mehreenkasana:

There’s a certain mindset in Pakistan and other Asian cultures (thanks to colonizers showing up a few decades ago) where speaking English with efficiency is considered a marker of higher social status and intelligence. Which is, pardon me, bullshit. So when I was teaching elementary level and high school students, and the medium was stressed to be English, I broke several rules and gained the disapproval of the administration. I said that the student would speak in whatever language they chose. It could be Urdu, Punjabi, Pashto, Persian, Siraiki, I don’t care because communication was essential. I also told the principal that humiliating people simply because their English was inaccurate, is utterly ridiculous and wrong. My students knew that they did not owe anyone proficiency in English. If they wished to learn, wonderful. If they found it difficult, no big deal. To create a stratification based on a language that isn’t even ours to begin with, is wrong because the young one feels obligated to learn something not because learning is beautiful, but because they will be treated better.

And that has to stop. Quit picking on non-English speakers for their mistakes.

feministfilm:

drvy:

“Me love you long time” came into prominence with Stanley Kubrick’s “Full Metal Jacket,” (from 1987) as a Vietnamese prostitute tries to pick up Matthew Modine’s character with broken English. The phrase was then popularly picked up by 2 Live Crew in the song “Me So Horny.”

“It’s so many different kinds of slurs in one,” comedian Margaret Cho said. “It’s instantly putting you in the position of being a foreigner, an outsider and a sexual stereotype. It’s an all-in-one combo.”

~naturallaw for yahoo questions

The popularization by Mariah Carey’s ‘Love You Long Time,’ Fergie’s ‘London Bridge,’ and Nicki Minaj’s ““Muahhhh me love you long time like I’m asian” demonstrates how this exotification of Asian/A.American women is constantly recycled in the media, perpetuated by celebrities to obtain the hyper-sexualized image needed to make it big, especially if you ain’t got the talent.

I would get started on Nicki’s whole hyper-sexualized, Japanese dolled up shit, but racialious says it best. Well researched: here http://www.racialicious.com/2010/11/01/the-orientalism-of-nicki-minaj/

You can degrade yourself, but no, my sisters and I will NOT love you long time. 

I’m sure we’ve posted about this before, but it always bears repeating.

(via kryptoswag)

(via racebending)

Fortunately for now, most of America just sees Asian-Americans as cute little socially awkward entertainers or one possible exotic choice in sex partners. (The wise, inscrutable stereotype usually only goes to foreign-born Asians. It’s hard to sound wise with a California accent.)

I say “fortunately” because I guess I’d rather be patronized than worry about getting beaten, in the same sense that I’d rather have my wallet stolen than get my kidneys stolen. But the existence of kidney thieves doesn’t make pickpocketing OK, and it doesn’t mean people being pickpocketed should shut up and stop whining and be grateful they still have all their organs.

Read more: 4 Things The Jeremy Lin Story Reveals About Modern Racism | Cracked.com http://www.cracked.com/blog/4-things-jeremy-lin-story-reveals-about-modern-racism/#ixzz1ngyjlzDx

“You can really see the creaky, rusty wheels turning as people struggle to make Jeremy Lin puns and race-related jokes. You can see the panic in people’s eyes, going “Oh shit, I forgot these people even existed. I am really going to have to scramble to remember what stereotypes we are supposed to have about them.”

“All they end up showing is that Americans have about 10 Asian jokes that they play over and over again on repeat like songs on a Clear Channel radio station: small penis, yellow puns, pidgin accent (love you long time), slanty eyes, eating dogs/cats, weird food, good at math, martial arts, bad drivers and owning laundries, which is particularly sad because apparently Americans haven’t gathered enough new jokes since the 1800s to bump the laundry joke off the list.”

Read the whole article!

(Source: lightspeedsound)

Jeremy Lin’s Pop Culture Slam Dunk (WSJ)

fuck the haters, GO JEREMY.

(via jesifiable)

(via jesifiable)

mizmlee:

“You’re clearly not white and encounter tons of ignorance from that circumstance, but you’re still more socially accepted than black and latino group due to “positive stereotypes” (bullshit IMO) and thus receive better access to resources i.e. health care, education. “

As an…

I appreciate your thoughtful posts though, and from the looks of it, I can tell that you’ve been opening up to discourse on these issues with respect that not many other people have with such sensitive issues, hah.

I understand that it does get really confusing with the generalizing term of Asians, since it is very diverse in itself.

To clarify a little bit, it is true that Asians are often the bigger minority when it comes to education, actually especially to education, and that is honestly, I think, coming from a big part of the traditional cultural family values, but we’re just as invisible where it matters just as much: the media, where people will judge how socially acceptable different ethnic cultures and people of that culture are.

For example, look at how anime and manga have grown so popular in America. Look at how everyone knows what Korean BBQ and sushi are, and the list goes on.

Now look at Hollywood movies. How many of those do you know actually come from Asia? The Departed is based on the Hong Kong classic Infernal Affairs. The Grudge and The Ring? Japanese horror movies first. Dragonball Evolution. Speed Racer. 21.The Last Airbender. And just recently, the Akira remake that’s revived its whitewashed self 4 times, Hollywood won’t let die.

These are all stories that originally have rich Asian cultural traits and meanings behind them with Asian characters in those stories. But when it comes on the big screen, where it all matters, where the most people will see it, the people themselves are conveniently erased or replaced with white actors and the stories become botched Americanized versions that most of the time do not honor the source material at all. My biggest gripe is The Last Airbender, which the cartoon series was made in America, and it honors Asian culture like I’ve never seen anything else do, and that’s why many people love it, and to have all those Asian characters be portrayed by obvious white people in the movie, it was such a huge slap to the face.

That’s where I’m coming from when I say the people themselves aren’t as socially acceptable as many think. It’s what these ethnic people bring and what they offer and whether that can be used for the audience they’re catering to (most likely white) that matters. If you look at history a bit, that mentality has held true for a long time. What did the people take from the Native Americans that can be used for them alone? Land, resources, etc.

Anyways, I digress, but thank you for the opening the convo up, and you’re doing just fine with how you’re handling the topics.

(Source: voguedissent)

David So is one of my fave vloggers and comedians these days. He’s relatively new to the scene after getting really well known for his Alexandra Wallace response vid, which is absolutely hilarious but this is the first time he’s being really serious, jokes aside, in responding to the terrible 7 vs 1 Asian teen that got beat in the midst of a gang war.

The second half hits home so hard for me personally. My parents escaped Vietnam in the aftermath of the Vietnam War and they lost everything in the process. It was a matter of survival getting into this country, for them, and for every other Asian immigrant. After all that suffering, to come to this country only to have your child also suffer like that, at a school, after hoping and dreaming for a better life with an education they couldn’t get in their homeland? And the fact that it was an Asian on Asian incident, I just can’t see nor understand how the perps don’t realize how much common ground we have in our history as Asian Americans, first or second generation.

Even more heartbreaking is that this is definitely not the only incident that is such the case.

(Source: mindyslilittybittyblog, via mindyslilittybittyblog)

racemash:

voguedissent:

Today is Martin Luther King, Jr.’s birthday, and in his honor, the Black students’ union sent out an email summing up MLK’s life, politics and legacy, along with a reminder of what we students can do. The email was sent to the Black students’ union email listserv and the Latino students’ union listserv.

But not to the Asian students’ union listserv.

Why the resistance to including Asians as people

Read More

“You’re clearly not white and encounter tons of ignorance from that circumstance, but you’re still more socially accepted than black and latino group due to “positive stereotypes” (bullshit IMO) and thus receive better access to resources i.e. health care, education. “

As an Asian American, I will have to slightly disagree with that statement, that Asians are more “socially acceptably.” It is not the people who are socially acceptable, it is our products.

By products I mean our food, history, mythology, culture, our martial arts, and dare I say it, the “exotic” nature of all that and more. Our products eventually became fetishized for most white people to consume and mold into their society.

In media, the Asian people are just as shafted and pigeon holed into the typecast roles that a white consumer society established for them, and if an Asian isn’t emulating any of those “positive stereotypes,” (ie if you don’t know kung fu, if you’re not nerd or geek smart, if you are not an Asian female that can be hypersexualized into an exotic trophy for the white man to win), you are denied opportunities and privileges just like anyone else of color.

Anyways, yeah wtf Asians are too of color and we love MLK as much as anyone does.

(via kryptoswag)