “Those greedy bankers are making so much money they must be stopped”, in Hong Kong it’s “Those greedy bankers are making so much money. How do we become them?”
I don’t know if this is right or wrong, I just know that it is – at least it is my observation of how these things work. Sometimes I think minorities should protest and yell and scream and do whatever they can to get equal rights; other times I think people should be less confrontational and focus on getting ahead and not making things be all about race. And my biased view is that some groups swing too far in one direction, and some in the other. But it’s not a zero-sum game: the black experience in America is not the same as the Asian one; the Filipino experience in Hong Kong is not the same as someone from Mainland China’s one.
At the end of the day, I just felt sad about the whole Oscars thing. Chris Rock spent his whole monologue complaining about how the Oscars were so white and no black people got nominated. I wished he had used the opportunity to highlight not only black people who didn’t get nominated but Asians, Latinos, and other under-represented folks in movies. I relish the day where an Asian will have a leading role in a film that’s not about being a kung-fu superstar. Maybe one day in a galaxy far, far, away.
Race is a difficult thing and it’s surely not just black and white. So boo to you, Chris Rock, for making it that way.
About the Realist: Yalun Tu is a writer based in Hong Kong. He wrote The Straight Man column for HK Magazine, and TV scripts for HBO Asia, Channel V, and Fox Movies Premium. You can contact him at yalun.tu@gmail.com or @yaluntu on Twitter.
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