May 30, 2003

• Oh, I’m so offended!
  

  
  
  
  I found this cartoon on a site recommended by dingus5. I thought it was pretty funny myself, and then I read some of the artist’s hatemail. It’s funny how people take offense at stupid things. I always hate it when someone tells me I should be offended when someone calls me “Oriental”. Usually those people are white. If I’m not bothered by it, why should they be? Don’t you just hate it when people are being self-righteous for you? Kind of like lawyers. Besides, if you had a choice between being called “Oriental” or “Mongoloid”, which would *you* choose? Huh?

  Someone in my sailing club once told me I should be offended by being called “Oriental”. I said, “I’m not.” He said, “You should be.” How funny that someone is encouraging me to be angry about something needlessly. He said, “Oriental is supposed to refer to things that are from the Middle East, not eastern Asia.” Yeah, and “gay” used to mean “happy”.

  I really am bothered by that whole “politically correct” thing. The whole thing rings of “Harrison Bergeron” (the original short story from Welcome to the Monkey House written by Kurt Vonnegut, not the movie, which I’m told wasn’t true to the original).

  For example, I wonder why newspapers say “African-American” when they really mean “black”. I had a friend in Berkeley who was from Austria, but he was born in Kenya. He was an Austrian citizen, and to call him “African American” based on how he looked is, well, wrong. He is actually (if you want to use stupid American lingo) African-Austrian. But that’s so stupid. He’s an Austrian citizen, so I honestly don’t think it matters where he was born. He’s black. And he’s Austrian. What’s so hard about that?

  At our University, there are constant debates about our mascot, which is a chief of a “Native American” group that actually didn’t even live around here. Every year, people hotly debate about whether to remove the Chief as our mascot. One of the professors in the Biochemistry department is Native American. He grew up on a reservation, actually. I asked him once what he thought about it all, and he told me he doesn’t really get into it. I guess some people would wonder why, since, hey, he’s “Native American”. Well, frankly, I would hazard to guess he’s got better things to do as a tenured professor at a University. He doesn’t need to depose a mascot to prove that “Native Americans” don’t all prance around football fields threatening to scalp opponents.

  The funny thing is, the major supporter of removing the Chief as mascot is actually a University professor in the same department who isn’t even Native American. And he’s actually not a very reputable professor in the department, which is ironic. I guess he spends too much time at protests instead of doing research. And people wonder why cancer hasn’t been cured yet.

  Put me in Thailand, and they make fun of my accent. Put me in Philippines, and I can’t speak a word of the language except to say, “Let’s eat now!” (the main thing they taught me). I’m mostly Chinese, but the relationships to China (on both my mother and my father’s side) is so far distant that no one in China would claim me unless it was because they wanted my inheritance or a visa to come to the States.

  I’m Oriental. And I was born in America. And I like dogs, and sometimes I’ve wondered what they taste like. Maybe it’s in my genes. But let anyone touch Buddy with their fork (or chopsticks) and I’ll ram a sailboat mast up their ass. Oh, wait, the American thing to do would be to sue.

  • 8:18 am
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