I was walking near the Port Authority Bus Terminal recently when a balding guy smoking a joint yells “Sexy Asian girl!” I give him a dirty look; he smiles.
As a 26-year-old Korean-American woman, I am wary of men whose attraction to Asian women leads to exaggerated gestures. I still remember Sam, the “Asiaphile” in my freshman dorm who majored in East Asian studies, practiced t’ai chi and presented handmade origami paper cranes to his love interests. Then there was Matt, whom I met at a wedding. When he mentioned that he was “really into Asian girls,” I wasn’t sure what he meant. I wondered if he had some perverse “Oriental” fantasy to satisfy. When I showed no interest, Matt moved on to Grace, the only other Asian girl in a reception of 150.
Asian women are everywhere. We rank No. 11 on the blog “Stuff White People Like” and star in a host of iPhone apps: “Cute Asian Girls” promised; “If you have yellow fever, this app is the cure!” “Asian Boobs,” which heralds our modest-sized racks, was a top seller for the App Store in October.
Now, we’re playing peek-a-boo in “Puff!” In this app, the user selects a photo from a scrolling selection of Japanese women, then blows into the iPhone microphone to lift the woman’s skirt and reveal her undergarments. The more vigorously the user blows and rubs the screen, the higher the skirt flies. Shyly attempting to cover herself, the woman yelps delightedly, wearing an inviting smile. “If the girls don’t react, try changing breath length,” instructions advise. “Winning a special bonus is all up to you!”
I’m infuriated at the thought of sitting next to some pervert on the subway furiously blowing and touching a woman who giggles adorably in response. But what I hate most about this app is that it feeds into an old and tired stereotype. The image of the voiceless, passive Asian woman is a common form of racism in visual media. She’s the “Puff!” woman - cutesy and obedient, she’d never kick a creep to the curb. She’s not too different from that saccharine Hello Kitty, the infantilized mail-order bride who promises to “love you long time” or the hypersexualized character in anime porn.
Passing off sexual stereotypes that reduce women as objects of so-called harmless fetishes is socially irresponsible. And it’s not harmless. By fostering a culture of behavior that denigrates one group of women, all women are denigrated. And that is unacceptable.
In 2005, a white Princeton graduate student admitted to secretly cutting locks of hair from nine Asian women. He apparently took the hair to fill women’s underwear and mittens, which he then used for personal sexual gratification. He even poured his urine and semen into the drinks of Asian women more than 50 times in the student dining hall.
In 2000, two Japanese women in Spokane, Wash., were raped by two white men and a woman who admitted to having a sexual fetish for “submissive” Asian women and targeted them because they believed the women’s submissiveness would prevent the assaults from being reported. In November of last year, police were searching for a serial rapist known for prowling the subway at Union Square for Asian women to follow home.
Contrary to their claim, tongue-in-cheek apps featuring “Cute Asian Girls” hardly “cure yellow fever.” Instead, by cashing in on insulting cliches, they only serve to spread the infection.
—Iris Chung. New York Daily News, 2009.
(via wordsandturds)
» BMA: Black Mental Age [Abagond]
Cracking the fuck up with this… sad how true it is.
Maybe this will help me be more patient with white folks stunting on some foolish shit - like, “Ju, it’s not their fault, they just have a low BMA and you can’t hold it against them.”
BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA
Disclaimer: This post is half serious, half parody:
Black Mental Age (BMA) measures human intelligence as compared to black people in America. A person with a BMA of 12, for example, understands the world as well as the average black 12-year-old in America.
It is an idea of mine to get at a difference between black and white commenters on this blog.
For example:
- I used to think that everyone over 30 understood that America is no meritocracy, that it is profoundly screwed up. Yet white commenters on this very blog, grown men in their 40s and 50s even, will write in perfect university-level English about how fair and wonderful American society is! Like they are idiot savant 11-year-olds.
- Black commenters, even as young as 16, have little trouble understanding my posts while white men, even those over 40, often have serious trouble understanding them. Like there is something wrong with those government tests where whites get such high reading scores.
And yet some of the very same low-BMA whites will talk about how blacks lack intelligence!
Utterly amazing.
IQ: How whites measure intelligence. The trouble is, they write the tests and yet believe shockingly low-BMA stuff like this:
- You can trust the police.
- You can trust the news.
- You can trust crime statistics.
- You can trust history books.
- You can trust IQ tests.
- You can trust employers.
- You can trust big business.
- You can trust the accounts of white muderers, especially policemen.
- Racism is pretty much dead.
- It is possible for 40 million people to imagine the same thing at the same time.
- American society is more or less fair and just.
- People are poor mainly because they are unwilling to work hard and better themselves.
- Most poor people are black and most black people are poor.
- Television presents a more or less true picture of black people.
- Whites do not and did not benefit from slavery.
- Whites are completely unaffected by their violent, skinhead past.
- People overseas hate America for no good reason.
- People say bad things about America or whites only out of hatred.
- White Americans are the good guys of history.
Such people are completely unsuited to writing intelligence tests.In my experience most White Americans have a BMA between 10 and 14. I doubt I am imagining that since black intelligence as measured by the white tests drops after age 14 – what you would expect from tests designed by those with such limited intelligence.
Why does white mental development stop at such an early age?
Possible causes:
- Genes: Neanderthal genes limit their intelligence.
- Unchallenging environment: Society is set up to favour them so they have no need to progress beyond a BMA of 14. You know, like how some say the easy living of the tropics limits black intelligence. Like that.
- Social pathologies: Maybe whites do in fact get beyond 14 like everyone else, but their position in society and self-image requires them to act like they do not understand certain simple things, making them into pathological liars.
why i say so many white people are like giant children. but really it’s kind of like perpetual pre-teens or teenagers.
One of the ironies of white racial identity is that white Americans tend to see themselves in non-racial terms, as the norm against which all other groups are compared. This perception of whiteness as “normal” distances all other groups and reinforces the power relationships that have been imbedded in U.S. society since colonial days. Whites regard themselves as “just people” and see only “others” as having race.
For example, in causal discussions and everyday conversations, whites often mention the race of non-whites, even when racial identities are not relevant to the story. For example, a white American might say, “This black guy asked me for directions to city hall,” identifying race even though it plays no particular role in the anecdote. When people are not identified by their race (“This guy asked me for directions to city hall.”), the assumption is that they are white: normal people who need not further description.
This view places whites in a highly privileged status. “Other people are raced, we are just people”…. There is no more powerful position than that of being ‘just’ human. The claim to power is the claim to speak for the commonality of humanity. Raced people can’t do that—they only speak for their own race.
Just as whites tend to be unaware of their racial identity, they also tend to be unaware of the privileges that attend “whiteness.” Sociologist Peggy McIntosh notes that whites (like men) are reluctant to acknowledge their privilege vis-à-vis non-whites (women). This denial is a way of protecting the privilege—if it doesn’t exist, it doesn’t have to be explained, examined, or defended.
"—
Joseph F. Healey, Diversity and Society: Race, Ethnicity, and Gender (via humanformat)
is this not the same for all races?
do blacks and asians not say “that white chick is sitting over there.” when referring to a white woman?
or are whites the root of all evil? :\
(via oli-via)
facepalm.gif
(via audiodopexx)
Ugh. This doesn’t make “whites the root of all evil”. It makes white people so used to using race as a qualifier of difference that they tend to do it at all times, especially when dealing with people who are non-white. Whether its about your nice “black” friend, or that lesbian woman down the street, the dominant culture tends to underscore statuses it considers wholly different from itself. The downside to this is that it alienates other groups in the process.
(via invisiblelad)
(via sonofbaldwin)
