You are currently browsing the tag archive for the 'bias' tag.
Few do.
This guy does not:
So I’m guessing “all those Asians” he talks about comprise maybe…..5-10% of the Colorado University’s 13% “students of color”? (http://www.colorado.edu/pba/qfacts/demog.html)
Karson makes a sore attempt at being clever/witty/original/cava
lier by mocking a stereotype after feeling victimized by reversed racism. It could have worked, but it definitely does not. This guy sounds like a complete muscle head, and of course, while he’s working his well-toned abs, the scrawny Asians with small eyes and thick glasses are playing–no duh–racquetball. And probably ping-pong at the other end of the gym.
Something like this would be much more clever, if the race card must be pulled: http://stuffwhitepeoplelike.wordpress.com/
There is a way to be cleanly cavalier about racelessness and race, yet still remain throughly humorous. Funny enough so that regardless of ethnicity or the ethnicity of the author, we can all sit back and chortle a bit at our stereotypical, often cultural/ethnic antics. There is no need for war, which is in itself an extremely overloaded term.
Nor do we have to be serious about racial tensions all the time. It is a dangerous field to play on, and most, like Karson, fail to mock the stereotype in a useful way, and instead perpetuates it. “When I blow my whistle, we will scatter in every direction and catch as many Asians as possible. Make sure to pay special attention to the Rec Center, the UMC, the math and engineering buildings and Lollicup. If you’re not sure if someone is an Asian, give them a calculus problem to do in their head. If they get it right, net ‘em.” Yeah, I might be in the Rec Center–I’ll be one of the few girls in the weight room, so what. But trust me, you will not find me anywhere near the math and engineering buildings, and likely not in Lollicup either, I’m not a big fan of boba. Though I am pleasantly surprised that there is one in Colorado. It must be for that >13% of “colored” students.
I recently wrote an article for the Daily Bruin Arts and Entertainment section about students who make successful videos on YouTube. (http://www.dailybruin.com/news/2008/jan/24/youtube-makes-hot-venue-amateur-artists/)
A week later, I got a message via our website from a reader who chose to remain anonymous (and therefore I could not contact him/her back). Essentially, they complained about the fact that I had only represented Asians in my story (we hadn’t), and accused me and my co-writer of being biased because we are both Asian. (We happen to be possibly the only two Asian writers in our beat, and two of the (guesstimation)four writing for a 25+ person Arts and Entertainment section) They concluded their rather curt email by saying “All the rice sticks together”. Needless to say, I was outrageously offended. It was like saying that if I wrote about women, I am potentially biased because I am a woman. While I could understand that the reader might have liked to see Hispanic or African-American talent represented, the fact of the matter was that the videos that happened to have the most web traffic happened to be created by Asians or a group containing more than a few Asians. I wasn’t actually out on the lookout for Asians to cover, otherwise I might have changed the angle to be solely about Asians–which would have made for a rather flat article. And I had no intention or thought of writing such a piece. But in three short, bitter sentences, I had been the one labeled racist, biased, and a bad journalist. Just because I’m Asian. Which is funny, because even though I attend UCLA, and am constantly surrounded by Asians, I choose to work for the Daily Bruin as a photographer and writer, where suddenly things are a lot more diverse, and I almost had forgotten that I’m Chinese-American. (Oh I’m sorry, maybe my eyes were too small to notice, and I forgot to wear my heavy prescription, black-rimmed glasses Made in China) Most of the time, race really doesn’t matter to me–until of course I’m labeled racist by a racist.
Asian Reporter, signing out for the night.
