8 Asians

UPDATE 3/9/2013 @ 10am: YouTube removed the original video for being hate speech, so I’ve updated the video embed with a mirror from LiveLeak. Thanks to commenter Aishi Yupi for providing the link.

UPDATE 3/6/2013 @ 9:30pm Pacific Time: It looks like Sam Hendrickson has deleted his Facebook page. When I looked at it a few hours ago, his page was filled with lot of Asians calling him out for his racism and a bunch of white people defending Sam’s video and saying “chill out, it’s just a joke!”

If you’re a white college kid who wants to become famous for making funny videos online, the way to get started is to post a racist video, ranting about what you don’t like about Asians… that is, if you go to the Alexandra Wallace School of Asian American Internet Infamy* (I heard this is where she ended up after leaving UCLA).

Samuel Hendrickson, a University of Southern Indiana Indiana University student, made a four-and-a-half minute video listing out ten reasons he’d “hate to be Asian”:

1. Most Asians look alike
2. If he was an Asian man, he’d most likely be with an Asian woman (and he doesn’t find Asian women attractive)
3. Sweatshops suck.
4. Smoking pot while Asian makes would make his already-chink eyes close completely
5. He sucks at math
6. The only way you can be in show biz if you know kung fu or if you play an Asian mobster
7. He’d be short.
8. He hates sushi and it would be “everywhere” if he was Asian. [He throws in a nice use of the word "Oriental" during this segment.]
9. Asian males don’t have a “good rep.” Schools don’t accept them any more than white males, they’re not known for being good in the bedroom, and are known for having small equipment and wear tighty-whiteys
10. Asians blur their porn

Evidently, Sam meant for this video to be a joke (according to a comment on YouTube, he says “I know not all asians look alike.. this whole video was a joke.”) and he has uploaded other so-called funny videos with his friends under the 3LetterMafia banner.

Sam also apologized on Facebook (and Twitter), saying:

I would like to really apologize to the entire Asian race and anyone else offended by my video. What I did was a joke but was not taken as one, with that being said, I sincerely am sorry for offending anyone.

Says our anonymous tipster, “this shows us that racism is alive and well today. People like this person are why we must keep fighting for equality.”

My hope is that a good parody or two comes out of this. After all, the parodies were the best things to come out of the whole Alexandra Wallace debacle.

h/t: Anonymous tipster

*This had better not be a real thing.

Since the sixth of November is 2012′s election year, Mother Jones recently put out an article on the timeline of voter suppression in America. What’s interesting about the piece is that many individuals from Asian American history are right there on the timeline. Here’s a few snippets snagged from them with a few comments from us, and an extra tidbit we added as well. Can you throw in some of your own highlights from Asian American history and current events too?

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EDITOR’S NOTE: This piece contains viewpoints from the author regarding the alleged gunman and the gunman’s possible intent(s). As the investigation of the Sikh temple is ongoing, the Editors remind all readers that the opinions and assumptions in this piece are solely that of the author’s and do not reflect the opinions of other contributors of this site, or of 8Asians as a whole. –JW

On Sunday August 5th 2012 around 10:25am, a white armed man entered a wide open Sikh temple and opened fire, leaving six dead before police shot and killed the gunman. “Tattoos on the body of the slain Sikh temple gunman and certain biographical details led the FBI to treat the attack at a Milwaukee-area temple as an act of domestic terrorism, officials said Sunday”, according to the LA Times.

I am not here to argue about stricter gun control laws (which I personally believe should happen) but instead I am here to create something remotely positive out of so heinous a tragedy. Therefore, it must be emphasized that the attack was conducted in a Sikh temple, which the white supremacist most likely confused for a Muslim mosque. Sikhs are the 5th largest religion in the world but it is also one of the least understood and known. For those who are completely unacquainted on the Sikh religion, please make sure to check out the SALDEF website to learn more about it.

I like to believe that this attack happened because the gunman attacked what he did not know and in many cases, what you don’t know can often lead to the things you fear and loathe. So if this is the case, let us take this time to at least be knowledgeable in what we don’t know so that ignorance cannot be a factor in what leads our decisions. And that is all.

Please keep the victims and their family members in your thoughts and prayers as the nation will once again plunge into a messy debate about the myriad of issues that surround this country.

If you haven’t heard already from numerous sources, Jeremy Lin has officially taken the $25 million offer from Houston Rockets after his home team, the New York Knicks, refused to match the offer. If I was in his shoes, I would take that offer because I could certainly use the payroll upgrade. But then there is that question of loyalty and being grateful to the people that made you a standout in the first place. It’s pretty clear that this is not sitting well with a LOT of people.

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After celebrating his win today in the Democratic primary for the Ward 8 on the D.C. Council, Former District of Columbia Mayor Marion Barry made this particular comment at his victory party:

“We got to do something about these Asians coming in and opening up businesses and dirty shops,” Barry said. “They ought to go. I’m going to say that right now. But we need African-American businesspeople to be able to take their places, too.”

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If you’ve been using Facebook for the past year or so, chances are that you may have come across a hilarious meme, quote, or pictures from a certain “George Takei.” You may be asking yourself, “Wait, George Takei as in that Star Trek Sulu George Takei? He can’t possibly be this witty, funny, and social media relevant!”

The answer is a most resounding yes, that is indeed the one and only George Takei.

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For starters, I didn’t even know there was a Korean version of Saturday Night Live — so it came as a surprise to me when folks have been bringing to my attention that SNL Korea did a parody of “Dreamgirls”…entirely in blackface. You can see the blackface disaster starting at the 45 second mark.

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On May 25, 1887, a group of up to 34 Chinese miners were massacred by a group of white frontiersmen in Hells Canyon in a section of the Snake River now officially known as Chinese Massacre Cove. After robbing them of every ounce of gold they had, the Chinese were hacked to pieces, and some of their mutilated bodies were found at Lewiston, Idaho, 65 miles downstream.

It is one of the worst acts of vicious hate violence against Chinese in American history. They could have stolen their gold and left the Chinese miners alive since there were few laws around to protect Chinese or their property. But they gunned them down and then mutilated their bodies on top of that. If that isn’t a hate crime, I don’t know what is.

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On December 3, 2009 at South Philadelphia High School, 26 Asian immigrant students were assaulted by classmates, the majority of them African American. Thirteen of those attacked ended up in the emergency room.

The Hyphen Magazine article “Are You Picking On Me?” by Helen I. Hwang goes in detail and in depth about the event and what went down that tragic day. What’s most disturbing is the way the district and the school handled the situation that day and the long time problem of bullying of API heritage students at that campus. There was an attempt to mute the race-based aspect of the bullying and attacks, and 80 API students had to boycott the school and have outside community support and intervention in order change the unsafe environment that was specifically and especially hostile to API.

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The perpetual foreigner syndrome is something we as Asian Americans are unfortunately all too familiar with and something we have to brush off as cases of stupidity and ignorance. Sometimes, it can seriously get in the way, especially if you’re trying to run a business. This was the case in Alabama where the owner of a large southwest Alabama car dealership was derided as “Taliban Toyota” by a competitor.

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Over 5 months ago, I wrote a very “flattering” open letter to Alexandra Wallace because I sincerely believed that she was truly ranting and had to get some things off her chest. While it was ignorant and in poor taste, I wasn’t get upset by her video because if I had to be honest, I’ve been in that same ranting position before and it was just as ignorant. If anything, I was more amused than anything else.

In the past few days, I’ve seen this video of a girl’s tutorial on “how to be Asian” popping up all over the place. I have to say, I’m not even amused by this. Heck, I’m not even angry. I’m just completely exasperated to every degree because one, another non-Asian thinks it’s so funny to use Asians as cheap punching bags for jokes. Two, I’m seeing so many people in the Asian American community posting this stupid racist video. I’m so annoyed by this that I’m not even going to bother to embed this video on this article. The video is complete with yellow face, slanty eyes held in place by scotch tape, and a moronic sense of humor.

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In New York, an Asian American group is planning to boycott the 1961 Audrey Hepburn film Breakfast at Tiffany, which is being screened in Brooklyn Bridge Park on August 11th. The film is being shown as part of the Park Conservancy’s free outdoor “Movies With a View” series, which receives some city funding but is primarily sponsored by the SyFy network.

While mainstream audiences will remember the film as a classic, it is also notorious for featuring  Mr. Yunioshi, a Japanese character played in ridiculous yellowface by Mickey Rooney. Many consider Rooney’s role to be one of the worst caricatures in Hollywood history and I want to make sure that everybody is absolutely clear on this matter.

But is this film really worth protesting about?

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