Yellow Fever

So I get home from another 13 hour day of worky funness, including floating to another floor from 7-3 (which wasn't so bad, folks were nice, patients were decent)....

Then I open my e-mail, which is still my last university account, even though I dropped out two semesters ago. So via this e-mail account, I've known for a few days now that the President of China is coming to this particular uni (I don't want to give it the power of ownership by calling it "my" uni) tomorrow.

Apparently, despite all their goodwill-efforts to make nice with the Chinese (whatever, there's something nefarious going on, I can just feel it) it's gotten around campus that some sophmorically titled uni rags, one of which is cleverly called "Rumpster" has taken racism to a whole new level of completely boring.

One of the feature stories was entitled "Me Love You Long Time" and then went on to discuss, in depth, "Yellow Fever," or, from what I could decipher from my 0 .5 second scan of the article, the sexualizing and objectifying Asians as hot campus commodities. Oooo! Interracial dating! Now there's a topic that was big news in 1955!

Complementing the article: a large photo of an otherwise nude reclining white male with a Chinese food take-out box over his (probably limp) dick. He appeared to be eating something out of a bag, which may or may not have been fried noodles, I didn't really pay much attention, because I didn't think it was all that special, funny, clever, or even all that scandalous.

Bad health care, now that's a subject of controversy and scandal. Asians?! Interracial dating?! This shit is generating controversy?! My thought would be to ignore it, because clearly the intention was to scandalize, and I'm sorry, but making fun of Asians is really passe, right up there with the Electric Slide and parachute pants.

My immediate thought was Yawn. How fucking boring can you be, white racists?! Edward Said had this all figured out decades ago. Nobody thinks you're interesting, nobody thinks you're "scandalous" and no one needs to "dialogue" with you, as suggested by one of the Nursing School's "diversity committee" professors.

Incidentally, I distinctly remember boycotting "Diversity Day" at this particular uni, even though it was "mandatory" because I think it is very condescending for white people to assume that everybody needs and wants to get along, and we should all be tutored in how white people think we as a population should cooperate and have group love-ins or whatever. Yeah, okay, so you feel guilty about decimating the native populations of our continent, enslaving blacks and Asians (not to mention throwing the later in concentration camps), but don't let your guilt be my fucking problem. And definitely don't make me come to school and read books about different cultures so I can empathize more with myself, because I'm the minority here, you fuck-heads, and don't you think I know what it is to be me and thank God every day I'm not you?!

I mean, do racist white people really think they're the only people who think they're racist!? Come on! You white people suck as racists. You're just not cool enough, you don't slam us chinks and gooks with enough style or verve for me to even be vaguely annoyed. In fact, I'm more annoyed with the fact that you couldn't come up with something more clever and therefore befitting of a 100K education. Come on, you can do better than pseudo-coining the phrase "Yellow Fever," can't you? I'd expect Ivy League students to do better than that pile of dogshit. I wouldn't even call it "racist," I would just call it, ummm... lame.

At least come up with something new, different and inventive if you're going to try to put people down, because otherwise, those people you are trying to insult have a tendency to think you're really silly and stupid, and need to grow up and get a real job, instead of living off of Mommy and Daddy's Platinum Visa at an expensive school that produces presidents of the dubious caliber of George W.

It's not an affiliation I was sorry to eschew, and I can honestly say people pretty much had to pry the information from me in tacit bits and pieces when they asked where I went to nursing school, as in, first I'd say "the Northeast," then I'd have to admit the state, the city and finally, I'd be wishing I was a better liar and just say I was going to local community college, because I would actually be prouder of that statment than revealing my ex-university.

Any way, stupid white youngsters, please, next time you try to insult Asians, take some notes on gansta rapsters, who have "in yo' face, motha'fucka's" down to an art form, and they are brilliant, even when they are self-effacing, which is part of why I love gangsta rap as much as I love Mozart or Bach.

Like, if DMX or Wu-tang Clan came out with a rap song dissing Asian bodega/dry cleaner/grocerystore/gas station owners, I'd probably find it very funny and very clever, because in a way, they are also making fun of themselves, even when they are at their most angry, pissed-off, "fuck you mothafucka's" I mean, haven't you ever noticed the irony in rap? Do they not teach the concept of irony at Ivy League Schools? Or demand that their students be literate?

If I'd protest anything, it's not that they called me "yellow" (I've seen yellow people. they have liver and renal disease. Most of them have been white people), it's not that they tried to scandalize the uni community... it's how miserably they failed at their objective.

Besides, I work around a lot of products of that kind of mindset, and you know what? A large percentage of them have poor peripheral vision, run into doorways, printer tables, spill dozens of charts onto the floor, and aren't very funny at all. What a shame. If you're going to be a dickhead, at least be a funny dickhead.

Caveat: This blog post was written by an Asian woman who is friends with white people, too!