Will Truman

Will Truman is the Editor-in-Chief of Ordinary Times. He is also on Twitter.

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27 Responses

  1. Burt Likko says:

    Haven’t watched the video yet.

    Wondering how it could possibly be a good thing to do at work.

    Nope, still not coming up with anything.Report

    • Oscar Gordon in reply to Burt Likko says:

      Interasian racisimReport

      • Was that a secret? Do a little Googling about the status of people of Korean descent in Japan.Report

        • LeeEsq in reply to Mike Schilling says:

          Since the American racial dynamic is usually constructed as white people versus everybody else, many progressive Americans seem to assume that all Asians are people of color united against white racism. So yes, for many people it is secret that tribal politics exist in Asia.Report

          • Morat20 in reply to LeeEsq says:

            I think it’s more akin to stereotyping. You’re white? You know all about the flavors of white — you know the difference between a redneck, a kicker (close but not the same!), hillbilly, white trash, yuppie, etc.

            But generally speaking, other races are a monolith — harder to differentiate between.

            Moreover, there’s kind of a reluctance to play tribal games with other races — it’s edging too close to racism to say “Of minority type X, those are the good ones, and THOSE are the bad ones” when talking about another race.Report

        • Damon in reply to Mike Schilling says:

          Nope. I live near a few large Asian communities. They generally are all racist against other asians and blacks, from what I’ve seen. Don’t get me started on the Middle Easterner’s racism.Report

        • Brandon Berg in reply to Mike Schilling says:

          Many Japanese people don’t consider Japan to be part of Asia. I was talking to a Japanese girl once, and she just casually mentioned that she didn’t like Asian people. Apparently that’s a socially acceptable thing to say.Report

    • LeeEsq in reply to Burt Likko says:

      It isn’t that bad. Oscar Gordon got it right. Its three young Asian people, although two have American accents and one has a British accent so I don’t know where they were born, discussing intra-Asian racism and stereotypes. The title comes from a stand up routine by Asian comic that is available on Netflix.Report

  2. Damon says:

    Those girls are hot as hell.Report

  3. Kolohe says:

    Honestly? Right message, a least one wrong messenger.

    They all seem to be friends and long time content collaborators, so that was who was going to host no mater what, and I’m certainly *not* denying anyone their lived experience, but…

    …having not one but two ethnic Han Chinese born(?) in SE Asia is kind of like having a white person from South Africa and a white person from Zimbabwe talk with a black person from Kenya about racism in Africa.Report

    • Saul Degraw in reply to Kolohe says:

      @kolohe

      I largely agree but being Han Chinese in Malaysia and probably some other SE countries does open one up to discrimination. There is a second-class aspect to being non-Malay. Not sure about Vietnam.Report

  4. Jaybird says:

    I’ll tell this story again.

    The Korean restaurant we visited a few years back had a gregarious hostess who, in response to my mentioning that I was allergic to shrimp, told me that Koreans weren’t like the Chinese. “We eat *CLEAN* food.”

    We then got a short speech about the Chinese.

    Which makes me wonder about the extent to which certain cultures are more welcoming to the whole multiculti thing and which are, for lack of a better word, immune to it.Report

    • Brandon Berg in reply to Jaybird says:

      I suspect that it may simply be a question of having minority groups large enough to force the issue.Report

      • Damon in reply to Brandon Berg says:

        “The Tutsi were collaborators for the Belgian colonists, they stole our Hutu land, they whipped us. Now they have come back, these Tutsi rebels. They are cockroaches. They are murderers. Rwanda is our Hutu land. We are the majority. They are a minority of traitors and invaders. We will squash the infestation.”

        George Rutaganda, Hotel RawandaReport

    • Brandon Berg in reply to Jaybird says:

      Bigotry aside, Koreans do eat shrimp, so I’m confused.Report

    • Murali in reply to Jaybird says:

      Its not just an either or thing. It can sometimes be both. Sometimes you find different people within the same culture making either claim and sometimes you have the same person saying opposite things about other cultures in different contexts. Part of it is a tendency to move from facts about our dislikes or likes to claims about the objective goodness or badness of some aspect of a culture’s cuisine. Another part is that some likes and dislikes are sort of culturally programmed. For a long while (though I’m not sure exactly how much this is still the case) anglos had a lower tolerance for spice. As a result, ethnic foods made in the UK, US or Australia tended to be blander than those you would find in the countries of origin (this was especially true when ethnic communities were small and businesses had to cater to the anglo palate in order to be successful).

      Some of it is a kind of taboo. Its not exactly a moral taboo, but I’m pretty sure Jaybird (and almost everyone here) would never eat cat meat. Yet, such meat is prepared in some provinces in south china as well as in vietnam.

      So while there is some chinese food that you may like a lot, e.g. Bak Kwa (barbequed pork) there are some things which will make you want to say (even though it is extremely impolite in mixed company) “those people will eat anything”Report

    • Kazzy in reply to Jaybird says:

      Is the “egg noodles and ketchup” line racist?

      What about referring to someone’s departure as an “Irish goodbye”?

      Throwaway lines about German porn?

      Games like “Florida or Germany”?

      Polish jokes?

      For me, I’d probably say that the order I’ve listed those in go from least problematic to most problematic. But I don’t think any of them rise to “MAJOR PROBLEM” largely because there aren’t huge power differentials at play of which these are a part of.

      So is what we’re seeing here like the ketchup line? A Polish joke? Or something much worse?

      Because I think we have a weird tendency of viewing a behavior performed by another group and clutching our pearls while looking at that same or similar behavior performed by our own group and thinking, “Well, you have to understand…”

      But I don’t know enough about Asian cultures to know where these comments land.

      I just worry that our response to one Asian group saying about another Asian group, “Well you know how those people are…” is veering towards, “Well you know how Asians are…” territory.Report

    • Saul Degraw in reply to Jaybird says:

      @jaybird

      A story from my second day teaching ESL in Japan.

      Me: Did you like the restaurant?

      Student: No.

      Me: Why didn’t you like the restaurant?

      Student: It was noisy.

      Me: Why was it noisy?

      Student: Because there were too many Chinese people.

      Rest of the class nods in a way that says “I agree. Too many Chinese people can make a restaurant too noisy.”

      22 year old me did not know how to handle that situation.Report