Hey everyone.
I haven't been really up to much lately. Just watching some March Madness, the Bulls and Blackhawks, and of course, getting ready for the GRE, which is coming closer and closer with each passing day. It was also spring break here at Oakton, though I didn't really do anything worth mentioning.
I hope I didn't frighten you all with the pretty wild, unrestrained rant I had on those morons trying to link the tragic earthquake/tsunami to Pearl Harbor. For those of you who read that piece and are about to read this one, you might be a little bit surprised to find a dramatic change in emotion.
So pretty much everyone and their mother has been asking for my opinion on UCLA student Alexandra Wallace who so "tastefully" described her "discontent" with the hordes of Asians that are supposedly invading American universities. In case you missed the video, here it is
Alexandra Wallace is an idiot. My favorite part of her asinine video is how she says her "rant" is not directed at her "Asian friends" yet the cretin was stupid enough to generalize an entire race of people based on the actions of 12-20 Asians who happened to live in the same building that she did. And did she really think it was a good idea to post this video just hours after an earthquake that has killed almost 10000 people in Japan? Once again, it is clear that this student is pretty brainless and lacks those "American manners" (whatever the hell that means) that she so obnoxiously bragged about.
However, if you expected another classic example of, wild, histrionic, and downright scary Dennis Choi rage towards this person, you're going to be disappointed.
Quite frankly, I wasn't really that offended at all. Yep, that's right. Here I'll type it again in case you're still in disbelief: I wasn't really that offended at all.
You can blame Highland Park High School, that abominable cesspool of spoiled brats, for my desensitization. At HPHS, I heard far worse. In fact, Alexandra Wallace's comments, however tactless and ludicrous, were actually par for the course during high school where I was bombarded by abhorrent remarks against Asians seemingly on a daily basis. The comments I received, particularly during my senior year, would make Alexandra Wallace look like Obama for goodness sake. After all, Highland Park is definitely not the most "open-minded" place in the world. In fact, the place seems to champion its stupidity and narrow-mindedness (which is why I refuse, and will ALWAYS refuse to call it my hometown. It's Highwood DAMN IT!).
I guess being exposed to such blatantly offensive racism really led me to a point of disillusionment with this idea of "racial harmony." Let's face the facts, as long as humans exist on this planet, prejudice will never go out of style in this world.
For this reason, it seems a little overkill for people to be issuing death threats. To those people who either sent the death threats or agree with those who went after her, do you really think that is going to suddenly change this person into a non-racist? The bottom line is, people like her, WILL NEVER CHANGE. It's pointless to throw death threats because her narrow-minded stereotypes of Asians are not going to suddenly go away because some jackass threatened to shoot her in the face. Even her apology seems half-assed and more done out of necessity than out of the goodness in her heart. I guess her "All-American" mother didn't teach her the universal manner of owning up to a mistake.
As defeatist as this sounds, there's nothing we can do about racism like this. For every Alexandra Wallace who has been humiliated because she was so incredibly stupid enough to make this video public, there are millions of others who share her views and will pass it on to their children without consequence, simply because they keep it within themselves. I guess that's why I don't get angry anymore when I see stuff like this because let's face it, she's not the only one who feels this way and it's not going to change anytime soon.
Back in January, I found myself in a loud bar that was blasting a cacophony of Serbian music and where pretty much everyone in the bar was a Serb (or from a country in the former Yugoslavia) with the exception of myself and two other guys. When I walked into the bathroom, a dude in the bar started insulting me by speaking mock Chinese, similar to Alexandra Wallace's "ching chong ling long" spiel. The dickhead proceeded to laugh his ass off while I fought off an urge to urinate all over him.
Were his actions as reprehensible as Alexandra Wallace's? I'll let you decide on that. But let's face the facts, if I decided to give him a lecture about how he should be more open-minded and accepting of other cultures (in a dirty ass bathroom of a shady ass bar, mind you), was it really possible to expect him to suddenly not be a prejudiced dumbass? Of course not...
So I did what I thought was best at the time, just ignored him and moved on. There's no point getting mad over something that can't be transformed.
Cheers,
DC
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