Tag: racism

Writing out the quiet part?

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Over the last few weeks, I’ve been chipping away at FX’s The Bear.  It’s a show that was always on my radar as something that I should see, and there was plenty of reason for me to be interested in it on its own.  After going through all of Shameless, I was high on Jeremy Allen White, and FX has a history of putting out shows that seem to be right up my alley, and furthermore, among the team that was making The Bear reality was Hiro Murai, who directed numerous episodes of Atlanta, another show that I was very high on and enjoyed.

Admittedly, The Bear starts off a little slow, and it did take me a little time before the show clicked and I realized that I did in fact enjoy the show, but I have to also say that it’s a show that’s kind of hard to watch, because how heavy-handed the show feels sometimes, especially from the standpoint that pretty much everyone has their own wars they fight on a daily basis, be it with themselves, their families, from their pasts to their presents, and often times television is supposed to be an escape from the hardships of life, and I find it difficult to instead be watching the hardships of fictional characters instead.

Like, I can’t really binge The Bear.  This truly is a show that probably is best watched on a weekly basis, so you can decompress and digest each individual episode, before your energy bar of watching stressful situations is replenished and the following week’s episode can tax you next week instead.  Every time Carmy and Richie have a knock-down drag-out screaming match, I can feel my own anxiety rising, and it’s a testament to both actors and their on-screen chemistry that they can do that to viewers with having such explosive arguments that feel genuine and stressful just to watch, but it adds to why I have a hard time watching more than a single episode at a time.

But recently, I got to thinking, in light of hearing of all the Emmy acclaim that The Bear has been reveling in, was to compare the sheer volume of Emmy consideration and success The Bear had, compared to Atlanta.  After all, the shows are very similar in the fact that they’re both on FX and considered psychological comedy-dramas, not to mentioned the aforementioned directing by Hiro Murai in both series.

It’s probably not popular, and something that I wouldn’t write out in a public forum, but I would go so far as to say that The Bear is basically the white version of Atlanta, in the way that the show is presented, the style of situational humor, and that both are listed as comedies, but although I do get some laughs from some of the scenarios they present, I usually go to bed thinking about the last episode and how fucking depressing they are. 

Frankly the only differences is that one show takes place in Atlanta with black people revolving around a rap career, and the other show takes place in Chicago with mostly white people revolving around a restaurant business.

Needless to say, it was of no surprise to compare the apples and find out that The Bear blows Atlanta out of the water when it comes to Emmy nominations much less actual Emmy wins, and I feel like I’m kind of writing the quiet part out loud a little bit with the not-so subtle accusation of the overtly white-favoritism of The Bear compared to when Atlanta was tearing up FX in their four seasons.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m enjoying The Bear, and I still love Lip Gallagher, and I’m very enamored by the many of the other characters and actors in the show.  I’m not trying to demean The Bear and say it’s not as good as Atlanta, not in the least bit  But I just see a lot of parallel with Atlanta, and feel that without Atlanta, The Bear doesn’t even exist, and I’m more just irked by the obvious racial bias in heaping mountains of praise onto The Bear, when Atlanta was doing the same thing just a few years ago to way less perceptive results.

Things White People Like: the new Ford Broncos

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

The funny thing about Things White People Like is that it’s rarely like a gradual thing.  It’s always, you wake up one morning, and then suddenly white people all over the place are doing/having/partaking in the exact same thing.  Building black and white homes, falling head over heels in love with Major League Soccer, embracing Korean food, etc, etc.

It’s almost like there’s a gigantic group chat for nothing but white people, and they come to consensuses on what things they decide to declare “theirs” and the following day, every single one of them embarks on claiming it, before any other dirty non-white demographic can get their grubby hands on it.

But let’s talk about the new Ford Bronco; and this isn’t the first time I’ve written about the Ford Bronco and in this identical context, but it’s just because it seems like White People have hit another gear in Liking this Thing that it warrants another posting.

Also, I know the car has been out for a while, so it’s not really new anymore per say, but the thing is I call it such out of a lack of wanting to refer to it by its chassis or model year because that would require looking things up and I don’t care about white people enough to want to exert such effort.  But also because by calling it the new Ford Bronco also implies that the old Ford Bronco is a leper of a vehicle and all of them are undoubtedly OJ Simpson cars, and not the Jesus Jeep-replacement that seems to be exclusive to white people only.

And that’s exactly what the new Ford Bronco appears to have become for White People – a Jeep replacement, because Jeeps have become attainable and acceptable to people of all other races and colors, to the point where White People feel the need to flee the Jeep brand and go find something else to claim for themselves.

I went to go visit my brother not long ago, and we’re parking in a parking lot and in front of us is a Korean guy monkeying with the soft-top of his Jeep, clearly getting it lowered so that he can indulge in the beautiful beach town weather that we were at.  I said to my brother, that this guy was an example of why exactly the Ford Bronco has become a de facto White People car, because minorities are progressively getting more and more of their hands on Jeeps, and they can’t stand it.

Fewer things make it more obvious that new Ford Broncos are Jeep replacements than the fact that they’re basically designed to be Jeep clones, but with Ford badges and the little bucking bronco emblem on them.  From color selection, aesthetic trims, and just the overall silhouette of them, they’re basically the Temu version of a Jeep, since Fords in general short of a hand-built GT500 or Shelby Mustang are all cheap adult-sized Tonka toys made out of plastic, zip-ties and minority labor.

One of the kickers though, was this time I saw a new Ford Bronco with a rubber ducky in the windshield, which is a major thing that the Jeep communities does with their whips.  The funny thing is that I saw a photo of a similar vehicle on theFacebook on some Jeep community that I don’t know why I was shown a post from, but the general consensus of that post was that of internet rage, animosity and disdain for a new Ford Bronco owner for ape-ing a very Jeep-ism for their own shitty ride.

Seriously though, I haven’t yet once, seen a single new Ford Bronco, where the driver wasn’t a white person.  Mostly females too, but every single new Ford Bronco driver I’ve seen has been white.  I’ll probably do a double take if the day ever comes that I see a driver that isn’t Ben Affleck.  The funny thing is that there’s actually a home in my community that was completely repainted to be white with black trim and accents; guess what the lady who lives there drives?

Interestingly enough, Ford being Ford, their name does hold enough weight to where despite the fact that they’re a Jeep clone, Hummer appears to be trying to now clone them, with their new Hummer models that are supposedly launching in 2025.  Considering the fact that they look very similar to new Ford Broncos, I feel like these are going to be a strong candidate of White People cars to flood towards if a few minorities manage to get their hands on the keys.  And when it inevitably happens, I guess it’ll be time to add a new entry to the list of Things White People Like.

The Ford F-250 Super Chief sounds kind of racist

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I was driving to work, stuck behind a parade of slow moving commuters as is the usual, but I couldn’t help but notice the behemoth Ford truck that began tailgating me, as if they felt that I was personally responsible for the logjam of cars on the single-lane road we were all headed down.  The third car that I use as my daily commuter is quite small, and the truck plastered on my asshole as if I could shit gold like a Lannister was rather massive and I obviously was not particularly pleased being tailgated so aggressively.

However, I know the capabilities of the car I’m driving, and I’m not at the point of my life where every single interaction on the road needs to result into a street race like Tokyo Midnight Racer, so when the road expanded to a second lane, I stayed put and let the douchebag with the tiny peepee whip around me as soon as they could and take off; it wasn’t worth allowing my blood pressure to elevate just because some fuckhead was riding my ass.

Naturally, the truck did just that, and I noticed the words “Super Chief” on the vehicle, and my brow did a little scrunch – was this the actual name of a level of trim, or was the driver of this car perhaps of indigenous heritage and really wanted the world around him to know that they were of American Indian lineage?  The back window also had a subtle black-on-black decal of an American Indian that kind of looked like the old Washington Redskins logo on it, and I’m thinking to myself that there’s no way this combination of shit came straight out of the factory.

At the next red light, I googled “Ford F150 super chief” and lo and behold, this is actually a legitimate thing, except that it’s an F-250 and not the pleeb-ey little brudder F-150 as I thought it was.  But yeah, the Ford F-250 Super Chief is an actual Ford product, and I can’t help but ponder that it sounds kind of racist, in the sense that we live in a world where the Washington Redskins and Cleveland Indians were taken to the shed and beaten into submission within the span of the last decade, because of their names, and yet here’s Ford, one of the largest auto manufacturers on the planet, naming one of their signature trucks “Super Chief.”

Yes, the word “chief” is not exclusive to Native American culture, but it is prevalent enough in it, to where people like me immediately pull indigenous culture to the forefront when hearing the word, and I can’t help but feel like there’s some racist-sounding undertones with Ford naming a big ass truck “super chief.”

Not just any old chief, but fucking super chief, like it’s the Kryptonian Superman of Native Americans.  Like in Native culture, there are chiefs, but then there’s a level above all the other chiefs, that is the super chief.

Digging a little further, I can’t seem to find any pictures of an F-250 Super Chief with any window stickers of the Washington Redskins chief on it.  So that part of the douchey small peepee truck driver that was riding my ass, had to have been custom to that driver.  I didn’t get a look at the driver themselves, but I sure hope that with brandishing a decal like that, that the driver was actually of Native American culture, and not like one of those white cocksuckers who claim 3/47th Cherokee or some bullshit so that they can try and get a slice of indigenous benefits.  Otherwise, then the Super Chief is being kind of racist, if it’s some white guy driving around in it with that big ass Native sticker on his window.

But either way, now that I know that this is an actual thing, my personal conclusion is that it does seem a little bit racist.  ‘Murica doesn’t seem at all that concerned about that kind of stuff anymore these days, so I guess that it shouldn’t be a surprise.

Are Ravens fans really this dumb, pt 2

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Even before I had daughters, I’ve always been in support of women’s rights.  What’s wrong with believing in that whole notion that everyone should be equal?

So a few days ago, I saw while scrolling, a quote from a Ravens player I’d never heard of before, about how he thought it was literally disgusting to see Simone Biles and Jordan Chiles playfully giving the bow down motion to Gold medalist Rebeca Andrade of Brazil.

My first thought was, who the fuck is Marlon Humphrey, but then feeling my own disgust that someone was so offended by some women demonstrating a beautiful scene of sportsmanship and camaraderie with a fellow Olympian, to where they needed to use their influence as a for-lack-of-a-better-term, celebrity on Twitter to take a shit on it.

I felt the compulsion to comment on it:

Man plays on a team whose fans gave ovations to a guy whom had video evidence of him beating the Jesus out of his babymama in an elevator, and he thinks some sportsmanship is literally disgusting. Yeah ok

I didn’t give it much thought afterward, but clearly I had ignited Ravens fans for taking a pot-shot at their fanbase for how they so glowingly supported Ray Rice after his domestic assault charges against his fiancée, implying that they are as brainless and dumb as I genuinely think of most of them anyway, and the responses were about as predictable as one might imagine.

Firstly, most everyone who replied to my comment completely missed the point of being in support of female gymnasts, because I had committed the most heinous of sins, which was to take a swipe at the Ravens, and all these schmucks were blinded with rage when composing their own silly rebuttals, with denial, personal attacks, including a racist one where a black guy told me to stick to ping pong that either was deleted, or they had the wherewithal to delete themselves, and a not-surprising amount of people who were inadvertently taking Humphrey’s side just because he’s on the Ravens.

The thing is, what a lot of these butthurt commenters don’t seem to realize that by attacking me, they’re basically showing their support of Marlon Humphrey’s disdain for women athletes demonstrating sportsmanship as well as being okay with domestic violence towards women.  Yes, it’s a little bit of a reach to come to those conclusions, but looking at the gamut of people who took their time to air out their grievances with my words with their own, it doesn’t seem that far-fetched after all.

My favorites are the people who tried to defend Ray Rice by stating how he helped the Ravens win a Super Bowl some time ago, as if it makes it completely okay that he beat the living shit out of his fiancée in a hotel service elevator.  Or how she was spitting on him and cursing and smacking him first, so she seemed to deserve it.

I like when abusers, or those who are okay with it identify themselves, because it makes it easy for me to steer clear of the pieces of shit they are.

The thing is, my remarks also got a surprisingly high (300+) number of likes, showing that a lot of more intelligent people agreed with my opinion of Humphrey’s dumbass remark.  Unfortunately, those people were all smarter than me and didn’t comment in the first place, and frankly I don’t know why I do it sometimes, other than inadvertently embarking on some weird social experiments.

But hey, unsurprising as it is, it’s something to see, that even ten years after the last time I posted about Ravens fans being idiots, absolutely nothing at all seems to have changed.

Things White People Like: Black and White Houses

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Part of observing the world around me, is occasionally identifying patterns.  I like to think that I’m a pretty observant person, and I feel like I’m pretty good at identifying patterns, especially when I see commonalities in behavior or tendencies in demographics.

To cut to the chase and keep my word count down and free of paragraphs of extraneous fluff, I’ve determined that white people are extremely willing to accept questionable aesthetics and/or quickly latch onto the new and niche, as long as the result of their collective acceptance makes something “theirs.”

And once something becomes a white people thing, all the other basic white people begin to glom onto it and perpetuate the stereotype even stronger and give it more and more momentum, to where it gets to this point where upon visual identification of it from the rest of the world, it’s automatically associated with being a white people thing.

In the past, I have brogged about things about how white people really love Major League Soccer, and how white people really love the new Ford Bronco, but I’ve given this a lot more thought than I probably should have considering all the things in the world that would be slightly more productive to think about alternatively, but to the point where this could potentially become a series of posts or at least worth justifying the existence of a white people tag on the brog.

Over the last, I’d say four years, I’ve noticed a trend in home design, along with a correlation of seemingly only white people partaking in it: black and white homes.  Homes that are entirely black and white, be it white brick, white panel, white siding. 

I’m talking straight up white; #FFFFFF white, 0.0.0.0 white.  Not “bone,” not “French white” or any shade of white that has any iota of colored pigmentation in it whatsoever.  Just fucking default plain white, but all over the home.

And then comes the black, usually in trim, shutters, doors, maybe an accent wall or side of the home.  Garage door(s), gutters, support beams, full on black.  #000000 black, 100.100.100.100 black.

Homes like these, I’ve seen an increase of them popping up all around the city, especially in the little bubble of zip codes that I live in, since I do live in an area with a high concentration of white people.  Roads that I’ve driven on, I’ve seen homes that clearly sold during the nuclear real estate boon just a year ago, and it’s evident that the new owners tore down the old homes, and erected these black and white, white people monuments in their place.  Empty lots or little parcels of land in which I didn’t even think that a home could be built upon, now have homes that are more black and white than a weekday newspaper comics page.

Even a home in my own neighborhood, frankly one that I would’ve gone after myself it were available at the time in which I was looking for a house, I remember walking in my neighborhood one day, and I nearly went snow blind when they had completely whitewashed the entire fucking home, before they put their all-black trim on it.  Like, this couple paid a large sum of money to transform their ordinary home into this gaudy black and white structure smack dab in the middle of a cul-de-sac with more ordinary looking homes all around it.

And the thing is, although my sample size is small in confirmation, I’d wager a good bit that every single one of these homes is resided by white people.  Many of the homes that come to mind while I’m writing this post I know by virtue of visual confirmation of the residents that they’re white, others have some serious tells that they’re resided by white people, most notably shit like big fucking Dodge Ram trucks, orange guy or Yosemite Sam political signs out in front, among other very obvious white people-centric things that easily fill in the blank.

The bottom line is that black and white houses have become this very obvious indicator of white people living somewhere, and I imagine I’m going to be flabbergasted the day I drive past a black and white house, and I see a minority coming out the door or garage.  However, I imagine that when such a day occurs, similar to the fashion in which white people abandoned cities throughout US history, it will probably mean that white people have begun to abandon ship on the trend are on the prowl for something other home aesthetic trend that they can make theirs, before any colored folk decide to get in on the trend.

Suck it, Italy

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

That’s just ~a little bit~ racist: after Hong Kong’s Cheung Ka-long’s gold medal victory over Italy’s Filippo Macchi in individual men’s fencing, the Italian Fencing Federation files a complaint with the IOC, accusing the refereeing to be biased because the refs were from Taiwan and South Korea, and had geographical favoritism

Man, not a whole lot to unpack here, but some pretty flagrant racism in the middle of the Olympics going on over here.  Italians crying foul and accusing refs of cooking up some home field advantage is wildly ignorant and racist considering the fencer is from Hong Kong, one ref is from Taiwan and the other ref being Korean.

Sure, there is a degree of Asians supporting Asians from time to time, but usually when it’s something where there are very few Asians present in some sort of contest, like Jeremy Lin in the NBA getting a lot of love and admiration from most Asians regardless of race.  Not the fucking Olympics, where not only are there a whole bunch of Asians present and participating in all sorts of events, they’re all representing their own cultures in neat little conveniently categorized by country.

Like, Taiwan couldn’t give two shits about Hong Kong.  They already exist with tons of beef from the mainland themselves, so they actually have something in common with HK, but a Taiwanese referee isn’t going to put their career on the line and secretly pull for a Hong Konger.  And Koreans couldn’t give even lesser of a fuck about Hong Kong.  As the kids so eloquently say these days, the fuck on out of here, Italy.

While we’re making sweeping generalizations, let’s go ahead and proclaim that there are few countries that whine and act like sore losers than Italy does.  Lose to a Chinaman in fencing?  Obviously racist and biased refereeing.  Angela Carini takes a punch and throws in the towel?  Clearly her opponent was a dude (read: she wasn’t), and drag her entire name and reputation into the mud before being proven wrong.

It’s even worse in futbol, where Italians have demonstrated a laundry list of bad behavior and reactions in the name of defeat, like fans throwing fireworks onto the field, pelting opposing players with dangerous projectiles.  In 2002, the Korean player who headed in the game-winning goal that sent Italy packing in the World Cup who happened to play for an Italian club, was cut almost immediately afterward.

But this recent episode isn’t just sore losing, it’s just straight up racist.  Ignorant, reckless and completely idiotic racism, that I had to stop and actually process just how dumb it was after hearing about it, because I almost couldn’t believe that there were people in positions capable of having direct lines with the IOC, being so juvenile and flagrant with their accusations.

Haven’t Koreans already had enough bullshit already during this Olympics?  Getting announced as the wrong country first was pretty bad, but now getting dragged into this pitiful Italy tirade is pretty bad too.

Props to Pizza Hut HK though, for sticking it to Italian culture by offering up free pineapple on pizza for the next 24 hrs.  I really wish Domino’s in Korea would do the same thing in solidarity and retaliation for Italy’s bullshit.  Kind of makes me want to go out and get some pizza with pineapple on it myself, but I think I’ll have to keep that want in my back pocket for the next time pizza is a possibility.

Good riddance, Pearl

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

TIL: the Atlanta Braves will be moving their Double-A minor league affiliate from Pearl, Mississippi to Columbus, Georgia.  They will also be ditching the Braves moniker and will hopefully be something chintzy and marketable

Not that I pay attention to every iota of Braves coverage as I once did at a point in my life, but as a fan of minor league baseball, and for lack of a better term, a fan of the Atlanta Braves, news like this piques my interest, even if this were reported way the fuck back in January of this year.

I mean, I knew that the Braves had relinquished control over all of their minor league squads back in 2021 like selling their debts, and I didn’t hate the news at all quite the contrary, because I felt that it opened the door for Braves affiliates to spread their wings and try to be something more in the spirit of minor league baseball, instead of the boring, stuffy and sterile branding of “The Braves.”

Gwinnett (AAA) had already switched over to becoming the Strippers Stripers, and Rome (A+) as of this years ditched being the Braves and became The Emperors, as in Roman emperor, and better yet, adopted emperor penguins to be their team’s mascot.  Not that I’ve been paying any attention, but for whatever reason, the Mississippi Braves had remained as such over the last two-plus seasons, and despite their freedom to do so, they didn’t appear to be in any rush to make any changes to the organization.

Until this season apparently, as it was announced that the club will be moving out of Pearl, Mississippi and moving to Columbus, Georgia, as well as ditching the Braves moniker and will be adopting a new name for the start of the 2025 minor league season.

At first blush, my thought was, oh great here we go again with a brand new fucking ballpark to build, but it turns out that there’s apparently a historic ballpark in Columbus, Golden Park, that will actually be renovated and used to house the future Columbus Braves affiliate, instead of building something from scratch.  Granted, a renovation isn’t cheap either, and I’m sure it will probably be something of a $65M tax burden for the people of Columbus to absorb, but that sure beats the $126M it took to build the Braves’ Spring Training facility from scratch in Sarasota.

Regardless of the financial burden of accommodations, this is actually a change that I don’t immediately just want to shit on upon hearing about it.  Having been to Pearl, Mississippi, solely to watch a M-Braves game, I have to say that getting the fuck out of that shithole in the middle of goddamn nowhere is nothing but good news for the Braves and frankly, all of Minor League Baseball in that nobody again will ever have to step foot in Pearl/Jackson, Mississippi after the 2024 season.

It’s the only place I’ve ever been to where I genuinely felt like I was whisked back in time at the casual ignorant racism that got in just a singular afternoon in town, from the moment I left the airport, to getting to the ballpark, and while simply getting food.  The cabbie who picked me up from the airport thought that I had to have been an actual player since I was headed to the ballpark, and upon arriving at the ballpark, I caught some kids staring at me and thinking I was Hideki Matsui.

It’s clear that Asian people aren’t a common occurrence in this chunk of the country, but god damn.  During the game, I was puckish so I went up to a concession stand where there were unsurprisingly chicken tenders and fries, and when I handed over my debit card to pay, the lady at the register examined my card and put down her bifocals, and then said to me, “oh that’s an easy one.”

Obviously having no fucking clue to what she was talking about, I asked her what, and she responded that it was my name, that it was one of those names that wasn’t too hard to pronounce.  Okay then

So needless to say, it seems like a monumental win for any person or any business or in this case, any team, to get the fuck out of Pearl, Mississippi, and head closer to somewhere that’s closer to their parent organization.  Columbus isn’t a tremendous step up from Pearl as far as not feeling like you’re in the middle of nowhere, but at least it’s a military town where people have had some etiquette and discipline beaten into them, and it’s only like a 2-3 hour drive to the Metro Atlanta area if anyone wants to feel some actual civilization.

I’m excited to eventually find out what the team will lean towards as far as a new team name, branding and identity will be.  I don’t know much about Columbus other than it being a military town, so I can’t take any snarky takes or come up with any sarcastic names to anoint them as, but hopefully the yokels out there will have the wherewithal to steer clear of the low-hanging fruit of Christopher, whom we all with brains have heard wasn’t exactly the best guy in history.

But hey, there’s always the Columbus Barves, wouldn’t that be some shit, to take the popularized typo-meme-unofficial sarcasm name for whenever the team fucks up, and make it official?  A guy can dream.