Trayvon Martin's killer is a Democrat

This is not Trayvon Martin.
But you might have been told it is.

When Obama went to bat for Trayvon Martin and his family, to many Republicans and conservatives that was not a cue that we should open a dialogue on racial tension, but rather a signal that they should do whatever possible to uphold shooter George Zimmerman and praise his actions, while simultaneously smearing the name and reputation of Trayvon Martin.

Now some partisans on the right are filled with glee because, according to the Washington Free Beacon, George Zimmerman has turned out to be a registered Democrat!

Democratic President Barack Obama has been trying for years to get the Republicans to see eye to eye with him on anything, but the right's defense of George Zimmerman proves one thing: The only way for a Democrat to get support from conservatives is to shoot a Black kid.

Yeah, yeah. I pulled this out of the "Probably too soon" files. Anyway, it is utterly irrelevant that he's a Democrat. Zimmerman had an itchy trigger finger and, apparently, a propensity for thinking Black kids in his neighborhood were "up to no good," even when that wasn't true. It doesn't matter whether he was a Dem or a Republican, whether he voted for Obama or McCain.

On the other hand, I do find it unlikely that he'd be a Democrat. The concealed weapon, the tendency to blame Blacks for crime, etc., all point to more conservative viewpoints. It's not impossible that he'd be a Democrat, but just terribly unlikely.

Consequently, I have to wonder whether the evidence at the Washington Free Beacon is genuine (since we've discovered that the Allen Goin/Coon photo was a hoax, as well as some of the Trayvon Martin pictures, like the one way up at top). I mean, something purely computer-generated like that would be extremely easy to doctor up, and the potential "gotcha" to Trayvon's supporters ("Ha ha! Zimmerman is one of you guys!") would be tempting even if it weren't true.

The real tragedy is that the opportunity for dialogue over the Trayvon Martin case, or even Allen Goin's case, is hopelessly lost in many circles now.

...

And speaking of lame apologies for silly racist crap...

Remember the Hoekstra political ad that was supposed to depict a Chinese (or Vietnamese) worker taking jobs from hard-working Americans, the one that included an Asian woman talking in a bad faux fob accent?

Well, it appears the actress behind "yellow girl" (yep, that's what the Hoekstra campaign called her), Lisa Chan (not a Korean!), is really, really, really, really, really, really, really sorry that this might derail her career that she got involved in this kind of thing:

I am deeply sorry for any pain that the character I portrayed brought to my communities. As a recent college grad who has spent time working to improve communities and empower those without a voice, this role is not in any way representative of who I am. It was absolutely a mistake on my part and one that, over time, I hope can be forgiven. I feel horrible about my participation and I am determined to resolve my actions.

And she didn't realize this before she did the ad?

Okay, I'll cut her some slack, but I can't help but think she'd be lacking in remorse if there hadn't been a shitstorm of criticism.

Frankly, this kind of thing is as old as electronic mass media. Racist depictions of Asians in the media are almost as old as shucking and jiving. What really gets me is the "if I didn't do it, then someone else will" rationalization. I know a lot of foreign television personalities in Korea, and I once asked one of them in particular who is known for his clownish demeanor that is so bad it makes all big-nosed people look like buffoons why he chooses to do that.

"It's what Koreans want to see," he told me, "and that's what I'm giving him." I tried to convince him that that was bull$hit, that if he actually did try to avoid dumbing things down, he might be able to reach the audience on a different level, but he was too far gone with the dollar signs in his eyes. Oh, well. Rant over.

...

Maybe she should plead "Linsanity."

"No, I've never seen nor heard of this woman in my life."

That's what everybody in kyopodom is going to do to the now radioactive Jenny Hyun, a songwriter for Girls' Generation and ChoColat who posts things like this [UPDATE: It's since been removed, but I have an archive of it]...

... and writes things like this:

Linsanity indeed. It bears reminding, people of K-pop, that tweeting, cyworlding, and facebooking are forever. Also, defending against racism by using racism is just plain stupid.

And it's not like she doesn't know that:

Anyway, just like the watermelon mayor in Orange County, this kind of public display of your own racial boneheadedness just doesn't fly. And Ms Hyun is from America, so she can't claim cultural ignorance like LG was able to (briefly).

I do have sympathy for people who inadvertently step over the line (e.g., "You people," "Was the term 'spic-and-span' derived from Hispanic housekeepers?" — if innocently asked — etc.), but Jenny Hyun knew exactly where the line was and she proudly trounced all over it. This only hurts other Korean-Americans and other Asian-Americans attempts to bridge the chasms of misunderstanding that still exist between Blacks and Asians, especially Koreans. No doubt a lot of Blacks are thinking, "Yup, just as I thought, this is what they really think of us," which is itself kinda sorta racist (the lumping altogether aspect, that is).

The only possible defense I can imagine for Jenny Hyun is if she can prove someone hacked into her accounts (which has happened to my email accounts in the past, so it's not outside the realm of possibility).

UPDATE:
Kinda sorta related, The Daily Show With Jon Stewart had a hilarious take on Blacks-versus-Asians in relation to all the aforementioned Linsanity:



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"Intermarriage" on the rise in US

For people from South Korea or who have lived in South Korea for a long time, the sea change in attitudes toward so-called "international marriage (kukche kyŏlhon, 국제결혼) is absolutely striking. Although President Syngman Rhee's wife was a Caucasian woman from Austria and one of the royals was involved with a Caucasian woman from the United States, what would be called interracial marriage in North America was, for a long time, seen as a curiosity and often frowned on as something only low-class women would do (a vestige of the hard times encountered by many women during and after the Korean War).

Nevertheless, changing attitudes and shifting demographics have led to the situation we have in South Korea today, where one in three marriages in rural areas and one in eight marriages across the country are between a Korean and a non-Korean. (Those same changing attitudes have also led to a far higher divorce rate between Koreans, but that's another story for another time.)

In fact, it seemed exogamy (the sociological term for marrying outside one's group) was, for a while, more common in South Korea than in the United States. But a recent Pew Research Study report that utilizes 2010 Census Bureau data indicates that intermarriage is far more accepted and far more common than before. And this is especially true for Asian Americans and Hispanics.

Some highlights:

About 15% of all new marriages in the United States in 2010 were between spouses of a different race or ethnicity from one another, more than double the share in 1980 (6.7%). Among all newlyweds in 2010, 9% of whites, 17% of blacks, 26% of Hispanics and 28% of Asians married out. Looking at all married couples in 2010, regardless of when they married, the share of intermarriages reached an all-time high of 8.4%. In 1980, that share was just 3.2%.

As one might expect, this is not evenly applied across genders:

About 24% of all black male newlyweds in 2010 married outside their race, compared with just 9% of black female newlyweds. Among Asians, the gender pattern runs the other way. About 36% of Asian female newlyweds married outside their race in 2010, compared with just 17% of Asian male newlyweds. Intermarriage rates among white and Hispanic newlyweds do not vary by gender.

I've always thought Asian American men who were having trouble finding that special someone ought to look to Black women, and this sort of backs me up.

In many ways, intermarriage between Asians and Whites represents a more educated and higher-earning group:

Some of these differences appear to reflect the overall characteristics of different groups in society at large, and some may be a result of a selection process. For example, white/Asian newlyweds of 2008 through 2010 have significantly higher median combined annual earnings ($70,952) than do any other pairing, including both white/white ($60,000) and Asian/Asian ($62,000). When it comes to educational characteristics, more than half of white newlyweds who marry Asians have a college degree, compared with roughly a third of white newlyweds who married whites. Among Hispanics and blacks, newlyweds who married whites tend to have higher educational attainment than do those who married within their own racial or ethnic group.

Couples formed between an Asian husband and a white wife topped the median earning list among all newlyweds in 2008-2010 ($71,800).

Revenge of the stereotypical Asian nerds, I guess.

The study also notes that rates vary by region: it's significantly lower in the Midwest and the South than in the West, while Hawaii tops everyone (42% of all marriages). And while those who think intermarriage is a positive for society is about equal to those who think it has no effect, there's still a lingering one in nine who think that it is a negative.

When comparing this to Korea, one might note that much of Korea's "out-marriage" is not in fact "interracial," since it largely involves Koreans marrying ethnic Chinese, Vietnamese, and Filipino/as. Nevertheless, from a social standpoint, it is interethnic exogamy and remains a relevant issue.

The Pew report is getting people's attention, especially since this wide acceptance of something that was once taboo seems a parallel to the issue of same-sex marriage. From the Los Angeles Times:

A quarter-century ago, 65% of Americans thought interracial marriage was unacceptable for themselves or for other people. Yet in the span of a generation, as intermarriage has become more common and the United States has grown more racially diverse, a dramatic change in attitudes has taken place. Today, according to a recent study by the Pew Research Center, 87% of Americans say that the rise in interracial marriage has either been good for society or made no difference, while only 11% think it's a change for the worse.

That's the thing about the tide of history: It tends to flow from intolerance to acceptance. The same shift that occurred in opinions about interracial marriage is happening in attitudes about same-sex marriage. Just ask folks in Washington and New Jersey.

I do think there's merit to that argument, just as there was in the comparison of racial integration of the armed forces with ending Don't Ask, Don't Tell. Still, there are people whose opposition to gay marriage stems from religious convictions, something that didn't generally hold true (I think) for opponents of interracial marriage.

I'm not sure if those people will ever change their minds, but for them, I have two things for them to ruminate. First, gay people have always been able to marry; it's just that with same-sex marriage, they'll finally be able to marry each other. And second, if you really don't like gay people having gay sex, then by all means you should support gay marriage.

UPDATE:
The Economist has a short article on this, but its main emphasis is on the earning power of White-Asian intermarriage couples.

UPDATE 2:
Apparently Black women with Asian men is becoming a thing.

...

Is this becoming a thing?

First we have "Ching" and "Chong" at Chick-Fil-A, and now we have a Papa John's employee referring to her customer — where it shows up on the receipt — as "lady chinky eyes."

Okay, then. What makes it go from egregiously racist and bad to egregiously racist and worse is the lame-ass excuse offered up by the assistant manager:

"I didn't think [the cashier] was trying to offend the lady in any type of way, but she did. It wasn't meant to harm her in any way. But I apologize on behalf of my staff for that."

Geez, that Minhee Cho is pretty thin-skinned to be offended by that. (You can't see my eyes rolling, but they are.)

To be honest, though, I'm starting to be a little surprised this kind of thing doesn't happen more often, since apparently a lot of food service companies are employing bored, minimally paid, and barely literate teenagers to fill in descriptions and/or names of customers who come into their stores. Add to that litany of adjectives "compromised when it comes to notions about what is acceptable to say in public regarding race, ethnicity, and gender issues."

Yes, I blame rap music and hip-hop and shock culture and all that stuff, where calling people bitches or the N-word is promoted and raised up as normal and acceptable, and where racial or ethnic humor is no longer frowned up but is considered edgy and cool.

That girl who wrote that should lose her job, but perhaps a learning lesson could be snatched from this. A beer summit, but with pizza and no president. People have got to re-learn this stuff of basic decency which somehow inexplicably the American culture seems to have unlearned.

That's right, my 2012 new year's resolution was to turn into an old coot ranting about kids today (except that it's not just kids... it's people the same age as this Gen Xer, as well as our parents).

I've also resolved to lose three or four kilograms and get rock-hard abs, but that's a post for another time.

Resting heart rate: 51 bpm

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"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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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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LG and blackface

Someone call LG marketing, quick. I'm serious.

As The Grand Narrative alerts us, LG has some ads for it's Cyon "Black & White" phones that feature a White woman and a black man.

Please note how I did not capitalize black, as I customarily do, because I'm not referring to the race or ethnicity of the man: He is a White made up to look Black, possibly. Or at least black, definitely.

It is hardly surprising that this would raise eyebrows with someone like The Grand Narrative blogger, James Turbull. No big shock that it would even offend. Indeed, TGN's comments section is full of critical comments. Commenter islets writes:

its definitely something that would have been unacceptable here in US .

And this is where I come in. Are you sure about that? Do a Google image search for Rose Wurgel blackface and see what you come up with.

You might have encountered this picture of Rose, who was the daughter in a show called "Black. White." on Fox Television around the time I came to Hawaii. Making Whites look like Blacks and vice-versa featured crucially in this program, though the intentions were good.

And that brings us back to LG: What were their intentions? Were they trying to mock Blacks? Were they disgusted by the idea of making a Black person look attractive as the central figure in the ad? Maybe they were not trying to find a Black person but a person who looks blackish (just like that White woman is almost snowy pale).

At TGN, they are speculating on why a White person was made up to be Black/black, and I could do the same, but it's pointless unless you contact LG themselves and ask them what was up.

That's right, ask them. Don't put them on the defensive; just ask. And then, after their rationale, explain to them that they made a huge marketing faux-pas and that they should yank these ads posthaste.

Because even if no bad intentions were there, the fallout is far too great. Even if no malice was intended, the ad is extremely problematic.

But let's not kid ourselves. It is problematic primarily because of American problems with blackface in the past. Korea did not invent "Amos & Andy" and does not have — nor do many of the people in South Korea particularly understand — the cultural baggage associated with it. Blackface was a way to keep Blacks out of mainstream entertainment and, moreover, it was a way to mock and ridicule Blacks in a way that was used to justify the segregation, anti-miscegenation laws, and general discrimination faced by Blacks in the early and middle 20th century.

[UPDATE 3 (March 2012: This video seems to be down, so I'm going to link to the same thing on YouTube. Ironically, it is Bing Crosby and his band made up as Black folk singing about... wait for it... Abraham Lincoln! As a bonus, here is Judy Garland — she of Wizard of Oz fame — doing blackface in 1938.]

And to be fair, it can be very confusing for companies outside North America to recognize what's okay and what's not. Functionally, what is so different from this model made out to be Black from the Wayans Brothers, as Alex mentions, dressing up as White chicks in the movie White Chicks? [Or, for that matter, Robert Downey Jr's character in the parody Tropic Thunder, as Left Flank mentions below.]

And when the likes of Bing Crosby is dancing around in blackface in a classic and still beloved movie, how are Koreans (or Japanese, Taiwanese, etc.) supposed to pick up that it's bad. America changed the rules of its game and Korea didn't get the memo. (And many Americans didn't get the memo about yellowface either, for that matter.)

This is not the same thing as depicting Blacks or Africans as near-naked natives, so how would you explain to a Korean advertiser what the rules are? It all comes down to explaining that in America we don't do that anymore, and then explaining why. (And frankly, one or both of the models should have spoken up, if they were North American.)

Not being an American company, LG has not been a part of that at all. But if it's going to market to the masses, it has to recognize such cultural concerns, and now the ball is in their court. To not pull the ad now would be gross cultural insensitivity.

This, by the way, is what Rose Wurgel looks like without blackface:

Frankly, I like her better as a Black person (though she's cute enough in her "normal" look), but my preference may be because her hairstyle and look sort of reminds of my ex-girlfriend back at UCI.

UPDATE (September 13, 2009):

Someone commented on this Japan Probe post with a link to this here Monster Island post, citing it as an example that it's not only the Japanese who are guilty of employing blackface.

UPDATE 2 (June 26, 2010):
A post on the use of darkening makeup and race-bending on America's Next Top Model brings to mind some of these points all over again.

UPDATE 3.5 (March 5, 2012):
I've linked to this post several times as the issue of blackface (this time on MBC) has come to the fore again. You can read about it at Popular Gusts, Roboseyo, Eugene is Huge, Eat Your Kimchi, Expat Hell, and The Unlikely Expat. 

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