race/ethnicity: Asians/Pacific Islanders

A great example of how humor can be used to reveal the absurdity of certain social patterns that we take-for-granted:

“I can’t explain it,” said Nakajima, dressed in a pleated miniskirt and pure white knee socks. “There’s just something about American men who are at least twice my age and nearly three times my body weight that totally drives me wild.”

Added Nakajima, “They’re so hot.”

…

“I like it when they dress up like middle managers,” said Nakajima, twirling her girlish pigtails with one alabaster finger.

…

Drawn by her curiosity, Nakajima has scheduled a vacation to St. Louis for early March.

More at The Onion.

For a very real example of the flip side  of this fetish, see this post on sex tourism in Thailand.

Matt S. has pointed us to the controversy over the casting of The Last Airbender (to be released 2010).  One blogger, comic book artists Derek Kirk Kim, describes the Nickelodeon cartoon series on which the life-action movie is based as follows:

[The cartoon is] wholly and inarguably built around Asian (and Inuit) culture. Everything from to the costume designs, to the written language, to the landscapes, to martial arts, to philosophy, to spirituality, to eating utensils!—it’s all an evocative, but thinly veiled, re-imagining of ancient Asia. (In one episode, a region is shown where everyone is garbed in Korean hanboks—traditional Korean clothing—the design of which wasn’t even altered at all.) It would take a willful disregard of the show’s intentions and origins to think this wouldn’t extend to the race of the characters as well.

The series–which I have never seen–does indeed seem to be inspired by various Asian cultures. Here are some images from the cartoon series (from the same blog post):

The controversy is regarding the casting of the lead characters.  All four leads are white (imdb).

Jackson Rathbone (image at imdb):

Jesse McCartney (image here):

Nicola Peltz (image here):

I couldn’t find a picture of the fourth lead, Noah Ringer.

Kim quotes Gene Yang saying:

It’s like a white Asian fetishist’s wet dream. All the Asian culture they want, without any of the Asian people.

Ampersand, at Alas a Blog, puts it nicely:

…the best roles for people of color are reserved for actors who appear white — and the best roles for white people are also reserved for actors who appear white.

Inspired by a recent post about a T-shirt where an Asian stereotype was saying I SPEAK ENGRISH, I thought of the perennial online popularity of “Engrish” in general. Engrish.com, one of the oldest such compendia on the Web, offers a selection of photos from clothing, packaging, menus, signs, etc., largely from Asian companies. All of these photos have been collected for their supposed humor value because they contain text poorly translated into English, English text that seems incongruous with whatever it’s describing, and/or place names that sound taboo in English. Examples below the cut [some taken from the Adult Engrish section and thus possibly NSFW].  more...

D. Cho sent in these t-shirts, which make fun of Asians who speak accented English:

Found here. The buck teeth, squinty eyes, and hat are a nice touch.

Found here.

The face on this one is supposed to be Kim Jong Il, and I believe the “Oh Reary?” references the movie “Team America, World Police,” though I bet a lot of people won’t get the reference and will think it just makes fun of how Asians supposedly speak:

This one (found here) might appeal to the man in your life you enjoys sex tourism to Thailand, if you’re looking for gift ideas:

This photo is interesting because they put the t-shirt that has a camel on it (and that plays on the derogatory term “camel jockey” often used for Middle Easterners) on a model who I think we are supposed to view as Middle Eastern–not quite the ethnic diversity in models that I’ve hoped for:

Why he is wearing four shirts, I do not know.

You might use them to talk about stereotypes and racial humor, or why people never tire of t-shirts with tired puns on them.

Natasha L. sent in another example of stereotypes tied to nationality/region in the form of a set of comical visual distinctions between “Westerners” and “Asians,” found here, by an artist named Yang Liu. [Note: Natasha and I both assume they’re supposed to be comical or even satirical, particularly of the way that non-Western countries are generally stereotyped as being less professional, less punctual, less rational, and so on, though we might be wrong.] Some examples:

“Opinion”:

“Punctuality”:

“Traveling”:

“In the Restaurant”

“Queue when Waiting”

Regardless of the artist’s intent (whether they’re supposed to be satires of this type of thinking, etc.), I’m sure many people will laugh and see some elements of truth to some of the images. But I’m betting you could tell people they represent almost any set of nationalities and people would also laugh and say “OMG, it’s totally true!” It’s Germany and Spain! It’s the U.S. and Mexico! It’s Venezuela and Greece! You could also probably change this to “men” and “women” and get the same reaction. It’s the stereotypical categorization we think is funny–the idea that groups of people are systematically different, whether it’s based on gender, class, race, nationality, region within a country, and so on (particularly if these differences might lead to sitcom-like hijinx and misunderstandings!).

For a fun little activity to get across the way in which stereotypes are inconsistent and meaningless, you might present these images, not tell your students what they’re supposed to represent, and ask them what groups they think are being portrayed (either out loud or in writing), then use their guesses, which will probably vary widely and draw on lots of different human categories such as class, gender, race, and so on, to talk about stereotyping (which may or may not be negative, of course) and how little we pay attention to what the actual contents of our stereotypes are. Another good example of this would be the way that ethnic groups are often defined as having uniquely loud and boisterous families–I think of it as the “My Big Fat Greek Wedding” syndrome. Well, if Italians, Irish, Greeks, Jews, Russians, Mexicans, Spaniards, Chinese, people from the Southern U.S., New Yorkers, etc. etc. etc., all have big loud families…doesn’t that kind of indicate that lots of families are just big and loud, regardless of background?

Thanks, Ashley and Natasha!

NEW! Robin sent in a link to an article in the Guardian about a Czech artist who pulled off a hoax by creating a set of sculpture that represent stereotypes of various European countries, which he said were created by 27 different artists.

Romania

Luxembourg is made of gold…and is for sale:

Poland has priests raising a rainbow flag. I didn’t know if the rainbow flag has the same association with gay rights in Poland as it does here, but Spiegel Online says it’s a gay pride flag:

Bulgaria is apparently supposed to be the floor of a urinal, though Spiegel Online says it’s a Turkish toilet, apparently also called a squat toilet:

Bulgaria’s not happy about it and has demanded the sculpture be taken down.

Holland has been flooded, but minarets stick out of the water to remind us about increasing concerns expressed by many Dutch about the Muslim community in the Netherlands since tension increased after the Mohammad cartoon incident:

There is ongoing debate about whether this image of Germany, showing the country’s many autobahns, is supposed to look like a swastika:

And of course France has a large banner that says “Strike!”

Apparently Great Britain was represented simply as a blank space.

This excellent documentary documents the powerful interests behind Disney and criticizes the extent to which young American children’s childhoods are influenced by the company. The comments on the messages behind Beauty and the Beast are particularly troubling.

A Cracked article compiled their candidates for the Nine Most Racist Disney Characters. Select stolen clips and liberal quoting below:

American Indians in Peter Pan:

Why do Native Americans ask you “how?” According to the song, it’s because the Native American always thirsts for knowledge. OK, that’s not so bad, we guess. What gives the Native Americans their distinctive coloring? The song says a long time ago, a Native American blushed red when he kissed a girl, and, as science dictates, it’s been part of their race’s genetic make up since. You see, there had to be some kind of event to change their skin from the normal, human color of “white.”

The bad guys in Alladin:

“Where they cut off your ear if they don’t like your face” is the offending line, which was changed on the DVD to the much less provocative “Where it’s flat and immense and the heat is intense.”

In a city full of Arabic men and women, where the hell does a midwestern-accented, white piece of cornbread like Aladdin come from? Here he is next to the more, um, ethnic looking villain, Jafar.

NEW: Miguel (of El Forastero) sent in a post from El Blog Ausente that compares an image of Goofy, a character generally portrayed as sort of dumb and lazy, to a traditional Sambo-type image:

The post suggests that Goofy is a racial archetype, built on stereotypical African American caricatures. I can’t remember ever seeing anything that suggested this, but that doesn’t mean much, and I certainly don’t put it past Disney to do so. Does anyone know of any other examples of Goofy supposedly being based on African American stereotypes? On the other hand, is it possible to depict a character eating watermelon in an exuberant manner without drawing on those racist images? When I look at the image of Goofy above, I have to say…that’s pretty much what it looks like when my (mostly White) family cuts a watermelon open out on the picnic table in the summer and everybody gets a piece and they all have ridiculous looks on their faces as they dribble juice all down themselves eating big chunks (I say “they” because I’m a weirdo who doesn’t really care for watermelon, so I rarely eat any, and even then only if I can put salt on it). I’m fairly certain that I couldn’t put up a photo of my family eating watermelon like that without it seeming, to many people, to draw on the Sambo-type imagery. It brings up some interesting thoughts about cultural and historical contexts, and how and in what circumstances you can (or can’t) escape them, regardless of your intent.

Lisa Wade, PhD is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of American Hookup, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender; and a forthcoming introductory text: Terrible Magnificent Sociology. You can follow her on Twitter and Instagram.

Laura Agustin, author of Sex at the Margins: Migration, Labour Markets, and the Rescue Industry, asks us to be critical consumers of stories about sex trafficking, the moving of girls and women across national borders in order to force them into prostitution.  Without denying that sex trafficking occurs or suggesting that it is unproblematic, Agustin wants us to avoid completely erasing the possibility of women’s autonomy and self-determination.

About one news story on sex trafficking, she writes:

…[the] ‘undercover investigation’, one with live images, fails to prove its point about sex trafficking… reporters filmed men and women in a field, sometimes running, sometimes walking, sometimes talking together.

…I’m willing to believe that we’re looking at prostitution, maybe in an informal outdoor brothel. But what we’re shown cannot be called sex trafficking unless we hear from the women themselves whether they opted into this situation on any level at all. They aren’t in chains and no guns are pointed at them, although they might be coerced, frightened, loaded with debt or wishing they were anywhere else. But we don’t hear from them. I’m not blaming the reporters or police involved for not rushing up to ask them, but the fact is that their voices are absent.

…

There are lots of things we might find out about the fields near San Diego… [but] we don’t see evidence for the sex-trafficking story. Feeling titillated or disgusted ourselves does not prove anything about what we are looking at or about how the people actually involved felt.

Regarding a news clip, Agustin writes:

…a reporter dressed like a tourist strolls past women lined up on Singapore streets, commenting on their many nationalities and that ‘they seem to be doing it willingly’. But since he sees pimps everywhere he asks how we know whether they are victims of trafficking or not? His investigation consists of interviewing a single woman who… articulates clearly how her debt to travel turned out to be too big to pay off without selling sex. Then an embassy official says numbers of trafficked victims have gone up, without explaining what he means by ‘trafficked’ or how the embassy keeps track…

So here again, there could be bad stories, but we are shown no evidence of them. The women themselves, with the exception of one, are left in the background and treated like objects.

To recap, what Agustin is urging us to do is to refrain from excluding the possibility of women’s agency by definition. Why might a woman choose a dangerous, stigmatized, and likely unpleasant job? Well, many women enter prostitution “voluntarily” because of social structural conditions (e.g., they need to feed their children and prostitution is the most economically-rewarding work they can get). Assuming all women are forced by mean people, however, makes the social structural forces invisible. We don’t need mean pimps to force women into prostitution, our own social institutions do a pretty good job of it.

And, of course, we must also acknowledge the possibility that some women choose prostitution because they like the work. You might say, “Okay, fine, there may be some high-end prostitutions who like the work, but who could possibly like having sex with random guys for $20 in dirty bushes?” Well, if we decide that the fact that their job is shitty means that they are “coerced” in some way, we need to also ask about those people that “choose” other potentially shitty jobs like migrant farmwork, being a cashier, filing, working behind the counter at an airline (seriously, that must suck), factory work, and being a maid or janitor. There are lots of shitty jobs in the U.S. and world economy. Agustin simply wants us to give women involved in prostitution the same subject status as women and men doing other work.

Lisa Wade, PhD is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of American Hookup, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender; and a forthcoming introductory text: Terrible Magnificent Sociology. You can follow her on Twitter and Instagram.