RACISM IS – HATE INDICATORS SPIKE

by Mike Liu
Thanks fot Martha Ta and Zenobial Lai

Racism has spiked up. On Campus, Asian Law Caucus has reported that at Stanford and Duke University, there have been new anti-Asian incidents. More revelations about Darmouth's five years of anti-Asian hate tolerance (see note in Dartmouth section). A poll commissioned by the Committee of 100 during the first half of March reports that most Americans look at Chinese Americans negatively. This jump has been exacerbated by the US spy plane incident

Duke:
The Asian Students at Duke describe the following:
CASE ONE
An Asian American woman was walking to her dorm room on West Campus late at night last week. A large number of men saw her and harassed her by shouting that she return the spy plane, referring to the US-China spy plane stand-off.
CASE TWO
The chemistry test of an Asian American freshman mysteriously disappeared the day of the test; however, an unknown person forged his name on the top of another student's test. A week later, on returning from a weekend trip to Washington DC, he unlocked his room and found that his room had been rifled and a large sum in cash had been stolen. On his desk was his freshman yearbook, open to the page with his picture. His picture had been crossed out with a red pen, with the note "it's time to go home chink." He also received two threatening e-mails - one full of racial slurs (pasted below) and the other with an article regarding a decapitated man. Since then, the campus police have conducted a half-hearted and sloppy investigation of the matter. The officer assigned to the case failed to interview the student until a month after the incident, when she had come to a dead end and was ready to meet with him to close the case. At this meeting, she accused him of forging the entire crime, threatened him with 2 years of jail, and tried to force a confession out of him because "it's less work" for her.

WARNING: THE FOLLOWING CONTAINS EXPLICIT AND OFFENSIVE LANGUAGE.
The threatening e-mail to the student, sent from over soon [over666soon@hotmail.com], with the subject line "blessed the virgin mary."
_________________________________________________________________________
the question is simple yellow wetback, dont fuck around so much with the situation. keep it cool fo shizzle my nizzle.. u lucky enough to be gong to skoo here u shit licking wetback chink.. the day will arrive.. eat ur heart out with a fuckin bottle of soy sauce .. we dont welcome YOUR KIND here u Littllee nigglet... go back to shainghaI and fuKkIN stay out of the mother fuckin land of the U S of A. things aint so EZ ne-more mr hotshot? thErE goez Ur "A!" in chem, easiest mutha fukkin course atDOOK, and im gonna PreVAil mutha fucka. you are mine soon. watch yOUR BACK, JAcKKKKKK 666 66
perhaps its tim.e... u pray... im GONNA ENjOY EATING ur fuckING bRAINS PuNK.. I NEVER FUCKIN LOSE AITE
PAYYYCEE IN MIDDLE EAST

Stanford:
At Stanford, white supremacist and racist graffiti was found scrawled on classroom walls in March in History Corner and the Center for East Asian Studies.

The hate comments were directed against Asians, Arabs and African Americans, were probably written on the night of March 14. A total of 14 slogans were found in a lecture hall and a classroom in History Corner, or Building 200, and two more were found on the steps and in the arcade outside. Similar graffiti in Building 50, which houses the Center for East Asian Studies, was not reported until March 20.

Examples of the kinds of anti-Asian and anti-Black sentiments included the following:

rape all asian bitches and dump them
rape all oriental bitches
KKK
White man rules
niggers don't get it, this is a whites only class
nuke hiroshima
kill all gooks
rape all asian bitches and dump them
I'm a real white american
nuke japan
nuke niggers
rape all oriental bitches
I'm a klansman
gooks out!!!

The Asian American Students Association on campus, among other organizations are organizing around the issue.

Poll:
On Chinese Americans
A telephone survey of 1,216 Americans age 18 and older conducted March 1-14, 2001 asked about views of Asian Americans and Chinese Americans.

* * * Attitudes toward Chinese Americans
Very negative: 25%
Positive: 32%
Somewhat negative: 43%

* * * Positive sentiment toward Chinese Americans (% who said "probably true")
Have strong family values: 91%
Are as honest as other businessmen: 77%
Are as patriotic as other Americans: 68%
Place a higher value on education than do most other groups in America: 67%
Have contributed much to the cultural life of America: 56%

* * * Negative sentiment toward Chinese Americans (% who said "probably true")
Have too much influence in the U.S. high-technology sector: 34%
Always like to be at the head of things: 32%
Are more loyal to China than to the U.S.: 32%
Hard to get close to, make friends with: 28%
Taking away too many jobs from Americans: 24%

* * * Note: Margin of error plus or minus 3.1 percentage points.
Source: Committee of 100
The telephone survey, conducted March 1-14 by Yankelovich Partners in consultation with the Anti-Defamation League and the Marttila Communications Group
.
The main thrust of the study was to probe the public's attitudes toward Chinese Americans. The survey also tried find out whether attitudes toward Chinese Americans were largely the same or different from those toward Asian Americans in general. It asked 1,002 respondentstheir opinions about stereotypes of Chinese Americans; 214 were asked about identically worded stereotypes of Asian Americans, according to the study. The answers were nearly identical, suggesting that prejudice against Chinese Americans is a subset of broader prejudices against Asian Americans, the researchers said.
Asians Americans were second only to African Americans as undesirable marriage partners. A third of respondents said they disapproved of marrying blacks, compared to 24% for Asians, 21% for Latinos and 16% for Jews.
As for housing, Americans preferred to be neighbors of Asians rather than blacks and Latinos. Seventeen percent of the respondents said they would be upset if an Asian moved into their neighborhood, compared to 21% for Latinos, 19% for blacks and 9% for Jews.
Asian Americans are often told that they excel in technical skills, but lack leadership qualities because they tend not to be assertive.
The poll found that 7% of Americans would not want an Asian American chief executive for a Fortune 500 company, compared to 4% who would not want an African American, 3% a woman and 4% a Jew. And the highest percentage of those surveyed objected to having an Asian American supervisor--6%, compared to 3% to 4% for the other groups.

Dartmouth
Over the past five years, Asian-Americans have been harassed in the bastion of campus conservatism. Recently, it was was revealed that two of the fraternities (of which there are a legion at Dartmouth) engaged in racist activities of part of their recruitment activities. In late 1995 and early 1996, the Beta Theta Pi fraternity read a racist and misogynist poem at a Summer meeting of and an Alpha Chi Alpha pledge skit featuring a "post-mastectomy Korean whore."

In January 1996 Jeffrey Link '98 confessed to having written "chink" and "bastard" on the Little Hall door of Asian American students Michael Yoo '98 and Jon Jun '98. He was eventually fined.

In 1998 a campus comic strip series portrayed an androgynous, Asian character with glasses concerned about his/her GPA.

Asian American students and their supporters have responded to these hate incidents. A group of students placed piles of manure, along with signs reading "Hey, Alpha Chi boys, deal with your shit. Release the script," and "Hey, Beta boys, deal with your shit. Release the poem," on the front lawns of both houses. The comic strip author met with 75 angry members of the Korean American Students Association and the Dartmouth Asian Organization and apologized.

In general the campus administration has been reluctant to act against the fraternities and other miscreants, defending the racist graffiti and comic strips as free speech. In that case, we imagine "red-neck, racist, ivory tower assholes" is also free speech.