The offensiveness is obvious. Yet racist remarks keep popping out of mouths as if they make sense to say.
Recently a female news anchor in St. Louis was criticized by a viewer for “being very Asian” and advised her to “keep her Korean to herself.”
The viewer’s reaction came after a food segment on the show when the anchor said she ate dumpling soup like many Koreans do.
The positive part of this incident is that the anchor, Michelle Li of KDSK-TV, received an outpouring of support. She also paired up with Gia Vang, a Hmong anchor on KARE in Minneapolis, to offer merchandise with the logo “Very Asian,” with proceeds going to the Asian American Journalists Association.
Asian American journalists, of course, aren’t the only targets of such racist behavior, but it doesn’t seem unusual enough. At a small daily newspaper years ago a journalist of Japanese ancestry said a source told her she should change her name to an “American” one. The source was talking to a woman whose family members had been imprisoned in U.S. internment camps during World War II. And here in southern Minnesota, MPR News reporter Hannah Yang wrote in 2020 about being in a store and overhearing whispers of: “Trump should send them back,” and “She looks diseased.”
It was soon after COVID-19 picked up momentum here in March 2020 that reports increased of Asian Americans being insulted, yelled at and refused service. At the Minnesota Department of Health, a hotline set up to field COVID-related questions received numerous calls complaining about Asian Americans. The state Department of Human Rights also received an increase in reports from Asian Americans who felt victimized.
Gold medal gymnastics winner Suni Lee, of St. Paul, is of Hmong descent and said when she was in Los Angeles in the fall, a car drove by and occupants shouted racist slurs and told Lee and her friends to go back where they came from. One of the passengers pepper-sprayed Lee’s arm.
The “us vs. them” mentality has infected too much of our civil discourse. It’s been around for a long time, but the Trump era made it OK to be more bold about being bigoted, anti-ethnic and misogynistic — in general making it acceptable to be pro-white at the expense of everyone else.
No culture or ethnicity has ever been the chosen one, despite what some people like to think. Shame on those who still believe you can be too anything that isn’t white and of northern European ancestry.
America is growing more diverse by the day, and that’s not going to subside. Even in southern Minnesota, the 2020 census shows minority populations are growing while the white population is shrinking. And more people identified themselves as multi-racial.
In other words, get used to the variety of people in our society in Minnesota and across the nation who go to school, show up at work, pay taxes and deliver the news.
And if you can’t accept that, at least keep your racist thoughts to yourself.
Commented
Sorry, there are no recent results for popular commented articles.