Tag: racism

The things that shape us

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I’m not entirely sure what brought this memory to surface, but when I look back at it, I feel like it deserves a bit of contribution to shaping who I am today. Meaning that someone was once harshly abrasive towards me with racist undertones, contributing towards making me the person who is astute to racist issues while laughing at them at the same time.

When I was in the fifth grade, I remember being pulled out of class, and taken to the office. Back in elementary school, I was a pretty non-descript unpopular fat kid (can’t really say that much has changed) who mostly kept quiet, so this occurrence was puzzling to me, as well as concerning as getting pulled into the office would be for any grade school kid. The lady that pulled me out of class was one of the ESL teachers; I have always spoken English, being born in the states, so this was doubly puzzling.

Anyway, I was sat down in one of the cushy office chairs in the waiting area, and the woman stood in front of me and with a narrowing of the eyes, and the finger of accusation pointed at my face, began tearing into me.

“Where are your parents from??”
“Do you know what they’ve gone through??”

But then came the words “How DARE you??” and I knew that I was being accused of something. What it was, I don’t really know, because frankly I don’t recall to having done a single thing wrong in this particular instance. The bottom line is that I don’t recall all of the specific words, but it was clear that this was a race-related issue at hand, because it was the ESL teacher (who was white, by the way), who naturally by nature of her job, dealt with all of the foreign-born students to whom English was not their native language.

The thing was though, she was approaching this lecture to me in what I thought was the absolute worst approach ever; by disciplining racism with well, racism. Her scathing reprimand on me targeted my parents, my Korean heritage, and there were a lot of undertones insinuating that my being Korean was somewhat of a pejorative. I sat there kind of leaned back, trying to get away from her finger point of righteous American justice, during her entire maniacal tirade, completely baffled out of my mind to why this was going on.

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Koreans can be so full of shit sometimes, too

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I’m in a bad, foul mood today.  I feel like writing with a little venom.

I don’t exactly remember what prompted me to think about this story, but it came into my head earlier today, and I felt like writing about it.

Koreans are notorious racists.  This probably isn’t much of a surprise to anyone reading this, considering how often times I get accused of being racist, which is probably kind of true, but I also believe that everyone alive is a racist too, whether they want to admit it or not, but the more important thing, if they act detrimentally on their feelings or not.  I don’t believe I do, so I think there are far worse people in the world than me, who finds amusement and ironic humor from the occasional tasteless remarks.

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As if MARTA weren’t enough of a joke

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

There’s so many things to possibly say about this little gem that I would never have seen if it not for my friend Bunny, but for the sake of letting the “gawd, danny is such a racist” thermometer cool down a little bit, I’ll refrain.

But anyway, as if Atlanta needs to be the butt of any more jokes, here we have this embarrassing video that exists, because there are a lot of people that genuinely have no common sense when it comes to dealing with public transportation. Not only does it seem completely unnecessary and ironically depressing, it makes an attempt to create awareness that Atlanta, does in fact, have a WNBA team. I didn’t know the WNBA was even still around, too. And its mascot goes around cockblocking a bunch of MARTA users from being time efficient; seriously, if you don’t make an attempt to run after a bus or try to beat elevator doors, what happens afterwards? You waste time, end up late, and get shitcanned from Taco Bell.

Honestly, I’m not sure what’s worse – this video, or the fact that there are “subway fights” that show up with World Star Hip Hop watermarks on a weekly basis that are obviously happening at MARTA trains or stations.

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I don’t get you people sometimes

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Back in 2007, pro-wrestler Chris Benoit was discovered dead, along with his wife and his son.  Immediately afterward, the WWE broke all storylines for one night, and put together an entire tribute show for Chris Benoit and his family, where there were some great matches, but most notably an array of tear-filled, emotional outpourings of interviews of Benoit’s fellow wrestlers sharing touching stories and memories of their fallen comrade.

Days later, it was revealed that it wasn’t an attack on the family by a second party that ended up with the Benoit family dead; it was Chris Benoit himself, who had murdered his wife and his son, before hanging himself.  Suddenly, all of the RIPs to Chris Benoit were rescinded, the WWE did everything they could to break association with Chris Benoit, and wrestlers everywhere expressed emotions of betrayal, disappointment and disgusted sadness at the guy they all thought they once knew.

It wasn’t really “rest in peace” anymore, as much as it was “good riddance, you fucking murderer.”

Recently, a player on the Kansas City Chefs, Jovan Belcher, murdered his girlfriend and mother of their three-month old child, and then killed himself.  This has all been confirmed and is all fact at this point – Jovan Belcher was a murderer before he killed himself.

So why the fuck are so many people bidding him to rest in peace?  The guy is a fucking murderer, and fellow football players, and people all over twitter are wishing him the same farewell, reserved for people who live their lives honorably, or at least without committing murder?

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Ironic double standards

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I get accused of being a racist a lot, but to be perfectly honest, I deserve it.  I derive an immense amount of humor out of politically incorrect things, and I love to point out when things seem racist in my opinion.  I say a lot of politically incorrect things around those I have confidence around, but when the day is over, I’m not going to act on my racism, because that would be bigotry, and that, I do think is pretty wrong.

But today was an example of why I get the impression that I’m generally disliked by my fellow Koreans, in an ironic case of I guess, self-racism.  There are a lot of Koreans that work in my building in general.  I’ve made their smoking habits the subject of my observations of people, but for the most part, I have no ill-will towards them.  I don’t necessarily think it goes the other way though; the impression I get from these Korean people are about the same as I tend to get from most other Koreans who have immigrated to the United States; an overwhelming desire to stay away from me.

I’m a very observant person, if it’s not well known to those I know.  Whether I like to or not, I tend to recognize faces, recognize patterns and tendencies of people, whether I know them or not.  Especially with a building where everyone sees everyone on a long enough timeline, I’m fairly good at remembering little, inconsequential and unsubstantial details on a sporadic basis.

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HEY CHING CHONG CHANG

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

A street merchant actually yelled that out to me.

Instinctively, I laughed.

Something NOT lost in translation down in Mexico – Racism

Other things said to me as I walked down 5th Street in Playa del Carmen:

“Are you Japanese??” I say no.  “Are you . . . Filipino??” Seriously?  He went from Japanese to Filipino?  Is it possible to go to such complete different ends of the spectrum?  Filipinos don’t even like being lumped in with Asians anymore.  They’re Pacific Islander. It’s like asking a dog if they’re a lion or a Dodge Stratus.

“KONNICHIWAAAA!!!”

“Hey chino, want some weeeeeed?”  I say no, I don’t smoke.  “Eets not too late to staaarrrt, amigo!”  Persuasive argument.  Be that as it may, I still say no, gracias.

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I’m pretty sure this was the blackest conversation ever

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I’m tired, groggy, and agitated that the lines at Starbucks are quadrupled since the start of the school semester, and my favorite barista girl has quit.  My head still hurts a little bit in combination of the hangover from the day prior, and not having a good night’s sleep.  And then a guy gets in line behind me, and is on his cell phone, and propagates black stereotypes by speaking as loudly and as animated as he can.

So it’s no surprise that I overhear his conversation; I’m pretty sure people at Piedmont Park could hear what he was saying at this point.  But being right in front of him, his words are crystal clear, and I’m trying my best to ignore it until I hear his idea for a business model: A sneaker bar.

A bar that instead of serving drinks, serves shoes.  Sneakers.  Kicks.  Cruisers.  Jordans.

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