Ted And The Paranoia Of Reading Asian American Blogs

Asian American blogs are great. They are wonderful resources that I wish I had when I was growing up. Being raised in the Midwest, I had no clue about the events affecting AA's around the country. There was a distinct feeling of isolation, as if I was the only person going through this Asian American reality. Now there is a whole universe of websites and blogs posted by other AA's who I can relate to and gain insight into my own experience.

However be careful what you wish for. Blogs like Angry Asian Man publicize the wonderful achievements of AA's but they also frequently write about the ugly side of discrimination in America. Whether the discrimination is overt or intentional, this steady torrent of racist acts against AA's soon started making me paranoid. Did somebody just make a racist remark to me at work? Was I passed up for a promotion because I'm Asian? Did somebody just cut me off on the road because I'm not white? Or are all these feelings just in my head and I'm overthinking situations?

I recently saw the movie Ted. I loved that movie. I hadn't laughed so hard in the theater in a long time. There is a scene in the movie though that made me feel uncomfortable. During the party scene, Flash Gordon punches a hole in the apartment wall clear through to the adjacent apartment. Who is on the other side? An Asian dude holding a live duck. He starts screaming at the partiers in thick Chinglish claiming he was about to cook the duck for dinner. Mayhem ensues. Granted Seth MacFarlane's claim to fame is his offensive humor directed at all races, religions, and sexual orientation. See his TV show "Family Guy" for an example. But during "Ted" I couldn't help but laugh self-consciously and uncomfortably at the chaos on screen. Isn't this a little too racist for the 2010's. Would the audience laugh as hard if they showed a black person getting ready to eat fried chicken?

I used to laugh at Asian characters in other movies that are now considered racist. Remember the infamous Long Duk Dong in "Sixteen Candles"? The play on Asian sounding names as well as his foreignness are clearly there to get cheap laughs from a Western audience. Another famous Asian movie person was the Japanese guy Takashi in "Revenge of the Nerds." Again, his obvious foreign accent and cluelessness about Americans is played for laughs.

Funny I never felt funny about laughing at those characters, along with the audience, at that time. I never realized how racist movie parts can be hurtful. It was not until I watched "Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story" that I first saw how racist Hollywood could be. Bruce was sitting in the theater with his white girlfriend watching "Breakfast at Tiffany" when one of the most racist movie roles ever put on screen appeared, Mickey Rooney's Mr. Yunioshi. With his pulled back eyelids, buck teeth, and thick accent, this was the equivalent of wearing blackface in its horrible depiction of another race. While the white movegoers laughed, Bruce Lee sat cold silent. His girlfriend was laughing too until she looked over at him and realized how terrible this Mr. Yunioshi made somebody feel about themselves. That's the first time I can remember understanding racism in popular media.

Now with Asian American blogs documenting racism all over the place, I feel like I'm always on the lookout for racism. Is it better that we are now more sensitive about hurting the sensibilities of other races? Yes. Does it make my life better knowing that racism is all around us and otherwise intelligent people still make racist acts, whether intentional or not? No. I just get inflamed over something that sometimes maybe I should just forget instead of allowing it to mentally fester in my head for hours or days afterwards. Can't somebody write happy Asian blogs?