Journalist, Author & Syndicated Columnist
When trolls can’t come up with a decent argument to defend their point of view, this is how they attack. ✔️ First, they attack your gender. ✔️ Second, they attack your race.
✔️ Third, they add xenophobia into the mix.
Thinking about it now, I see so many things that I didn’t as a young reporter. I see their white privilege, which was tinged with racism, sexism and jealousy. How dare an *unqualified* Asian woman whose intelligence obviously was inferior to their own have a more prestigious and higher-paying job than they had? I must’ve gotten my job because I’m a woman. I must’ve been an Affirmative Action hiree. In their minds, I was the reason they didn’t have better jobs.
Singer Sam Smith got skewered on social media for a series of tweets. After witnessing his friend being abused due to his race, Smith said he was astounded that something like this could happen in London. His tweets clearly were well intentioned. But some folks wondered how he could be so naive as to not know that these things happened on a somewhat regular basis to people of color — especially since the anti-Muslim, anti-Pakastani, anti-Syrian sentiment in the U.K. has been covered extensively in the media there.
• At 4, I wondered what a chink bitch was.
• At 5, I came home from kindergarten singing, “Chink-a-chink-a Chinaman, sitting on a fence.”
• At 6, I watched in horror as a blond boy called my father a motherfucking gook.
My bullies were the worst kind of dude bros: educated men who should’ve known better, but who cloaked their misogyny, racism, jealousy and entitlement with words they thought made them appear hip and clever.
Vincent Chin’s murderers served no jail time. They killed him, but the legal system allowed them to literally get away with murder.
News organizations are making the claim that Korean culture is partially to blame for the Sewol ferry disaster. Some even insist that had these been American children onboard, they would’ve escaped death. Shame on them for blaming the young victims of this tragedy.
Our local Boy Scout troop could’ve had an opportunity to learn that there are repercussions to their actions; and that sometimes, the worst action is in pretending that a wrong never happened. Instead, they learned that if they deny something enough, they can get away with being cruel to youngsters and disrespecting members of their community.
So, ya’ll have read about Oprah and the salesclerk at some chi-chi Swiss handbag boutique, right? Ms. Winfrey wanted to see a purse that retailed for just under $40,000. The clerk repeatedly told her it was very expensive and wouldn’t show it to her. Have any of you had a similar thing happen? I have, on a much smaller scale.
Someone privately messaged me and asked why I wrote so much about things that had happened in the past. Do I write about it so much? I’ve been writing professionally for the past three decades and I’d estimate that my pieces surrounding race issues encompass less than 1% of everything I’ve ever written.