The Fighting 44s

From An Asian Antiracist

Here’s the answer.
Jenn at Reappropriate posted a link to our friends at CKY=KKK. Thanks Jenn for helping us out, and thanks to Angry Asian Man too! She also alerted us to a disturbing reaction to our effort.

I was in a conversation with a middle-aged White progressive the other night and the topic of grassroots Asian American activism came up. This progressive argued that race activists are too busy trying to gain media attention for issues that “don’t matter” and that we should let the little stuff like this — a racist YouTube clip — slide because it only makes us look like whiny ingrates to White America (more on this conversation later).

Of the many things one could say in response to such a perspective, not the least of which has to be how one can ask anyone of Asian descent to let the hatespeech apparent in “little stuff” like this not affect us. Another woman eavesdropping on the conversation compared hatespeech to a fundamentalist listening to swearwords and how one must just let others be stupid.

But what right do others have to tell us that this kind of ignorance should not affect us?

Exactly!

We will agree, this issue is not as universally concerning as global warming. For Asian issues, it’s not as bad as, say, exploited sweatshop labor.

But this is not about our hurt feelings. It’s about the children.

Rhymes about Asians have some kind of sick appeal. Remember this “oldie but goody”?

“Chinese, Japanese, dirty knees, look at these”

When the singer says “dirty knees”, they point at their knees. When they say “look at these”, they pull at their shirt around the nipples, or pull up their shirt.

A 7-year old little Asian girl is at the playground one day. Some girls run up to her and do the little song and dance. “Chinese, Japanese, dirty knees, look at these.” They sing, they dance, they enjoy themselves. Then they laugh. What does the little Asian girl think?

“I’m different and they don’t like me because I’m different. I’m not dirty but they think I’m dirty.” (she’s learning she doesn’t have the right to define herself) “Maybe I am dirty, and I just can’t see it. What’s wrong with my breasts? Look at them? But I don’t have any breasts. It’s supposed to be funny, but I don’t feel like laughing, I want to cry. What’s wrong with me?”

She cries. They laugh at her. “Why can’t you take a joke?” If she complains to another person, they tell her to stop whining.

She turns in on herself. Or worse, when they do it to her again and again and again, she starts to laugh at the joke. If she doesn’t take offense, if she appeases them, if she doesn’t rock the boat… maybe everything will be alright. Her sexual and cultural identity are wounded and deeply traumatized. And this is one of the reasons that Asian women have the highest suicide rate of all American women aged 15-24.

Let’s flash forward a few years. We’ve already seen on this blog that the Brandon Dicamillo Chinese Freestyle Rap is incredibly popular. People love this stuff. IT’S SO FUNNY. It’s not just one video. There could be hundreds of slightly different versions. It’s spread to Sweden. Little kids who look like they’re 9 years old are uploading videos of themselves singing it. They build a whole sick community where racism is normalized.

A 7-year-old Asian boy is sitting at the playground.

Some boys run up to him and start rapping. “Who like my chopstick? Hit you when I shit with my little-ass dick.”

Fill in the rest yourself.

This entry was posted on Sunday, March 25th, 2007 at 9:58 pm and is filed under Advocacy & Activism, Social Issues. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

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