"Hello" as "hate speech," an essay

"Hello!"

This is the age of Twitter on your iPhone. You can document right there in the moment something good (or bad) that has happened to you. It's the age where you can blog something good or bad at a traffic light, at a game, right there in the restaurant, or anywhere you happen to be, with great immediacy.

If, for example, someone in a Las Vegas department store who has overheard me speaking Korean on the phone growls, "Speak English!" (a bit relevant to the recent The Black Guy on the Bus™ incident), then I can blog about it right there on the spot. It gains some credibility despite the lack of audio because the "facts" are laid down right away, and my surprise-turned-to-anger was great enough that I felt compelled to share it with others.

It wasn't always so. In the days before smart phones, people usually had to wait until they got home, to the office, or to the Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf before they could put thoughts to phosphorus. And before camera phones became so ubiquitous (I still like that word, despite its recent ubiquity within Korea), we would have to merely describe, hours or days later, what we'd seen, in our blogs, in list groups, in emails back home, on USENET, on snailmail, or even the guest columnist pages of the local newspaper. This was always unsatisfying to many readers, who would eventually come up with a standard reply: "Pics or it didn't happen!" That's probably why Steve Jobs invented the iPhone.

Um, anyway, as someone who has lived in Seoul off and on since being a teenager, who has lived there for over a third of his life and at this point most of his adult life, a good chunk of that is in the pre-smartphone era, at a time even when few people had email addresses, when the Kexpat list-serve was The Marmot's Hole of the day, and a good back-and-forth might take weeks if it were on the pages of the Korea Times or Korea Herald. My first camera here required negatives to be processed (and it wasn't cheap).

It was frustrating, because living in South Korea, just as now, different people would have different experiences, but it would be so hard without Google, voluminous tweets, or even grainy pictures from an old LG camera phone, it would be very hard to document claims that we made. Right now, I take pictures of everything, but there are literally thousands of things I would have taken a picture back in the day if I'd had at least a camera phone with me everywhere I went, giving me an arsenal of pictures I could use when making arguments on future posts on a blog somewhere that had not yet been created.

If I'd had an iPhone back then, I'd probably have filled it up with pictures of people running around the Panpo-dong Kim's Club in a panic as the economy started to collapse before our very eyes in the last days of 1997. I'd have made a collection of the once-ubiquitous page-sized movie posters that used to be put up in neighborhoods as a collection of movie advertisements or local notices, including one that depicted how violent an American movie was by showing just a frightened woman with a gun pointed right in her face. No concern that kids impressionable kids would be walking by and seeing this on a regular basis, but also very telling in that, while some in Korea complained American movies were too violent, the marketers who made and then disseminated this poster obviously thought that "violence sells."

But when I made that argument (to a KoKo) and cited that poster that is still clear in my mind's eye, my claim was regarded as incredulous, in part because I could not produce said poster. "Pics or it didn't happen."

That's right. It's been so long ago, that I think a lot of people have forgotten what it was like in the days before we could document right there in the moment.

I have run into this kind of problem when describing how much things have changed in South Korea. Though I'm not particularly old (I'm a Gen-Xer in grad school), I've lived in South Korea longer than most bloggers or commenters in the K-blogosphere, and the lack of documentation of so many things before the Millennium makes it hard to make an argument. The owner of The Grand Narrative called this view of mine annoying or some such (I'm still looking for the link to that).

So I was a little giddy when I saw Casey Lartigue, a once ubiquitous writer for the Korea Times who has found his way to the K-blogs, post links to some of his articles from before Y2K. You see, he'd given me the documentation to back up a claim I'd made that was, frankly, nothing more than my word against anybody who might choose not to believe me.

Back in 2009 (pre-Y2.01K), I had written the following, in response to someone asking (first line below, in bold) about the effects of constantly being called "foreigners":

Do they call us foreigners because we stay here a year or two, or do we only stay here a year or two because they call us foreigners?

Oh, my God! If the precious little lotus blossoms can't handle being called oégugin or foreigner (or gaijin or whatever), then they should stay home where they can wrap themselves up in the cocoon of their majority-ness and feel all secure. Never leave your home country in that case.

Seriously, if someone is so sensitive that would cause them to leave, then they really have too thin a skin. This reminds me of the people who thought little kids shouting "Hello!" was "hate speech" (I'm not making that up).

Damn fu¢king racist Koreans. Most racist people in the world! Fu¢kin' Koreans always shouting Hello!

Now you may or may not agree with my perhaps too-harsh sentiment (being a kvetchpat often stems largely from being stripped of one's "racial transparency" back home), but the main point here is about "Hello!" being "hate speech." Yeah, that was really an argument making the rounds. Not merely that it was annoying to be singled out as a tall, blond White dude, but that shouting "Hello!" was race-based mockery. Mockery. They were making fun of you based on your race.

If you were to acknowledge that the Hello-ee (is this where Haole comes from?) was indeed being noticed because of their obvious physical differences, but that shouting "Hello!" was a way to be friendly or even inclusive, you were dead wrong. Because it was mockery! They were shouting it because of their racism! "Hello" is "hate speech."

So when Mr Lartigue decided to post an old KT piece from August 1999, in response to The Metropolemicist's rant about The Black Guy on the Bus™, I was pleased to see it contained a reference to such:

I heard other complaints from expatriates. Some are bothered by the personal questions many Koreans ask. Some also complain about the lack of personal space and privacy that they have in Korea . By far, the most incredible complaint I heard is that some expatriates feel unfairly singled out by drunks and smart-aleck children shouting, "Hello!"

Now that I'm back in America , I can see that drunks here aren't exactly the most dignified of souls. And many of the kids will tell you to "go f...yourself" if you tell them to tie their shoes. In our respective countries, when encountering rude or playful children, we say, "stupid kids." While in Korea, far too many Americans will say, "stupid Korean kids," attributing the "hello" to a character flaw in Koreans.

I'll be the first to admit that I didn't always see eye to eye with Mr Lartigue, a staunch libertarian. And although he does not corroborate that some of the plaintive cultural plaintiffs did in fact call it "hate speech," but he does independently confirm that there were in fact a number of people making "the most incredible complaint" that they were afflicted by people shouting "Hello!" to them.

Now, if you've read this far and you're hoping for some grand bow to tie this all up with, I'm sorry to disappoint you. I had meant to write a three- or four-sentence post tying my "hate speech" remark at Brian's with the newly posted Lartigue piece from 1999, but I was too tired. This morning, after a restless night of bad dreams of being chased by arachnoid monsters in a post-apocalyptic California, I woke up and just went to town, reminiscing about the days when we could prove so little of what we lived through in Seoul, in South Korea, or in Asia at large, and just had our stories.

If these North Korean kids don't say "Hello," it really might be hate speech.

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"Multiculturalism in Korea" at The Sonagi Consortium

Newly added Sonagi Consortium blogger itissaid has taken a prominent K-blogger to task over his criticisms of Korean society and the media, and what it means (or doesn't mean) as Korea moves toward being a multicultural society. A real barnburner of an inaugural post. 

Follow THIS LINK for the post by itissaid.

Follow THIS LINK if you'd like to be a contributor for The Sonagi Consortium (even just an occasional one).

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Updates to the bus incident

As the facts reveal themselves and opinions are laid out, I've added a few updates to my piece on The Black Guy on the Bus™ incident that are more worthwhile, I think, than the original post.

In the meantime, I could answer three of Metropolitician's worthwhile questions:

The urge to flip out camera phones doesn’t seem to strike when a drunk ajussi flipped out on me in Seoul Station and came at me, yelling and screaming to “get out of Korea” and calling me a “nigger” in Korean because I was taking too long to figure out which Daejeon stop I needed to get off on, right in front of the security guard, who, instead of arresting this guy or even saying anything to him, simply smiled and apologized meekly, came over to me, and said I should just get on the train?

THAT was pretty spectacular. And it’s far, far more representative of any confrontational encounters between foreigners and Koreans, in my experience and observation. And what I’ve been saying is that it wasn’t like this longer ago, when I knew less Korean and less about this place, when I was a bumbling newbie in the 1990′s. I am simply asking these questions:

1. Why does it seem worse now?
2. Why has the media never reported on the pattern of confrontational encounters, which generally go the other way?
3. Why did this particular incident go from being filmed, from cellphone to YouTube, to national scandal?

These are reasonable and useful questions to bring up, and the advent of this scandal offers itself as a perfect moment to enter into a more constructive conversation about it.

Before we begin, let's deal (yet again) with that old chestnut that 껌/깜/검둥이 = Nigger, as Metropolitician is wont to say. I've dealt with as much here:

I have long felt, and The Marmot seems to agree with me, that 검둥이 (kŏm•dung•i) is better represented as "darkie." The word is still insensitive and inappropriate, but it by no means carries the historical baggage — and violence — of nigger. Koreans have not been lynchers of Blacks, they have not legally or physically barred Blacks from marrying Koreans (or anyone else), nor have they enslaved, segregated, red-lined, or systematically and institutionally tried to keep down Blacks. Nigger comes from that violently supremacist mentality, which is far different from the xenophobic race-infused mentality that produces words like 검둥이 (or 흰둥이 for "whiteys"), and that makes it terribly misleading to use them as equivalents when describing racism or attitudes about race.

[Of course, if you're on the receiving end of it, it may be seen as tah-MAY-toh/toh-MAH-toh, but I submit that the latter is far less damaging and much more amenable to change than the former. I also recognize that a WASP WASP-like entity German-Irish Catholic from Long Island (The Marmot) may be the last one to expound on the comparative hurtful usage of 검둥이 or Nigger being hurled at someone, but I'm straight out of Compton, so maybe I've got a little more cred. Just a little.]

In short, whenever Metropolitician goes off about Koreans (who have used 검둥이 or some variant) calling him "Nigger," his credibility goes down a few ticks in proportion to how large the chip on his shoulder is at the time.

That said, does this seem worse now? As some at The Marmot's Hole have pointed out, we have a situation where more foreigners and a dramatically expanded means for putting even minor cases out there for the public to see make for a situation where there could, if one were looking, seem to be more incidents going on even if there were dramatically less. At the very least, I think per capita incidents may be going down even as we read more about them (and Metropolitician does his part to make sure we see them, even as more and more people go to him with their stories).

Then he asks why the media never reported on this pattern of confrontational encounters. My guess is that never is not true. I'll have to look that up, but when Metropolitician uses superlatives to describe what the media is doing, he's almost certainly wrong. (I've made this point when he talks about how the Korean media or police will always make a big deal in the press about drug arrests of foreigners, even though I know first-hand that this is not true.) That Metropolitician may not have seen them doesn't mean they don't exist. Another example of cognitive distortion that stems from the subconscious assumption that what ends up in the K-blogs is an accurate reflection of what's in the Korean news media.

Finally, he asks how this went from being filmed to being a national scandal. Well that's easy: someone went crazy on a bus while being filmed. As others have noted, this was true with many infamous videos where Korean nationals were the subject, including some where some youngish man or woman went off on an older Korean person. Maybe Metropolitician would do well to review the memes post, including #81, "When bad things happen to me, it's because I'm a foreigner," because shit happens to Koreans as well.

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Kvetchpat of the day

Actually, this is more of an anti-kvetchpat rant, as you'll see, but it addresses kvetchpats.

Okay. I'm still in the midst of a major set of work deadlines, but I've found a way to produce posts on the cheap: take notable comments on other blogs and highlight them for their value (or infamy).

So, on one of the posts on The Black Guy on the Bus™, a frequent Marmot's Holeian named milton, fresh off his success with Paradise Lost, wrote the following in response to another commenter, cm (a kushibo favorite), who asked how so many people can have two completely different sets of experiences:

I think theres a number of factors involved.

Pre-departure, people read all kinds of sensationalistic blog posts, articles, forum threads, travelogues, etc. about how “racist” Koreans are. When they arrive in-country, they expect to be treated badly and confirmation bias ensures that they dwell on the burly ajumma who shoved her way out of the bus and the unscrupulous hagwon director who fires people in the 11th month of their contracts, while conveniently forgetting about the friendly ajeoshi who helped repair a burnt out light bulb or the neighbor who helped carry in that load of groceries. People come here expecting Koreans to be racist and so they make sure they find (and imagine and exaggerate) plenty of incidents of racism to fulfill their expectations. People who are looking for trouble are going to find it. That’s human nature. I’ve met more than my fair share of paranoid expats who manage to find racist overtones in every Korean twitch and glance and are convinced that a Korean version of the KKK is lurking behind every shadow.

There’s also the nature of the people who tend to come here. A lot of people (Westerners in particular) tend to go to Japan because they grew up watching Sailor Moon and Dragon Ball, love sushi, and obsess over learning kanji. They go to China because they’re fascinated by Chinese history and hope learning Chinese will give them an edge in the business world. They go to Thailand because they love beaches, ladyboys, and great deals on fake gems. In other words, these people want to be in their host countries and tend to be more forgiving of local imperfections. On the other hand, people tend to come to Korea because they’re looking for adventure and high-paying, easy teaching jobs to pay off their student loans, or in the case of other Asians, because they did poorly on their college entrance exams. They don’t really have anything “invested” in focusing on the positive side of Korea, and don’t appreciate or understand their host culture. For some Westerners in particular, I think there’s some latent disappointment at not being treated like King Whitey, and these folks, with a sense of entitlement, are shocked to be greeted at Incheon by a haggard customs agent instead of Lee Myung-bak and the other tribal chieftains and a harem of Korean virigins for His Majesty’s pleasure. They face further disappointment when they learn that the backwards locals treat them with indifference instead of ooing-and-aahing and mistaking them for Tom Hanks, and that their white skin and English abilities don’t magically open every door in the country.

That said, there is definitely racism here. There are more than enough examples of racism in the media, in the education system, in the national ideology and policy, and other venues to fill several volumes. I don’t doubt (all) of those stories about cab drivers ignoring foreign fares to pick up a Korean fare 5 meters up the road, about foreigners being denied entry into night clubs, about police and bystanders always siding with the Korean, about young nationalistic hotheads deamanding that Yankee go home, or about curmugeoned drunk seniors dressing down Korean women for being near their foreign boyfriends, but I feel that most of the racism is on the “systemic” level as opposed to the person-to-person level. I think a lot of it boils down to how you carry yourself in public and how you behave: if you act like a barbarian and treat Korea like your personel frat house, you’ll be treated accordingly. If you make the effort to adapt, act in professional manner, smile, and be discreet, people will leave you alone.

Frankly, the first part is something I agree strongly with (I pretty much agree with the whole thing, including his earlier discussion of the Expat Echo Chamber and perceived racism), and I've made many of the same points here and there. Many of these themes are covered in my (in)famous memes post, including the notion some folks work from where they think anything bad that happens to them in Korea happened because they're a foreigner (#81).

"They keep staring at me!"

His part about who goes to China or Japan (something with which I'm less familiar) sounds plausible based on what I've heard. And it really does explain this galling situation where some "foreigners" gripe that every little thing is a sign that Korea is "Raaaaaacist!" when in Japan things like "No Gaijin!" housing issues are rampant but so few complain. Were something that big going on in Korea as a common thing, there would be a collective aneurysm among the waaaaagugin. But I digress. (And I'm still trying to fit this into the discussion.)

I would add that the going-to-Korea-as-a-business-decision issue also runs headlong into such Whites having their racial transparency stripped away from them.

So in conclusion, short milton: "Paradise never found."

"We're sending you to Korea."

Any thoughts? Is milton right? Am I too hard on newbies? Should prospective future residents be steered away from some, most, or all blogs on Korea? Are there good blogs for newbies and prospectives?

Is being a kvetchpat communicable? Manageable? Curable? Commendable?

Not mine. See link.

What can be done on the Korean end to make Korea more attractive to people who won't just see it as, ahem, "like a retarded prostitute's pußßy" (apologies for that)?

Will the soft power generated by K-pop help resolve this problem on its own by attracting people who already have a fascination for all things Korea? Will some of them be disappointed that Korea isn't full of middle-aged men wielding hammers against gangsters?

"The mud festival is over. You have to put some clothes on!"

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UPDATED: Oh, my Niga. Non-offensive generic post title about Black man in fight with elderly Korean man on bus that has become latest video sensation in Korea

Ahem, as much as I hate to push a post with a hit-generating title like "no more angry sex with my running partner in a café restroom for me" off the front page, this video has grabbed the K-blogs by the throat and is throttling for all its worth.

Having read at The Marmot's Hole the explanation that the Black gentleman on the bus to Pundang had misinterpreted Niga (as in a casual "You..." as the subject of a sentence) as the incendiary N-word, it was painful to watch this man go off so badly over a misunderstanding.



I was all set to write a post where, well, I actually came down on the side of the Black guy in the video — at least a little. I'm not Black, but I spent half my childhood in Compton, long enough to have a very different view (apparently) of Black people than many non-Blacks in America, and long enough to recognize, when I later lived in Orange County and elsewhere, the often schizophrenic and hypocritical way that many non-Blacks regard and treat Blacks. (Not to mention later in Seoul, when so many Whites suddenly take up the cause of Blacks in Korea because, well, they suddenly feel they are treated the way they think Blacks are treated, even though this wasn't really such a bother to them back home. But I digress...)

I was going to come out and write sympathetically, as I have before, about how most non-Blacks really have no clue what it's like to live inescapably from the taunts, snickers, condescension, backbiting, and even racial epithets that are commonplace if you are Black in America. Which carries over in different ways to being Black in Korea. No, I'm not Black, but in the latter half of my childhood and adulthood I was very attuned to the knee-jerk reactions to Blacks they saw (seriously, there was a time when I would have said without a second thought that I was more afraid of White people than Black people).

So if the guy really did hear Niga but thought he heard Nigga, I'd cut him some slack for going off. Maybe the guy has anger issues, but maybe the guy also has just been seething from so much crap thrown his way, in Korea and back home.

An update at The Marmot's Hole link above says the guy was with his girlfriend, and I'm thinking that supports my suppositions that the guy — walking around or taking public transport with his Korean (?) girlfriend — has endured a lot of crap and he may have reached the tipping point.

Now, as Oranckay points out, none of that allows you to go off on a harabŏji (grandfather figure) in Korea. Nothing. You let him hit you with his umbrella and his words, parrying both in a defensive pose, but you do not attack. That earns you no brownie points and can land you in jail. Black, White, foreigner, or Korean.

But the constant barrage of "검둥이," "무섭다," etc., can eventually send some people over the edge.

Now just as I was about to hit PUBLISH, I get a link to Metropolitician's site, which has a post on the same topic, but from a completely different point of view:

Left out of the conversation -- and a question that every Korean would ask were the court of popular opinion turned against them -- is any consideration of what the context was. Not that there's an excuse for hitting another person without cause, but the funny thing about this video is that we're right in the middle of an altercation that obviously was started for a reason, OFF-camera, but no one on the Korean side seems to care what it was, and the video's title hints at what the real issue is: a scary black man attacks defenseless old Korean man. Case closed -- we know what we expect, we know how they do, we got the case that we want. It's a "BLACK MAN," after all. ...

Because life as a black man in Korea affords you about the same amount of sympathy, both in person and in the media, as one might have gotten in the Deep South in the 1950's. Doesn't matter that violence, both mental and physical, is done upon you day in and day out -- you step out of line one time, and that's your ass.

He also goes on to talk about the Shinchon stabbing, tying it in with the gang-up-on-the-foreigner impression he has, as if the Black guy on the bus or the White guy in Shinchon are mostly not responsible for their fate or their actions. (Metropolitician and others have characterized the Shinchon stabbing as having been instigated or "provoked" (Stephannie White's word).

But like with the guy on the bus threatening people with his "rocks" and using Korean and English profanity and being a physical menace, the guy in Shinchon was not some babe in the woods caught up in the cogs of the Korean judicial system after being "provoked" by anti-American agents in Shinchon. As I wrote elsewhere:

They "provoked" the GIs to go to Shinchon which is off limits. They "provoked" the guy to bring a knife with him when he went out drinking. And then they "provoked" him to hold it to someone's neck.

That's some mighty skilled provokin'.

Okay, it's late (4 a.m.) and I need to wrap this up. I basically have found myself in a position where, owing to my own Compton roots, I was sympathetic to the Black guy who thought he was being berated in a directly or indirectly racist way and then reacted angrily and violently even though he didn't really have the Korean skills to back up his chip-on-the-shoulder feeling (that is fueled by K-blog rhetoric, but that's another story for another day), especially since he apparently apologized.

But Metropolitician has gone and ruined that. His knee-jerk defense of this kinda sorta almost indefensible guy (despite my own defense of him), tied in with his sixth sense for all things racist and xenophobic, and held down by using that Rhode Island-sized chip on his shoulder as a paperweight, has made me rethink my cautiously contingent support for the guy.

It also doesn't help that I was going to cite in this post his earlier claim of a supposed Southern expression — "When the Nigger starts to win then we all jump in!" — and discuss how it didn't really pan out here (apparently there was no violence done by the Korean crowd to the guy), but Metropolitician went and made that the actual title of his piece.

Okay, anyway, it's late and I'm groggy and I'll probably take this post down after (a) getting lots of emails or comments saying, "Boo!" which is what we from Compton have to face in life, (b) waking up and realizing it's full of logically or grammatically unsustainable sentences, and/or (c) something else.

For now, however, I leave you with the words of Pawi Kirogi, who sums up what I think should result, Metropolitician's defense of the guy notwithstanding:

no, don’t kick him out. the man’s sensitive to racial slight and lost his cool with a perception. he says he knows he was wrong and wants to apologize. if the ajoshi is willing to accept, that should be that.

Yeah, I think that's what I've been trying to say somewhere up there. The guy has learned a lesson, and maybe everyone else has: "Kids, you tried your best and you failed miserably; the lesson is, never try.”

UPDATE:
I don't like this post, but that largely stems from not liking this entire issue. It has me posturing against posturers, he-said ni-said crap, "my experience trumps your experience" stuff, etc., etc. There's nothing clean and philosophical that can come from this, except maybe "Don't speak English loudly in public" (Marmot), "Don't ride the bus/subway while Black" (Metropolitician), or "Carrying around a massive chip on your shoulder might make you see/hear things that aren't there" (kushibo).

It also stems from having written the latter part of it way too late at night and the resulting me-too feeling I get from it.

UPDATE 2: 
Linkin' Lawyer Benjamin Wagner asks at The Marmot's Hole:

Curious about people’s opinions on what the guy could or should do at this point to try to makes things right or at least better. Especially interested to hear what Korean commenters would advise.

I guess it's too late for "Speak softly and carry a big stick."

Um, I think the usual would be in order: a deeply contrite apology and an offer to make monetary amends for any physical damage caused, plus people from his hagwon and elsewhere — including Koreans who can speak Korean, if he has any — who can attest to his good nature in regular life. That might get him off with just a fine and no jail time or deportation.

UPDATE 3:
Popular Gusts, as usual, puts together a first-rate set of links on this issue. I have to admit, though, after reading more detailed descriptions of the guy's violent behavior (e.g., trying to "strangle" the elderly gentlemen several times, etc.), my sympathy is quickly dissipating. I'm still leaning toward giving the guy a second chance if he's contrite and this incident was very uncharacteristic of him, but this is serious legal assault.

I'm also reminded of a post I wrote back in 2009, where I pointed out that it's sorta against your best interests to defend everyone in your group (in this case defending Mr H because he's Black, American, or an English teacher who may bear the brunt of xenophobia just like you). Sometimes the Korean public reacts badly to an American or English teacher or whatever because he has in fact done some reprehensible things.

At least this case is getting a lot of KoKos to think about and discuss the stress that builds up for foreign residents of Korea who are routinely singled out as different and, sometimes, even unwelcome.

UPDATE 4:
At Marmot's, Metropolitician writes an impassioned defense of his use of this case to highlight what he considers increasing violence against foreigners:

This IS an appropriate time to bring up the fact that foreigners are harrassed at what I consider to be higher numbers than before. This is the “teachable moment” that the subject has been brought up in the Korean media, although in its most sensationalist form, and in the specific way that happens to NOT represent reality for most confrontational situations between foreigners and Koreans. Sorry, no matter what you say, nothing convinces me that foreigners — no matter how rude or culturally inconsiderate some can be — go around physically threatening or assaulting Korean people. Korean crime stats don’t bear that out, and you can bet a scandal-hungry media would certainly pick up on it were this to be the case.

I'm not so sure I agree there is an overall increase or even a per capita increase (it would make sense that more foreign residents would mean more reports of being victim of violent or racist behavior). I also don't think that labeling the whole of the Korean media as "scandal-hungry" is correct or prudent. In fact, I know reporters who would probably want to focus on the foreigners-as-victims angle, if they could wade through Metropolitician's various screeds to see if there's any there there.

I do wish to question Metropolitician's activist wisdom. This guy, as I'm seeing more and more on the various blogs and news sites, was way out of control, violent, crazy, and even murderous. And that makes him not a very good poster child for crimes-against-foreigners. There's a reason that Rosa Parks, whose "character was impeccable," was chosen as the face of the Montgomery Bus Boycott that catapulted civil rights onto the national stage in the 1960s. She hadn't been the first one to be forced out of her seat, but she was the one that the civil rights leaders saw would be someone whose character could not be attacked by those looking to excuse what was going on. Mr H is no Rosa Parks, and this situation is no foreigner-as-victim set of circumstances.

UPDATE 5:
I forgot mention this:

Criticize me, disagree with me, but don’t put shit in my mouth I didn’t say, or say I do things I don’t.

I hear ya. If you're going to put shit in Metro's mouth, use scare quotes.

UPDATE 6:
Jieun at The Marmot's Hole, another favorite of mine, left a comment I liked:

With all due respect, if you could kindly bear with me here:

A guy with an ethnic background similar to yours commits an act that is patently flagrant—in any way one looks at it (and no one with a right mind would act the way he did upon being told by a much weaker elderly man to “shut up.”)

Then, you appear, saying you’re not defending anyone, and start seguing into a bitter tirade about how you (and your friends)—all good model citizens and polar opposites of the guy on the bus, I’m respectfully sure—have been victimized for years by the society at large, or rather, by the social fringe.

Do you see it? I don’t think that is the strongest tack you can take to further your cause/grievance.

I’m truthfully (and sometimes hopelessly) empathic; I feel for you, but I think it’s time you reconsidered your paradigm of thought as to how to bring about change, away from focusing on the hurt.

If you’ve ever felt you haven’t gained much traction pushing the “issues” into public debate, there must be a reason—and a good one at that.

The funny thing about having a name like "Michael Hurt": it's an apt emotional descriptive.

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