The readings this week really hit home for me. I grew up watching Youtube stars like Nigahiga- and, as the article mentions, it is pretty common to use humor to get at deeper concerns about race as a social construct- people throw it around a lot, but even in the most serious of social justice discussions, there seems to be a way in which it is used to shut others down. I found it funny that some scholars might want to confine race to “the dustbin of analytically useless terms”, but it helped me see past all the empty rhetoric and recognize that is really just an “ideological system” for “thinking about, categorizing and treating human beings”.
Despite this, people are more emotional than rational when it comes to the issue, and the fact that it has become so sensitive makes me wonder how differing sentiments can be expressed in other art forms, or even plainly, without somehow inciting race as a defense mechanism. Common arguments employed by communities of color/ minorities include their “history of oppression”, “cultural appropriation” and even stereotypes and microaggressions launched against them. One of the most difficult to refute is the fact that “white privilege” permits people outside the culture to ever understand the struggles of these minority groups.
While I find it problematic to use personal experience (or lack thereof) as a basis for shutting others arguments down, I wanted to reflect on my own status as a minority group on this campus. As an international student from Singapore, hardly anyone knows about my home country and what that says about my identity. I have had several people ask me where in China Singapore is, and causally compliment me on my good English. Fact is, Singapore is not part of China, and most people in Singapore speak English (it’s my first language). It is also a diaspora, as a number of US immigrant groups seem to be. More in this article:
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/13/opinion/tash-aw-being-chinese-in-singapore.html
However, unlike the tension created between whites and communities of color here, Singaporeans have used social media to respond more humorously than seriously to stereotypes and idiosyncrasies of the culture. It might be that it is difficult to offend anyone because the country is so young (about 50 years old) and we lack a strong sense of national pride, or that we have not been the victim of hate crimes or racially motivated wars. This, however, does not change the fact that we have learnt to take embarrassing facets of our culture very generously upon criticism. An example (Shit Singaporeans Say)-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r41uayjfg1w
Despite the fact that no one really understands my culture (nor would I claim to completely understand it myself), I don’t feel the need to use it as a tool against others. Further, I think the fact that these videos are created speak to the desire to contribute to a greater narrative about the way we interact with the world, and mis(portrayal) of Asians don’t really upset me. Stereotypes are meant to be reductionist, and while racism is alive and well here, the knowledge that the medium of humor is as reductionist as the stereotypes it seeks to imitate speaks to some truth in the representation. This also forces acknowledgement and further reflection on nuances and complexities.
While the race argument is very difficult to address, I think Spencer does a great job of pointing out that “the use of racial divisions emerged as a way of resolving the conflict between the ideology of equality for all and universal reason, and on the other hand, facts of social inequality”. But because social media has the power to democratize, it seems as though social inequality is temporarily suspended. It does not change the fact that racism is still prevalent, but because you can be anyone on social media, it removes the label of race and hopefully encourages us to develop arguments that are conceptual rather than simply contextual.