Dallas Morning News: “At the Republican state convention, a booth hosted by Republicanmarket was selling a pin Saturday that says: If Obama is President will we still call it the White House.”
Category / Racism
Watson, Can You Smear Me?
Many things have been written about James Watson’s inglorious Imus homage, but for my money, Annalee’s column, pointing out the remarkable arrogance and needless associations with race and gender, is one of the few that consider the expansive context.
Leigh Robbins — The Racist Exemplar
Leigh Robbins, a 35-year-old housewife, genuinely believes that she was fulfilling her maternal duties. The truly sickening aspect of her story, which delayed a flight for more than twelve hours, isn’t so much her fear of brown-skinned people, which is quite evident in Robbins’s attempt to get her sons off a plane that, lo and behold, happened to have seven Iraqis on board. It was the way in which Robbins justified her racism with these quotes:
“How can you overreact when it’s your children?”
“I’m very sorry, but I’d do anything to protect my kids.”
Robbins’s excuses are very much grounded in the hermetic seal of the nuclear family archetype. The horror from six years ago has so successfully indoctrinated its way into public consciousness that it is no longer a matter of remembering (“Never forget!” read many of the signs here in New York), but a matter of fulfilling one’s basic domestic duties.
9/11 is no longer the smoking gun. Hollywood is — to some extent. It is no longer a matter of accessing one’s general sense of reality. It is, as Robbins observed, a matter of comparative metaphor. “It was very frightening, like something out of a movie,” said Robbins.
There are important questions here which must be asked: Why didn’t the plane’s passengers stick up for the Iraqi men? They were questioned by American Airlines, as if they were the villains. Why was Robbins’s ostensible safety valued over that of the Iraqi men? Does Robbins truly comprehend the callous fury she has unearthed?
Never mind their ethnicity. Why in America were seven men — who served their country — considered lesser than one racist homemaker, who served nothing more than graham crackers and juice?
EXCLUSIVE: Prepub Version of Kenneth Eng’s Column!!!
San Francisco Chronicle: “The 22-year-old author of a column titled ‘Why I Hate Blacks’ in the regional newspaper AsianWeek has been dismissed, and the paper’s editors said Wednesday that they suffered ‘a serious lapse in editorial judgment’ when they published his column.”
Return of the Reluctant has obtained a version of Kenneth Eng’s racist column that was circulated shortly after it hit the AsianWeek copy desk.
Why I Hate Niggers Blacks
Kenneth Eng, Feb 23, 2007
Here is a list of reasons why we should discriminate against blacks and string them up, [Editor: shouldn’t we clarify the order here? Also, save the “stringing up” angle for a future column.] starting from the most obvious down to the least obvious:
� Blacks hate us and wish to copulate with our daughters. Every Asian who has ever come across them knows that they take almost every opportunity to fuck our women [Copy desk: Yes, we’re aware of the evils of miscegenation, but do you think you can tone it down? This is a family newspaper. See recommended change.] hurl racist remarks at us.
In my experience, I would say about 100 90 percent [Legal: Leave margin of error in event of lawsuit.] of blacks I have met, regardless of age, penis size, or environment, poke fun at the very sight of an Asian. Furthermore, their activity in the media proves their hatred. [Editor: Examples?]: Rush Hour, Exit Wounds, Hot 97, etc.
� Contrary to media depictions, I would argue that blacks are easily exploited weak-willed. They are the only race that has been enslaved for 300 years. It’s unbelievable that it took them that long to fight back.
On the other hand, we could have been slaveholders during the Civil War [See recommended historical example.] slaughtered the Russians in the Japanese-Russo War.
� Blacks are easy to coerce. This is proven by the fact that so many of them cannot play mahjong and insist on dominoes, including Reverend Al Sharpton, tend to be Christians.
Yet, at the same time, they spend much of their time whining about fried chicken how much they hate “the whites that oppressed them.”
Correct me if I’m wrong, but didn’t they steal dominoes from us? wasn’t Christianity the religion that the whites forced upon them?
� Blacks don’t get it. [Copy desk: Cover our asses with doubtful statement!] I know it’s a blunt and crass comment, but it’s true. When I was in high school, I recall a class debate in which one half of the class was chosen to defend black slavery and the other half was chosen to defend liberation.
Disturbingly, blacks on the prior side viciously defended slavery as well as Christianity. They say if you don’t study history, you’re condemned to repeat it. In high school, I only remember one black student ever attending any of my honors and AP courses. [Editor: Good, Ken, but we need something more sensational here. Can you invent something along the lines of cheating?] And that student was caught cheating.
It is rather troubling that they are treated as heroes, but then again, any of the non-Asian races [Ted wants us to play up the evils of the white liberal.] whites will do anything to defend them.
[NOTE: If Ken can’t turn around the edits, do you think we could get Michelle Malkin to finish up this piece? I’ll talk with you about all this after the racial tolerance meeting. (Why this diversity nonsense? Do they really think we’re that racist?) Thanks!]
Broadway’s Racial Divide
New York Times: “Urban theater — or what has been called over the years inspirational theater, black Broadway, gospel theater and the chitlin circuit — has been thriving for decades, selling out some of the biggest theaters across the country and grossing millions of dollars a year….The word in the industry is that urban theater is about to go mainstream.”
So let me get this straight. Theater that has proven consistently popular among audiences and that has consistently sold out theaters is not considered mainstream? Simply because of the race of its cast and theatergoers? I have to ask: What does African American-based theater have to do in order to be recognized as “mainstream?” Or perhaps the answer is more ingenuous: Great Jumping Jehosophat! Black people attend the theater too!
In fact, the Times, reporting on New Brunswick theatrical developments (including an all-black version of David Mamet’s American Buffalo), published more or less the same article nearly twenty years ago. Great Jumping Jehosophat! Black people attend the theater too!
A few weeks ago, I attended a revival of Follies, now playing in New York City Center. And one of the things that troubled me about the Follies show was that not one of the theatergoers was African-American. Every single person was white. The only black people in the room were the ushers directing septuagenarians to their seats. And it had me wondering whether I was living in 1957 or 2007.
Granted, one does not attend a Stephen Sondheim revival to find black people. But just as Hollywood continues to remain baffled that black people see movies, Broadway (or, more specifically, the New York Times) does not seem to understand that black people do indeed attend theater and that, heaven forfend, there may be something to this so-called “urban theater” after all! Yes, darling, this “urban theater” is something we simply muuuuuuuust bring up at the next neighborhood association meeting! But we muuuuuuuust see Follies first!
Why this ridiculous categorization of “urban theater?” I certainly don’t call Zora Neale Hurston an “urban writer,” Tupac Shakur an “urban rapper,” Paul Laurence Dunbar an “urban poet” or Scott Joplin an “urban pianist” (although at the 1893 World’s Fair, Joplin was banned from performing ragtime inside the Midway, presumably because he was considered too “urban”). I admire an artist great not because she is “urban” or because she has a darker skin color, but because she produces great art.