Epstein and Hassan,
I'm sad to see that your response entirely missed my point. I'm not trying to be mean-spirited, nor to discount your volunteer contribution to the evening. I too was at the launch party to support a fantastic effort by a committed group of people, but I don't think that gives me the right to blithely target an ethnic group.
Once again, let me tell you why I'm writing. I am writing because I hope you have something interesting to say. I hope that by addressing your own interracial relationship so publicly, you can give voice to something that is ordinarily silenced. I don't think you would disagree with this interpretation of your performance; why else would you choose so glib a name as "the black and the Jew"? And I find this a fantastic idea that, if thoughtfully executed, could really be funny and constructive.
I am writing because I hope you are kind people, who have thoughtfully analyzed your own positions in a racial dialogue. I am writing because I hope you can see how your stereotypical comments about Chinese people were neither thoughtful nor constructive. I am writing because I hope you will open your eyes to this mistake, and because I hope you will continue your act but take out the offending bits.
I tried to express this to you in a respectful way in the last email, and I am trying again with this one. I am not merely "sensitive to my own group," which I suppose is kind of an awful misappropriation of my point here. If you had made essentializing comments about any other group of people, I would have written you just the same and asked you to account for them. You dismiss me as a mean-spirited person who needs to "chill" and "lighten up," and you smugly claim that "many Chinese people love our act and get the joke." Ouch. The Log Cabin Republicans also like to vote for people who want to obliterate their existence, but that really doesn't justify homophobia, does it? Michelle Malkin is Filipina-American, but that doesn't mean we have to give her any credence when she says Japanese internment was a great idea. Just because some folks have "gotten it" doesn't excuse you from responsibility for your racist comments.
I can see from your response that you have some contradictory logic at work here, so let me try to parse it for my own sake. I'll use your example: Margaret Cho. Margaret Cho can mock gay people and mock Asian people because she has herself identified very strongly with both groups of people (to my knowledge, Margaret Cho has not mocked white people). Margaret Cho contributes her money and her performances and her publicity to both of these communities, giving her some legitimacy to rib those she knows best. But if Margaret Cho made dumb jokes about black people--maybe even "positive stereotype" jokes like the Asian-people-are-industrious-and-prolific jokes you made last night--suppose Margaret Cho said, "Those black folk sure can dance! They got big dicks and can dance!"--she too would have been way out of line. Likewise, you two can stick to your black/Jewish interracial couple jokes, and get hearty and legitimate laughs out of that. But once you start working in territory foreign to you--and it is obvious that this territory is foreign to you, because the only Chinese people you address you assume to be service workers and PRC citizens--you start losing traction.
You see, your reasoning is nonsensical because you two claim legitimacy by playing off your identities (i.e., you are black/Jewish interracial couple, so you make jokes about that) while at the same time you don't see how identities that are not your own are off limits. You two understand, on the one hand, that the reception of your black/Jewish jokes depends on the audience and the speakers. A hypothetical will underscore my point: if you performed your act in front of a KKK crowd, who would love hearing all about how black women are sexualized vixens and Jewish men are orally rapacious Jude Suesses, you are promulgating hurtful racist stereotypes. You are putting on a minstrel show. It's only because you have considered your audience and your own positions thoughtfully that you can pull off your black/Jewish jokes. But, on the other hand, you're not applying this same thoughtfulness to your Chinese jokes. If you thought as carefully about the audience and the speakers in the Chinese joke gags, then I would hope that you would reconsider what you were saying.
I'm taking a long time to get to what I'm trying to say. Maybe this stems from a fundamental misunderstanding of your joke. You say that many Chinese people "get the joke." Well, unlike all those other smart Chinese people, I'm pretty slow on the uptake. Would you mind explaining your joke to me? Where do you intend the humor to come from? How is the joke anti-racist? I really would appreciate your response, because I don't want to continue to accuse you of doing something hurtful just because I'm not getting the joke.
Respectfully,
Mandy
Okay, that was my best effort at being polite, though I still couldn't squeeze all the sarcasm out of my email. I'm giving them one more chance to write back and act all contrite. All I want them to do is be thoughtful, be sensitive, and cut that shit out of their schtick. This is public education folks, not an attack.
I'll give them another chance. Hey, maybe they'll see the err in their ways, and public education will have been committed!
But I'm not too heartened by the defensive and cowardly response they gave the first time around. Man, people are proud. It's so hard to think critically about yourself and change your mind. I'm like that too, but I don't think I'm being the proud one in this case. If Epstein and Hassan can give me a legitimate reason for their racist comments--a legitimate reason might be, e.g., that their words actually formed an acrostic that signaled to the spaceship from which they descended that they were ready to move intergalactic missiles to key targets--then I'll back down from my proud posturing.
If they can't, or if they are as rude and dismissive as they were the first time, I'm unpacking my bitch bags. Oh boy, that's going to feel so fine. Bring. It. On.
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