LinuxOnly wrote:i just watched it. where was the racism???
the only racists are the asians getting furious over this.
oh and for the record, besides the japanese, maybe the vietnamese.. asians have absolutely no manners. a pot belly pig is probably more dignified at supper time. koreans and mainland chinese are especially rude
OK, let me try to spell out why I believe this girl's rant can easily be considered as a form of racism against Asians.
First, let me define what I mean by racism, a term used in many ways. Here are some of the more common meanings and uses of the word:
a. The discrimination or prejudice of a person or group based on the racial or ethnic group she or they belong to.
b. White supremacy, the belief that the Caucasian race is superior to all other races.
c. Discrimination against a particular race’s culture, beliefs or traditions.
d. The idea that a single race is somehow purer than other races, or that one race genetically exhibits dominance over others.
e. The belief that race can be a way to determine behavior and performance.
f. More subtly, over-generalizations that are made in race grouping, for example, the failure to make assumptions which fail to distinguish between cultural values of say ethnic Koreans from Khmers. Assuming that an Asian person is Chinese or that a Hispanic person is Mexican may be characterized by some as racist.
Now, let's go to her rant.
Don’t take this offensively, I don’t mean it towards any of my friends, I mean it towards random people that I don’t even know in the library. So, you guys (my friends) are not the problem.
She’s about to complain about some people in the library who she thinks are a problem.
The problem is, these hoards of Asian people that UCLA accepts into OUR school every year…
So the problem involves these hoards of Asian people - a race according to common American usage of the word. So this rant is being directed at one race so far. Moreover, by using the word ‘our’ she implies that the school belongs to her group (Americans) and they (Asians) somehow have different status, even perhaps if some of them are (technically) Americans too which is entirely possible. Perhaps she means they are just visitors, or students with a subordinate rights. But somehow, they are different because the school is ours, not theirs. That seems to fit definition a (prejudice)
…which is fine
Tone and body language account for a larger percentage of the messages expressed in verbal human communication than do words. I would say her tone up to this point clearly contradicts her claim that she’s fine with UCLA accepting “hoards of Asian people�. That seems to fit definition a (prejudice) and perhaps definition f (which admittedly is common and at least partially a product of the formal US system of race classification).
But if you’re gonna come to UCLA, use American manners
Implies that Asians often don’t behave within the scope of ‘American manners’. This seems to fit definition e (behavior)
It used to really bug me but it doesn’t really bother me anymore the fact that ALL the Asian people who live in all the apartments around me, their moms and their brothers and their sisters, and their grandmas and their grandpas, and their cousins and everybody that they know, that they brought along from Asia with them, comes here on the week-ends to do their laundry, buy their groceries, and cook their food for the week, its seriously without fail, you will always see old Asian people running around this apartment complex every week-end, that’s what they do, they don’t teach their kids to fend for themselves.
First, this blurb seems to start with a specific group (the Asians living in the apartments around me) but progress to broader generalizations , Asian people not teaching their kids to fend for themselves, etc. This seems to fit definitions a, c and f.
You know what they don’t also teach them is their manners.
This seems to fit definitions a, c and f.
OK that’s about half the vid right there. In the second half, she:
- mimicked what her perception of ‘Asian language’ as “ooooooo, ching chong ling long ting tong, ooooo�
I believe many so-called Asians in the US and elsewhere would consider that a racial slur. It seems to fit definitions c, e, and f.
- implied that Americans are more polite than Asians when talking about her upbringing. Again definitions c, e, and f.
Besides the racism, she made reference to that ‘Tsunami thing’ which personally I thought was a rather rude and thoughtless way for an educated person to describe such a major disaster.
For the record, I don’t believe all racism (esp. some parts of the definition above) is necessarily bad and in some forms, it can be innocent or at least unintentional. But the point of this post is just show why I believe this girl’s Youtube rant should be considered racist against Asians. BTW, the last statement in your post clearly fits within the scope of the definition as well.