Attraction, Fetish and Racism: Asian Girlz and Day Above Ground

Human beings (especially the male variant) are visual creatures. If we see something that we like then we either make it known that we are available or inform that person of our interest in the culturally appropriate manner. Everyone has slightly different preferences. If you favor red hair and a relative lack of melanin you'll probably look first in one subgroup of humanity. If you prefer a lot of melanin you'll look in another subgroup. Whether via inertia, deliberate political/romantic decision, lack of opportunity or childhood cultural imprinting most people wind up with folks from their own particular subgroup, however defined. But humans have always mixed and always will mix. There's nothing wrong with this. Some people even prefer people who are not from their group. I don't automatically think this is bad. It depends on the reasons. There's a thin line between having a preference and having a fetish. There's an even thinner line between expressing admiration for a certain subgroup's real or imagined particular characteristics and reducing a member of that group to a sexual stereotype. Saying I like Black women is one thing. Saying I like Black women because they just want to get f*****d all night is probably something different. 

The band Day Above Ground recently crossed that line between preference and fetish with the song "Asian Girlz". This five minute song listed every stereotype about East Asian women. The song may have been meant as a satire on some non-Asian men who do indeed fetishize Asian women. Angry people could be missing the point entirely. Or it could just be 100% racist crap. If it was meant as satire, which I'm not sure of, it didn't work. Levy Tran, the Vietnamese-American model who acted in the video gave an apology.

I'm so sorry once again to anyone who was offended by the video. It wasn't at all the intention. I truly apologize
— Levy Tran (@MissLevy) August 1, 2013

I sincerely apologize to all who feels that I set Asian women back 50 yrs. I know I lost respect from a lot of ppl. It wasn't my intention
— Levy Tran (@MissLevy) July 31, 2013

Check out the video and one funny response to it below. Both videos are slightly NSFW. There is no nudity but there's implied sex and sexually explicit language in the first video and profanity in the second.

One man's response

Thoughts?

Was this satire gone wrong?

Is this the most racist song you've heard?

Adam Carolla: What's wrong with you Black people

Some (many?) conservatives seem to think that black people are naturally inferior. Now except on the fringes you probably won't find this expressed in the traditional "I hate n*****s. I won't hire them, work with them, live with them or marry them. This is a white (wo)man's country, dammit!!". Although the election of President Obama seems to have brought some of that closer to the surface, it's still I think, somewhat of a minority view, pardon the pun.

But what's not really a minority view is the idea that there's something wrong with black people, that they aren't quite on a par with white people.  We saw a fictional take on this in Django Unchained. Some people couch this in points about culture while others claim that there is real measurable important biological diversity among humans and that black people just happen to have gotten the short end of the stick as far as intelligence is concerned. This is diffused throughout the larger community, really throughout the entire American society. Comedian and commentator Adam Carolla recently gave voice to this view point.

"I want everyone to plan. Look down the road six months," said Carolla. "Yes they foreclosed on your home. That's why you need to have a network, a community, friends, family members, money put away. Don't have the kids."
"Think about it, Adam," challenged Newsom. "Half of African Americans in the state of California, and roughly half of Latino families, have no access to a checking account or an ATM."
And that's when things got hairy.
"What's wrong with them?" asked Carolla. "I want to know why those two groups don't have access. Are they flawed?"
"I want to know why [Blacks and Latinos] are struggling," Carolla continued. "Do Asians have this problem? Why do so many [Blacks and Latinos]? Blacks have been here longer than we have. What about Asians--they were put in internment camps. Are they at the check cashing places?"
"How about the Jews?" asked Carolla. "No problems in the past? Whose had it worse? Why are the Jews doing well? [...] Why do some groups do so much better? I'll tell you why: They have a family who puts an emphasis on education.

LINK

Unwilling immigrant

Carolla's questions fit in neatly with the idea that modern racism is minor or non-existent and that any problems black people have are almost entirely their own fault. It also raises the idea that blacks have less ability to plan for the future, think with their genitals and can't be trusted with money. Unsurprisingly these are the same stereotypes which were used to justify the enslavement and segregation of black people.

Of course to support this idea it's critically important not to discuss the experiences of a wider number of black people. You can't talk about "faulty family structure" when you're discussing situations like black mid level corporate managers who repeatedly find themselves training white co-workers who swiftly surpass them, black youth who are stopped by (and threatened, assaulted or insulted by) the NYPD more than white youth but have fewer guns or drugs found on them, black authors or musicians who can't get cover stories or reviews in white media, black accountants who discover they're paid less than someone white with less education or experience or my personal favorite, black job seekers who discover they have less of a chance of getting a job than someone white with a felony or who learn that their resume was rejected immediately because their name or zip code indicated probable African ancestry. Those things are real and are all going on today. And if anything black parents put more emphasis on education than white parents do simply because they hope that education can protect their children from some of the worst instances of racism in the labor market. This isn't always the case of course.

Although the issues of the so-called underclass , future time orientation, out of wedlock births, conflict resolution, etc are well known and important to solve, they are not the only problems facing the larger black community. I have no problem talking about financial mismanagement or other items which are in an individual's power to change. But there's more to life than that. Carolla seeks to pose as a truthteller when in fact he's just a bully punching down. Where is the oh so brave iconoclast who looks at the past 600 years and asks "What's wrong with white people?". Well chances are he or she won't get mainstream media access, unless it's to make someone else repudiate, denounce and renounce them.

 I'm not part of any "underclass" and I've still seen or experienced real racism, whether it's couched in the coldly polite passive-aggressive corporate style or the direct and dangerous "Why are you in this neighborhood show me your hands" flavor that police tend to prefer. 

As other people have pointed out, if you've been traumatized in some way as a child there's a slightly better than average chance that you're going to have problems as an adult. If you're been assaulted or raped it might be a long time (if ever) before you are as trusting of people as you previously were. If every time you stepped out of the house someone whacked you in the head with a shovel, you might become more fearful than other people of trying or doing new things. If you, deep in your heart of hearts, are convinced that God doesn't look like you but looks like some other group of people, how can you ever get right? 

I've said it before, here and on other forums. And I'm not the only one who's said it. But Black Americans only became legally full citizens post 1965 or so. It's not quite within my lifetime but it's pretty close. For the majority of this country's existence, black people were either slaves or non-people. White people could and did remove or prevent Black people from competing with them. Whether this was done by law (mostly in the South) or custom (more likely in the North) the impact was to retard accumulation of wealth and social resources. And violence or the threat of violence always played a part as well.

So there is no real comparison to be made with other immigrant groups, whether they be Italian, like Carolla's, or Jewish or Asian or any other group. None of them went through what black people in America experienced. None of them had their cultures stolen and mental framework destroyed. Basically what Carolla is saying is that he thinks Black people are inferior. He thinks that other groups could go through what blacks went through and come out better off. Well. I say that that question can't be answered unless we (literally) give black people the whip hand for 400 years and see how whites turn out. Let's make whites worship a Jesus that looks just like Isaac Hayes and see if they have any issues with self-hatred after a few centuries. I think that if this country were majority black and had been for ages, we very might see a Johnny-come-lately descendant of black immigrants making snide comments about what was wrong with the descendants of white slaves, while being totally clueless about his own privileges.

It seems like the new thing is to figuratively tear someone's ACL, slit their Achilles tendon, smash their big toe and then sneer at them for not being to run as fast as you.

Thoughts?

Reaction to Chris Kyle's Murder

Chris Kyle, a former US Navy SEAL, was the most dangerous sniper in the history of the US military. He had over 150 confirmed kills and multiple Bronze and Silver Stars. Kyle was wounded in combat. He completed four tours of Iraq and once killed a rocket launcher bearing insurgent from a little over a mile away. In short he was the best at what he did. When he left the military to be with his family he wrote a best selling autobiography, American Sniper, detailing his story. He didn't take any of the royalties from this book but instead donated them to the families of SEALS killed in combat.  He also gave away the money he made from appearances or book signings. Kyle started a non-profit foundation, FITCO, to work with veterans suffering from disabilities, whether physical or emotional/mental like PTSD. Kyle did a lot of hands-on volunteer work with veterans. He was pretty dedicated towards raising awareness of the challenges that veterans face reintegrating into society and doing what he could to help veterans meet those challenges.

Kyle was supposed to help work security at the Super Bowl but evidently decided to decline that opportunity in order to volunteer with a veteran he didn't know, Eddie Ray Routh, who was suffering from PTSD. The men went to a shooting range. Apparently, at some time on Saturday, Eddie Ray Routh murdered both Chris Kyle as well as a friend of Kyle's, Chad Littlefield. So a man who survived four tours of Iraq and an Iraqi bounty being placed on his head was murdered in the US. Kyle leaves a wife and two small children behind.

Now this isn't the first time this has happened to a combat veteran. And it definitely won't be the last. The news is full of stories where someone survives the war zone abroad only to return home and get murdered. Usually when things like this happen, people murmur words of sympathy and curse the evil person who took the life. But see, Chris Kyle was also something of a conservative who was quite proud of having served his nation in the Armed Forces. He also was not a fan of current gun control proposals or the current Administration. I haven't read his book yet but it's probably a pretty fair bet that Kyle was probably close to if not 180 degrees different from my political beliefs.
So evidently that made it okay for some people to snark or joke about his untimely death.
Whether it was the Mother Jones editor  implying Kyle's death showed we needed more gun control because even SEALS aren't safe, random twitter users calling Kyle a hillbilly liar, saying his death was poetic justice or karma, alternet commenters calling Kyle a "mass murderer","psycho", "serial killer", or Ron Paul saying that "live by the sword die by the sword" there was an unseemly number of people that were eager to denigrate Kyle (and by extension all soldiers) after his death.

I am not a fan of an interventionist foreign policy. I did not and do not support the American invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. But once we're there, we're there. Chris Kyle did not commit war crimes. He killed people in a war zone who were trying to kill him or other Americans. He wasn't sitting in Langley dropping bombs on children and or writing memos claiming the right to kill Americans. He put his life on the line overseas to save soldier's lives. And upon his return he continued to look out for soldiers. He died trying to save a soldier's life. There are American veterans today who are alive because Chris Kyle was watching their backs. You may or may not think that makes him a hero, but there's no way that makes him a bad guy as far as I can see. But even if you do think that Kyle was a bad person for his politics or his attitude, I don't see why someone should crack jokes or make light of his death. Is that where we've come to as a nation? Someone politically opposed to us is murdered and we hurl insults and unfunny jokes? That's disgusting. I have family members who served in Desert Storm. I am very glad they returned safely. Another younger relative is at West Point now. In the unthinkable event of their murder I wouldn't have much nice to say to anyone who implied that their death was somehow karma for their "bad" deeds or politics. Even if you think that our foreign policy is wrong and needs to be radically changed as soon as possible, (and I certainly do) I just don't think you do your argument or yourself any favors by making fun of dead soldiers. Something has gone very wrong in our political culture when someone's death just invites more vitriol. Given time and experience Chris Kyle may have become a modern day Smedley Butler. Or he may not have. He may have stayed most comfortable on the right. Either way he (nor most other human beings) did not deserve to be murdered and then mocked after death. Again, it's not about if you agreed with his politics or not. It's just basic human decency.

One of Kyle's last interviews from January 2013.