Friday, March 18, 2011

Asians In The Library



Something unfortunate happend this past week. UCLA student Alexandra Wallace posted a video about her distaste of people answering their cell phones in the library. Especially during finals week. Alexandra posted it on her youtube vlog last Friday. By Sunday, it was unposted. Good or bad, it was recorded and reposted to the disgust of the API community. The reasons for the disgust was Alexandra's racist remarks about Asians that live in her apartment complex, "the horde of Asians" talking on their cell in the UCLA library, and lack of sympathy for the recent events surrounding the Japan tsunami. Since this past Monday, the post has taken on a life of its own and is now truly a meme.

My initial response was that of shock. After a minute or so later, it turned to disgust. Five days later, it's now turned into entertainment. Among my Asian co-workers this week, it's not uncommon to hear "Ohhhhhhhh Ching Chong..." in the middle of random conversations. It's that big. One thing that saddens me is that at no point was I ever surprised that this behavior could and does exist here in the good ol' US of A. In order to enjoy the "hordes of Asians", there's no better place than SoCal and specifically Los Angeles.

The responses from the only place Asians seem to have a voice in the US is YouTube. Literally, thousands of response videos have been posted. I've posted a few of my favorites below. I'll be adding to it for my own reference. Unfortunately, there are many supporters of Alexandra's rant.

On another note, I passed the YouTube video of just the "Ohhhh Ching Chong Ling Long Ting Tong Ohhhhh" loop to my co-worker in China. That guy didn't think it was racist, but thought it was super funny.





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