The Korea Times this weekend had this editorial from a Daniel Hong about the relationships between Western men and Asian women. It seems like the Korean newspapers just can’t get enough about talking about relationships between Western men and Asian women as is evident by the amount of articles that have been published on this subject. Anyway this particular article I find quite offensive. Here is just the start to it:
I had never paid attention to the arrangement of the evening news anchors, a young Korean woman paired off with an old white man, at my local TV channel in Seattle until I heard Sheridan Prasso’s lecture at the University of Washington the other day. “Have you seen an Asian man teamed with a white woman on the news?” she prodded. Prasso, a former Business Week Asia editor, in her new book, “The Asian Mystique: Dragon Ladies, Geisha Girls & Our Fantasies of the Exotic Orient,” asserted that the Westerners’ misconstrued perception of Asian women made it impossible to create the odd pair.
Ms. Sheridan is alledging that Asian women cannot be put on TV and deliver news to the public due to stereotypes about them. Ms. Sheridan must not get out much from her liberal paradise of the University of Washington because growing up in Colorado and watching the Denver Channel 9 News, the news station has a Asian female news anchor Adele Arakawa who is originally from Hawaii but her grandparents imigrated to Hawaii from Okinawa, Japan. This news station didn’t have any problems having an Asian woman anchoring the news. In fact the news station had two more Asian female reporters, one Quynh Nguyen of Vietnamese family origins and Jinah Kim who is originally from Seoul, Korea.
 Obviously this stereotype isn’t very strong in my conservative state of Colorado if we got all these Asian women all over our television screens giving us the news. So how is this stereotype alive and well according to Ms. Sheridan in her People’s Republic of Washington? I thought liberals were all fair and open minded? Seems like an Asian women delivering the news in Washington shouldn’t be a problem especially with such a high Asian population; unless it’s the liberals that are the one’s that believe the stereotypes. So how did three Asian women get hired in Colorado with a very small Asian population? This may be a shock to some kooks out there but maybe they were hired because they are really good news reporters and the stereotype of submissive Asian women didn’t play into the decision to hire them. In fact Adele Arakawa is a highly respected and recognized news anchor:
Adele has received 5 regional emmys in the Heartland Region NATAS awards, including 3 for best anchor. In 1997, the emmy was awarded for coverage of the Oklahoma City Bombing. In 1999, the recognition came for coverage of the Columbine shootings. And in 2004, the Best Anchor award was based on a compilation of the year’s work. She has also received a national 1st place award in 1991 for reporting from the Asian American Journalists Association. The report was a 3-part series on the 50th anniversary of the bombing of Pearl Harbor. Adele has received numerous other awards from both community and professional organizations.
Adele served as president of the Chicago chapter of the Asian American Journalists Association in 1992. She is a member of the Japanese American Citizens League, the Japanese American Service Committee and the Japan America Society of Colorado.
I have disproved Ms. Sheridan’s theory in 10 minutes of typing. I’m sure there are more Asian women out there on TV reporting the news. Just off the top of my head I see Michelle Malkin on the news all the time. I wonder how much money the university payed her to teach these false allegations to the student at the University of Washington? Our tax dollars at work.
Now that I have proven Asian females can work in the news industry lets move on to other allegations from Ms. Sheridan:
Still on the streets in Bangkok, as she witnesses numerous Asian women escorting Western men with bald heads and pot bellies, she couldn’t help but think, “What are they thinking? What does she want for dating the paunchy middle-aged man?” She believes that the Western man exploited the Asian woman, and vice versa: the Asian woman out of her need for money and Western man out of his sexual desire. Not only from the street but also from the growth in demand for mail order brides from Asian countries testifies to the exploitation, she laments.
It is true the sex industry in the country of Thailand is out of control but that is because of the poverty there. It is the same thing in the Phillipines and was once the case here in Korea. However, it is not strictly an Asian phenomenom. She needs to go to Eastern Europe and see all the exploited women there. Same thing in Africa. The bottom line is that where there is poverty there will be those who will exploit it in the sex industry be it Asia, Africa, or Europe. Also keep in mind that it works the other way around to. I can’t count the number of GI’s in Dongducheon I have seen wiped out by Phillipino and Russian “drinky girls.” These “drinky girls” must not have gotten the memo that they are supposed to be submissive and obey all commands from the Western man.
Here is what will really piss a lot people off:
Later in the discussion session after her lecture, I raised several questions: “Who are those Western men or Americans chasing after Asian females? Aren’t they what the Southern Californians would call, UCLA (Ugly Caucasians Living with Asians)? Aren’t they at the bottom of the Darwin’s food chain that they couldn’t get what they want in their own land because of their low social status and therefore only option left for them is to chase after those Asians? I know, without any empirical data, it’ll be difficult to press the argument” Prasso admitted that it is true partially and added, “Just street wisdom will give us a telling insight. In England where I used to live, they say that if you can’t make it here, that is, to find your girlfriend, go to Hong Kong.”
I don’t know where to begin on this one? But let me just sum it up this way; this may be a shock to these people but maybe the Western men that marry Asian women simply love their wives for who they are and did not marry them because they are alledgedly submissive and exotic.
Anyway, I’m assuming the writer Daniel Hong is Korean because of his last name, but he is clearly a racist, along with Ms. Sheridan, and by association the Korea Times for allowing such a piece of trash as this article to be published. I find it interesting that a Korean man and a so called open minded liberal are the ones passing along and reinforcing the negative stereotypes about Asian women. In their effort to defend Asian women these people have actually only furthered harmed their image and have shown that they are the real racists not Western men. What is really sad is that they probably don’t even know it.