The Right to be Racist Against Asians

Topic: Media

By Irwin Tang

Special to ModelMinority.com

January 5, 2003

If you are Asian American and you have grown up in America, you have heard it all your life. It is often associated with a shove, spit, and mob violence. It means to you, “Go back to China or wherever you’re from!” It means, “You aren’t American, you’re a dog!”

It’s that old “ching-chong-ah-soooh-wah-ngwah-ngwah” song that racists sing when they are attempting to defile your language, your culture, and your family. It’s the song that Shaquille O’Neill sang to Yao Ming last month when he told reporters, “Tell Yao Ming, ‘yayangwahwangngaongchong!’”

Shaquille O’Neill attempted to de-humanize Yao Ming just like the great Ty Cobb tried to dehumanize Jackie Robinson, the first black major league baseball player. Furthermore, combined with Shaq’s earlier comments – saying that he would greet Yao with an elbow to the face, for one – Shaq reveals to us a dangerous mentality. This combination of violence and racism encourages an attitude among the lesser civilized which translates into racial violence, a major problem for Asian Americans.

Shaq’s racism inspired Tony Bruno, the host of the nationwide Tony Bruno Morning Extravaganza radio show on the Fox Sports Network, to lead a special anti-Asian show (on Dec 17), during which he cracked racist jokes against Chinese and encouraged his listeners to call in and email their racist jokes concerning Yao and Chinese people.

Unfortunately the ripples from Shaq’s comments don't stop at the nation's borders. Shaq, an American sports ambassador whether he likes it or not, has shown the world the ugliest side of our nation. After keeping Wen Ho Lee in solitary confinement for nine months on racially-influenced spy charges and after the CIA-goofed bombing of the Chinese embassy in Yugoslavia, the United States was on the verge of recovering our image. Until now. Shaq has unashamedly disgraced our nation.

Demonstrating that Asian Americans surely cannot be as important or valuable, or as human, as white or black Americans, the media has all but ignored Shaq’s comments. The Houston Chronicle, Yao’s new hometown paper, has not even reported on the incident. No national article of note has been written. Betraying their own nose for controversy, reporters haven’t even asked what Yao thinks of the comments.

The media wishes to reserve its right to poke fun at Asians, and if the media criticizes Shaquille O’Neill for it, they can’t do it themselves. After all, we are the last minority group the media is allowed to trash.

What does Steve Francis have to say about Shaq’s racial taunting of his Rockets teammate? Do other players have anything to say about this? The silence of the NBA administration and all other NBA players screams out that the Association and its basketball players are racist themselves, or that they don’t mind a little racism, as long as it’s against Asians.

If Larry Bird in his heyday had made racist comments toward the Nigerian American Hakeem Olajuwon, the press would have had a field day, teeing off on Bird’s beak. After all, Jimmy the Greek, Howard Cosell, and Dan Isell were pressured out of their jobs for racial comments. Fuzzy Zoeller and John Rocker were ostracized for their racial and homophobic remarks. But Shaq’s case is different. He’s black. And he’s popular. And he’s offending Asian Americans, which most Americans consider fair play.

Shaquille O’Neill and the NBA must not only apologize for the racist comment, they must tell the people that this type of language and behavior is wrong and racist, that Shaq’s actions must not be emulated. After all, it seems, a lot of Americans (and especially the media) don’t understand or accept that.

huh? im slow hahah.. very! i should change mai sn too MzSloSlo.. but n e waiz i dun get how diz have to do with khmer? or are you talking bout African and Caucasian Americans hatin on chinesez.. so wat does da chinesez feel bout hatin khmer?

i onno.. as u can c im very slow... but nvm.. i gonna shut up now!

In this forums I don't see hardly any hate toward Khmer from Chinese or even Thai, what I see is from mostly Vietnamese but it also vise versa.

Agreed.... but there are Khmer who goes to the Vietnamese Forum and post hate against them as well(Khmer Krom). I don't feel any Chinese are racist to Khmer.

Well I'm not sure what your point is here, FKR. If you are trying to compare the Khmer experience in China to Chinese experience of discrimination in the USA this article doesn't particularily fit.

If you are trying to point out that in America that minorities discriminate against other minorities, you have proven that.

The Shaq business is old news. He's already apologized and Yao Ming is not affected by it. I don't expect everyone in America to be non-racists.

welcome to last year