Asian-Americans Talk About Racism, and We Listen - Part 1

Still Processing

The New York Times

News Commentary, Society & Culture, News, Arts

4.8 • 9.2K Ratings

🗓️ 28 June 2018

⏱️ 36 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

This week and next, we’re doing something different. After witnessing an awful instance of anti-Asian racism at a movie theater, we couldn’t stop thinking about how this type of racism is rampant in American culture, both on the screen and off. At first, we wanted to talk about it. But then, we realized that we needed to listen. For the next two episodes, we hand the microphones over to our Asian-American colleagues, friends and listeners to hear about their experiences with racism. From Pablo Torre (of ESPN) to Emily Yoshida (of Vulture) to Parul Sehgal (of The Times) and more, we hear about childhood traumas, politicization, pop culture and hierarchies of oppression as they relate to Asian-American identity. The ideas are varied and complicated, conflicting and nuanced — which makes sense for a hugely diverse community that makes up almost 6 percent of the American population. We’ll bring you the second part of this two-part series next week.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Like one of the weird things about being Asian American is to hear people do the things
0:06.9	that are the most offensive in any textbook way towards Asian Americans.
0:11.5	It is doing the slant-ey eyes thing.
0:13.7	It is doing the Ching-Chang voice thing.
0:16.7	All of these things that to us are the clear signals that you are not one of us, that you
0:23.0	will never be one of us, that we do not respect you enough to know that this makes you feel
0:29.8	like you're not one of us.
0:40.8	I'm Jenna Werthom.
0:42.1	And I'm Wesley Morris, we're two culture writers at the New York Times, and that was Pablo
0:46.4	Torre.
0:47.4	He's a writer and co-host of ESPN's High New.
0:50.7	And he's one of the people we wanted to talk to about something that's been on our minds
0:54.2	a lot.
0:55.2	Right, we've witnessed a lot of racism towards Asian Americans recently.
0:58.6	We've been asked to partake in a lot of racism towards Asian Americans.
1:02.5	Like remember that time we went to the movies?
1:04.3	Oh my god, yes.
1:05.3	So one afternoon we decided to give this movie called The X-Fail 3.
1:11.6	Cute, huge hit in China, movie about guys on the rebound after break up with their girlfriends.
1:17.3	So we go to the box office, we buy the tickets.
1:21.1	And so that guy at the box office asks us if we're sure we wanted to see this movie because
1:28.0	it wasn't in English.
	...

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