Tag: racism

Here is a story about the “peaceful” protesters in Chicago and a Korean-American shop owner:

The crowd was growing impatient as Crystal Holmes fumbled with the keys to the store.

Dozens of people were swarming the street around Western Beauty Supply, the Chicago shop where Holmes works. She had persuaded some of them to let her open the store so they could rob it without breaking the windows.

“She’s taking too long,” someone yelled. “Let’s go in and get it.”

Western Beauty Supply sells products like wigs, hair extensions and combs mostly to Black women. Most of the employees, like Holmes, are also Black, but the owner is a Korean American man, Yong Sup Na.

When a few young men appeared outside the store earlier that evening in May, Na went out to speak with them. He offered some of them cash, and they walked away. At that point, Na told Holmes that he felt confident his business was safe. “They are not going to break into the store,” he told her.

A few minutes later, though, a larger group showed up. A woman snatched Na’s keys, but Holmes persuaded her to give them back. Then she ordered Na, her boss, to leave. “You don’t know what could happen,” she told him.

Even as Holmes tried to save the store from ruin that evening, when protests and looting followed the police killing of George Floyd, she understood what was causing the turmoil roiling Chicago and dozens of other cities.

“I understand where the rage is coming from,” Holmes, 40, said in an interview. “We don’t have any businesses in the community and we are getting killed by the police and killing each other, and we are just getting tired.”

New York Times

You can read more at the link, but I think there should be some self reflection here instead of blaming Koreans for being “insular” as described in the article.

How come a guy who came to the country in his late 20’s with no money and not speaking the language was able to become a successful shop owner who put his kids through college, but people with all the advantages of being born in the US could not? If you read the article there are some hints why.

Another idiot going down in flames for making a racist comment:

A man who was accused of telling Korean-American entrepreneur Sophia Chang, 28, to “go back to Wuhan” was fired from his job Tuesday at Prudential, a Newark-based financial advising firm, the company confirmed.

Around 6 p.m. on Sept. 12, Sophia Chang and her sister were eating dinner at Bluewater Grill in Newport Beach, California when the man “made direct eye contact” with the women and told them to “go back to Wuhan” as he headed to the bathroom, Chang wrote in an Instagram post. When the man returned from the bathroom and the women questioned him, she says he responded, “I don’t speak Chinese.” This comment is not seen in the video.

Following the incident, Chang posted the video to her Instagram where it racked up over 800,000 views. The post — which does not show the “go back to Wuhan” comment — sparked outrage, with people calling for the man to be identified and held accountable for his alleged comments. The man was identified as a financial representative for Prudential, which confirmed his firing.

NBC News

You can read more at the link.

 U.S. military leaders have been unusually outspoken about the need to address institutional racism amid a growing wave of civil unrest over the latest killing of a black man in police custody.

Many black service members speaking Sunday at a forum organized by U.S. Forces Korea welcomed the outrage but called for words to be translated into deeds.

Sgt. Dasha Long, 35, thanked U.S. Forces Korea commander Gen. Robert Abrams for tackling the long taboo topic, saying the discussion was an important first step.

“This isn’t new, right? But it feels like it took too long for us to hear something about it,” Long said, wearing a T-shirt emblazoned with the phrase “I Can’t Breathe,” which was uttered by George Floyd before he died as a white Minneapolis police officer kneeled on his neck for nearly nine minutes on May 25.

“I feel safer outside the country that I serve than I do in it, so I want to know aside from words what actions are going to take place because I’m tired,” she said.

Anger over Floyd’s death, which was captured on video, has sparked massive protests calling for racial justice and an end to police brutality in the United States. It also has led to soul searching in the military, which has long prided itself as promoting diversity.

Nearly 19% of active-duty enlisted service members are black, but that number falls sharply to just under 9% when it comes to officers, according to a 2018 Defense Department demographics report. Many also complain that they are unfairly targeted by the military justice system and receive unfair sentences compared to their white counterparts.

Stars & Stripes

You can read more at the link, but I am willing to bet that if the Stars and Stripes took a poll most white soldiers stationed in South Korea would also agree that they feel safer there than back in the U.S. So this is not an exclusively a black soldier issue.

As far as the 9% officer issue, this is caused by societal issues larger than the Army. To become an officer you need to have a four year college degree and either commission through ROTC or OCS. If the number of African-Americans graduating from four year universities increases, the number of officers will also increase.

There is no doubt there are stupid, racist people out there, but it seems to me the media is just eager to create another victim group and sensationalizing a few random incidents:

When Eddie Song leaves his Manhattan home, it can feel like heading into battle. The Korean American startup founder and avid rider dons his armored motorcycle jacket, motorcycle gloves, a skull face mask and a GoPro camera.

“The GoPro is on all the time whenever I leave the house now. Basically it’s a rolling camera,” Song said. “With the combination of looking intimidating and having the camera — if they pick a fight with me, they know I’m prepared.”

As the coronavirus first seen in China now ravages the U.S., Asian Americans are continuing to wrestle with a second epidemic: hate. Hundreds of attacks on Asian people have been reported, with few signs of decline. Rather than feel helpless, many are filming their interactions or carrying guns.

Associated Press

You can read more at the link, but the AP article of course gives the obligatory reference that this is all Trump’s fault for calling it the “China Virus”.

I just don’t understand how someone could win a major volleyball match to qualify for the Olympics and the first thing to come to mind is to make the slant eye gesture?:

The South Korean national volleyball federation said Wednesday it will lodge a complaint against a Russian women’s team coach for his racist gesture following a recent match.

Russia defeated South Korea 3-2 (21-25, 20-25, 25-22, 25-16, 15-11) in the final Group E match of the FIVB Women’s Volleyball Intercontinental Olympic Qualification Tournament at DS Yantarny in Kaliningrad, Russia, on Sunday (local time). With that victory, Russia earned direct qualification for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. In post-match celebration, Sergio Busato, an Italian-born assistant coach for Russia, was photographed making the slant-eye, racist gesture.

Russian website Sport 24 carried a photo of Busato with his two index fingers on his eyes. The accompanying blurb simply said the coach “did not hide his positive emotions” and showed a gesture depicting narrow eyes, with no mention of the gesture’s implications.

FIFA bans this and other discriminatory gestures under its disciplinary code and once sanctioned Colombian midfielder Edwin Cardona, who resorted to the act in a friendly against South Korea in November 2017. But FIVB, the international volleyball federation, isn’t known to have specific rules against racist or discriminatory acts.The South Korean national volleyball federation said Wednesday it will lodge a complaint against a Russian women’s team coach for his racist gesture following a recent match.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

I have never watched a Harry Potter movie, but on the racism scale this seems pretty thin:

The final trailer for Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald contained a jaw-dropping character reveal that has some Harry Potter fans fuming. As it turns out, one of the prequel franchise’s “new” characters, played by Claudia Kim, is actually a familiar villain from the original series: Voldemort’s evil snake companion Nagini. Author and screenwriter J.K. Rowling tweeted that she’d been sitting on this secret “for around 20 years.” But social media skeptics say that Nagini’s shocking past as a Korean woman seems highly implausible and possibly racist.  (……)

Fans are picking up on a few problems with this change. First, there’s the issue of representation: Nagini is only the second significant Asian character introduced in the Potterverse, and we know that her fate involves being the murdering pet reptile of a wizard who believes those without “pure blood” should not live. This plays into a couple of nasty stereotypes about Asian women often scene in Hollywood films: the sinister, exotic “dragon lady” and the submissive, voiceless sex object.  [Yahoo]

You can read more at the link.

It looks like Asian-Americans are beginning to rebel against affirmative action policies which are now targeting them instead of just whites:

That sound you hear is the shattering of a cherished Democratic orthodoxy: race-based preferences in education.

Mr. Adams is an African-American who serves as Brooklyn’s borough president and aspires to run for mayor. On almost any issue, he lands where you would expect a big-city black Democrat to land. But when he cheered Mr. de Blasio’s bid to replace the Specialized High School Admissions Test with criteria meant to sneak in a racial rebalancing, he suddenly had a rebellion on his hands.

Asian-American moms and dads made their displeasure known. So after hastily convening a meeting with angry constituents (and, according to the New York Post, threats from Chinese-American donors), Mr. Adams announced that he wasn’t with the mayor after all.

He’s not alone. Every elected Asian-American in New York City politics has now blasted Mr. de Blasio’s plans. At the City Council, Peter Koo and Margaret Chin are against it; in the state Assembly, Ron Kim and Yuh-Line Niou are opposed; and in Congress, Grace Meng —a graduate of Stuyvesant, one of the affected schools—says she’s “disappointed” by the mayor’s proposal and was particularly “insulted” by the way his schools chancellor framed the issue. What makes this drama so unusual is that every last one of these pols is a Democrat, part of a larger community that overwhelmingly votes Democratic.

Whites have traditionally been the losers from affirmative action. Proponents sometimes justify this as the price to be paid for the legacy of slavery and Jim Crow. Whatever the merits of this argument, the Asian-American experience is hard to squeeze into the box of racial privilege.

In the 19th century, the Chinese Exclusion Act was the first U.S. law to deny immigration and naturalization based on race. In the 20th century, during World War II, Japanese-American citizens were confined in internment camps. To this list the 21st century adds racial discrimination at our most elite universities, which, as they did with Jews a century ago, limit the number of Asian-Americans they admit.  (……)

As Ms. Chin points out, even if you are an Asian-American with little education, work as a manual laborer, and have no political connections, you understand that an objective exam represents opportunity and upward mobility. You also understand that if merit is replaced by softer (“holistic”) criteria designed to tilt the racial balance (e.g., Harvard has given Asian-American applicants lower “personality” ratings), it will be your children who pay the price. In other words, Democrats are now dealing with an Asian-American community that doesn’t buy the argument that racial justice requires discriminating against a racial minority.  [Wall Street Journal]

You can read more at the link, but yet despite all the discrimination that Asian-Americans have faced in the past and even now by affirmative action policies in colleges, they have still been able to have by far the highest per capita household income of any race, even higher than whites.

If America is so racist how is this possible?

Soccer legend Diego Maradona is being accused of making a racist gesture towards some Korean fans at the World Cup:

Football legend Diego Maradona’s racist gesture toward young Korean fans is drawing a strong backlash in Korea.

Maradona, 57, has been accused of making a “clearly racist gesture” at the Spartak Stadium on Saturday, after Korean fans shouted and waved at him in joy.

ITV presenter Jacqui Oatley, who was there as part of the broadcaster’s coverage of the game between Argentina and Iceland, claimed on Twitter that Maradona “pulled his eyes to the side in a clearly racist gesture. All of us who saw it are stunned.”  [Korea Times]

You can read more at the link, but interestingly no one caught this on film.  However, here is what Maradona said happened:

Responding to the accusation in a Facebook post on Sunday morning, Maradona said: “Today, in the stadium, among so many demonstrations of affection from the people, I was struck by a group of people around a fan who filmed us. “I saw an Asian boy wearing an Argentina T-shirt. I, from afar, tried to tell them how nice it seemed to me that even the Asians cheer for us. And that’s all, guys, come on.” [iNews]

I will let everyone make up their own minds if Maradona had racist intentions or not.

Even if the two servicemembers involved poorly parked their vehicle it is no excuse for the horrible actions these two civilians took:

A 71-year-old woman was arrested after she lunged at and hit a pregnant servicemember at a Cheddar’s in Macon, Ga., police said. Videos of the Saturday incident, which police said was sparked by a disagreement over parking, have drawn millions of views as they spread across social media.

Judy Tucker was arrested on Saturday, charged with simple battery and released a few hours later on $650 bail. According to a Bibb County Sheriff’s Office report, Tucker told police that the incident with servicemembers Stephanie Mitchell and Treasure Sharpe, who are black, “all started because she was white and it was a race issue.” Tucker’s son approached the women when they were backing into a parking space and told them they “should learn how to park” and called them a profane name, the report quoted Mitchell as saying.

Mitchell said that, inside the restaurant, Tucker’s son again called them the profane name and said that they were black lesbians.   [Stars & Stripes]

You can read more at the link, but the Tucker’s should be ashamed and embarrassed by their inappropriate and racist comments if the alleged actions are all true.

On April Fool’s Day if you are a foreigner or if you are a Korean that can pretend to be a foreigner you can get a discounted movie ticket:

Speak a foreign language and you can get a discount on movie tickets on April Fools’ Day.

Even if you are not a foreigner, you will get a discount if you pretend to be one.

The event will be hosted by CJ CGV, the largest operator of multiplex cinemas, at its outlets.

Discounted tickets will be 8,000 won ($7).  [Korea Times]

You can read more at the link, but unsurprisingly the promotion is being met with claims of racism.