Tuesday, February 26, 2008

Campus Press Starts a 'War on Asians'

Via racialicious, a columnist for Colorado University's Campus Press wrote a column that essentially declared war on Asians (note: an entire race) based on a bad experience he had with someone at the Rec Center when a kid lost his racquetball.

After my friend and I finished working our abs at the Rec Center, we decided to head upstairs to tighten our buns on the StairMaster. As we walked down the hallway, a rubber ball bounced out of one of the racquetball courts and landed at the feet of an Asian in front of us. He picked up the ball and leaned over the railing of the court nearest to him.

“Hey, that’s not ours,” I heard a guy call up from the court. The Asian stared down at him for a moment, and then held the ball out to him. “That’s not ours,” the guy said again.

Then another voice called out from a different court, “Hey, does anyone see a ball up there?”

The Asian looked over, confused.

“I think it goes to that court,” I said, pointing to the one nearest to me.

The Asian stared at me blankly for another second, and then he looked back down into the court next to him and offered them the ball again.

“That’s not our ball,” the guy called up.

“Excuse me,” I said. The Asian whipped his head around and scowled at me. “I think it goes to that court.”

He paused a few seconds, and then he said, in a perfect American accent, “Okay,” and tossed the ball into the court next to me.

That’s when it hit me.

The Asian was so jaded by his experiences with the whitebread, brainless tree sloths of CU that even though three people had explained to him that he was trying to return the ball to the wrong court, it was inconceivable to him that we might be right.

And when he looked into my eyes, it wasn’t just irritation and disgust that I saw-it was hate. Pure hate.

I’m such a fool for not realizing it sooner. I can’t tell you how many times the Asians have treated me like a retarded weasel and I’ve forgiven them. But now I know that Asians are not just “a product of their environment,” and their rudeness is not a “cultural misunderstanding.”

They hate us all.

No, it's not because this kid was having a bad day and you were in his way. It was because this Asian kid represents all Asians and their pure and unjustified hatred for white kids. Right. Also, thanks for your generosity in forgiving all those Asians and their rudeness. That was very benevolent of you.

The head editors at Campus Press [BTW, could they come up with a more generic name?] issued something of an apology, but most people aren't buying it. The columnist, Max Karson, already has a legacy of racism chronicled by Wikipedia. The thing is, if the editor of the commentary section was a person of color, it seems unlikely that this column would have ever made its way onto the printed page.

1 comment:

Larry Kelley said...

So you looked at Max Karson’s Wikipedia entry and you still don’t get it? Yikes.

Yeah, he’s no Jonathan Swift.

But considering he almost went to jail after comments the day after Virginia Tech, don’t you just think that maybe--if he really had it in for Asians--he would have cited that bloody, record-setting massacre, perpetrated by a Korean?

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