Vomit in a Bag (Patrick Lee)

The editorial ends with the author’s college email address and “©2008 Campus Press,” as if nothing extraordinarily inflammatory transpired in the preceding one thousand words. What I wonder about is not how many emails he received in protest to his blatantly abrasive and crude editorial, but how many he received thanking him or agreeing with his sentiments.

The possibility that some individuals will have read the piece and missed the satire, or even worse, wholly agreed with its views, troubles me more than the fact that a college student found a terribly juvenile way to funnel his apparent angst.

Did he write the piece just to get some attention? Or does he really espouse the racist, narrow-minded and alarmingly animalistic ideas in the article? I hesitate even to call it an article, because it is more like the product of pouring one’s vomit into a bag and tying it up with ribbon, in an attempt to cover up the crude contents: it’s vomit-in-bag, in written form.

But more urgent is a question that applies to all forms of communication: to what extent is the author responsible for the aftermath of her or his work? The immediate fallout of the editorial probably only enhanced the author’s notoriety on campus and beyond, and in the twisted dictionary of American culture, notoriety is just as good as fame.

Thus, my main concern is this: is American society — or on a smaller scale, the college campus — an environment that actively breeds such sentiments as expressed in the editorial? That’s a question that will require a thorough analysis of the forces shaping our popular culture, and it is an issue that we must all consider, regardless of race.

The one positive aspect of the means the author chose to communicate is that it left space for dialogue. The fact that everything has transpired in the realm of words, and has not significantly crossed over into the realm of action, allows for response and reaction. What I gained from reflecting on the editorial is a realization that the inequality of the real world can infiltrate everything, even the idealized “University bubble” I currently live in. The CU Editorial proves that, even within college campuses (where admissions offices purposefully recruit diverse classes), entrenched stereotypes can make their way in and slap me in the face.

My reaction will not be to slap back, but to pity those who are nearsighted by the prejudices of the past.

Reacting to Racism (Lisa Leong)

Max Karson of Colorado University has given up on racial tolerance. Karson wrote a controversial column for the campus paper titled “If it’s war the Asians want…It’s war they’ll get,” in which he outlines an attack on the souls of Asian people. The self-called “No more ‘Mr. Pretend-I’m-not-Racist,’” says that “tolerance” and “cultural sensitivity” are over (his scare quotes, not mine). Karson declares a race war: “They hate us all… It’s time we started hating them back.”

I’ve been trying to stomach this racist hate speech for three weeks, during which my reaction has become more complex.

“I’m offended!” was my instinctual reaction. When I read Karson’s misguided satire about identifying Asians by asking us to do calculus in our heads, training us to read facial expressions, and punishing us for not speaking English, my thought process was “racist, racist, and more racist.” Here are the old anti-Asian stereotypes — that we are all math nerds, that we are inscrutable, that none of us can speak English, et cetera. By the way, if an Asian person can do math and has less than perfect English, that’s not a reason to attack.

Not only does Karson generalize all Asians, but his gross generalization is the basis for his violent hatred of Asians and need to “attack their souls.” Karson’s plan of attack has the ring of Nazi rhetoric. He invites his volunteers to “hunt” down Asians, round them up with nets, and throw them into a “reformation” program that tortures them until the “Asian spirit is broken.”

Karson claims that his exaggerated column is a piece of satire because he wants to say, “Hey, it’s a joke.” But the only person who would find this funny is a white supremacist. Maybe that’s close to who Karson is, considering he was arrested for making threatening comments about being “angry enough to kill people” during a class discussion of Virginia Tech shooter Cho Seung Hui. It seems that Karson takes his own satire quite literally.

Feeling offended is a combination of disgust and outrage. I am disgusted that such an ignorant piece of journalism went to print. I am outraged by the “apology” delivered by the editors of the CU Campus Press. Their apology is half-hearted: “We apologize for any ambiguity of the satire that may have been misconstrued.” I wish the editors would have just taken a bite of humble pie and said, “We made a mistake.” There’s a difference between saying “Sorry to anyone who might have been offended” and “Sorry for being offensive.” The first is phony, the second is genuine. Campus Press offered a fake apology, the same way Karson’s column is fake satire. To read a real apology, see the public statement from G.P. “Bud” Peterson, Chancellor of CU.

Another side of my reaction was a lack of surprise. I’m not surprised that someone declared “War on Asians” because I’m no longer surprised that racism exists. In 2006, there was a similarly anti-Asian “satire” in my own school’s paper The Daily Bruin. The article “A Modest Proposal for an Immodest Proposition” was also controversial and inspired complaint letters. Again at CU’s Campus Press, Lauren E. Geary wrote a racist column against Hispanics called “No Hablo Ingles.” All these racist articles represent more than a recent trend of on-campus racism; they are the present form of a history of racism in America.

My final reaction is resolve, that feeling of “I’m not gonna give up.” There’s racism and ignorance in the world of journalism, but I’ll take that as a reason to keep writing. Karson publicized what a lot of people think about Asian people, but most people know better to keep it to themselves and not act on their resentment toward Asians. We need to keep fighting the good fight, not a war against Asians or whites or any group, but a struggle to end ignorance so there will be less people who think the way Karson does.

Every act of oppression is met with a resistance movement. Students at CU rallied against the Campus Press’ infamous hate speech columns by Karson and Geary. The Asian American Journalists Association and numerous Asian American bloggers helped mobilize the outcry against Karson’s column. Protests can bring change: Karson has been suspended from Campus Press.

Who’s laughing now?