Plus, a view of road conditions during this winter storm. New guy around the Purdue office: The Drew Brees edition. And today’s local holiday song: Malachi Jaggers’ ‘The Bells of Christmas’
Allow me a correction, third, but first, the songs were a good idea . Those could ONLY appear in Based in Lafayette, Indiana. Secondly, right now the public doesn't know what the difference is between accepting an apology and a reprimand. It appears the same. Now, the correction. The headline accidentally misleads. The chancellor didn't speak "Asian gibberish." That would mean that there was something inherently and authentically Asian about the sounds he made. What he did was speak gibberish and then he labeled it "Asian." That's not a small point, and this key difference highlights the offense.
I still don't understand the nature of the offense. Is the claim that Keon was somehow "mocking" Asians? That seems pretty far-fetched, particularly given that, as best I can tell, he has no history -- none -- of mocking or otherwise behaving badly toward Asians in his personal or professional lives. If anything, he was mocking himself: He was demonstrating how Asian languages sound to Americans who don't speak any Asian languages. (And he did a pretty good job of it: That's what Asian languages sound like to me). This is really a self-own: It's a way of saying, "Unlike non-native English speakers throughout the world who spend years learning to speak English, we Americans generally -- me too! -- can't be bothered to learn foreign languages, and especially non-Indo-European languages, and so they often sound to us like gibberish." Keon's emulation of what Asian languages sound like to him is only an offense if you make some weird and wholly unwarranted assumptions about his intent -- like, say, assuming that the real message he was trying to convey was that Asian languages, and the people who speak them, are somehow inferior to 'Murican English and 'Muricans, and that they should learn to speak 'Murican, damn it! Does anyone seriously think this is what Keon was up to?
Asian languages sound like gibberish to me. That's clearly a "me problem": I don't speak any of them. (But for the cognates, most Indo-European languages that aren't English sound like gibberish to me.) I've done precisely the same sorts of impressions of what Asian -- and many other languages -- sound like to me, both with my family and friends, and even in some improvisational sound/music/dance performances. Sadly, I'm not nearly as good at it as this guy:
The problem with Keon's "performance" clearly can't be that it's "racist" or "anti-Asian." In the absence of any additional evidence to support the proposition that he is racist or anti-Asian, it seems ridiculous. Maybe it's just that it was too goofy, and thus, contextually inappropriate and unprofessional. Maybe I'm missing something. Help me out!
There's lots of "yikes" in your narrative above. I encourage you to share it with several friends and a pastor. Amongst those friends, please also share it with your Asian-American friends. Make sure they have a printed copy before you chat with them.
I take no position on whether Keon should be removed. I don't work at PNW and don't know his history. I DO know he is enacting the kind of Yellowface performance we saw in Mickey Rooney's fail in BREAKFAST AT TIFFANY'S and in THOROUGHLY MODERN MILLY. These are not acceptable performance modes now, just like minstrel shows fell away.
I'm Asian-American and I find it quite noxious. If I was in a business office and a boss did that at a meeting, I would request a transfer. Faculty and students can't request transfers. So then what? Cancelling the man is odious to many. Leaving him is equally odious to many. Where I land in this minute, and it might change, is here:
The expression is unarguably racist, regardless of the intent. It's racist because it draws from a racist history of Asian-American depictions. The bigger problem is, and outsiders wouldn't know this, is that for at least the past decade, such incidents tend to always get a finger wag and a pass. If you are a person of color, or an LGBTQ citizen on one of the Purdue campuses, or even just living in I.N., you right get frustrated that every incident gets described as "isolated." He/She isn't a bad person, they just slipped up. I totally get that caution. Still, that means the system is built to perpetuate "isolated" situations, all the while the people they impact experience a quite solid and consistent wave of insult. For us, it's not isolated. It's built into the culture. Your Youtube links serve to disprove your point. Watch them again and then watch the Chancellor's video clip. Reflect on the differences.
See what I did there? I moved past Keon to answer your question. In the end, Keon isn't the issue, and again, I take no position on his ouster. But please, after the January break, report to us what your Asian-American friends said after reading your full comments. My father immigrated from Mainland China in the early 60's, full disclosure.
Once I got past your initial paragraph, which involved little more than attempting to shame me for being a (presumptively racist) dunce, you then pretty much lost me completely with this sentence: "I DO know he is enacting the kind of Yellowface performance we saw in Mickey Rooney's fail in BREAKFAST AT TIFFANY'S and in THOROUGHLY MODERN MILLY [sic]." Your characterization of Keon's spontaneously improvised remarks -- over in a few seconds -- as a "Yellowface performance" on par with Mickey Rooney's elaborately scripted portrayal of Mr. Yunioshi -- a rather deliberately grotesque caricature of a Japanese man involving painted-on yellow skin, fake buck teeth, taped eyelids, etc. -- seems facile to the point of meaninglessness.
Never mind that Keon was obviously not "performing" -- except in some high-falutin' lit crit sense of the word -- and was neither literally in yellowface nor engaged in any other sort of behavior that could be read as embodying a racist Asian stereotype. The film seems to mock Mr. Yunioshi for speaking English with a "Japanese accent," not for speaking Japanese (a language that Holly Golightly probably wouldn't have understood.) Keon, on the other hand, wasn't obviously mocking any individual or group for their inability to speak unaccented English, or their inability to speak English at all (unless, somehow, you think that such an inference is supported by other evidence). At worst, he "performed" an impression of himself, giving voice to what Asian languages sound like to him as someone who doesn't speak an Asian language.
If this is "racist," either intentionally or "objectively," then I'm guilty of the same thing. When my kids were young, we often "spoke" to each other in a pseudo-language we called "Toonah." It had no formal structure and was completely improvised, using phonological elements borrowed in an entirely ad hoc way from a variety of languages none of us spoke but to which we'd been exposed. This included Indo-European, Asian, and African languages (especially Swahili, a language that my wife speaks, and Xhosa, a language whose phonology she studied). I also know some biblical Hebrew, which I acquired in 7 years of Hebrew school as a child, and threw in some of that as well. I used a similar sort of pseudo-language, composed of similar elements, to accompany improvised modern dance performances in which some of the performers -- and some audience members -- were native speakers of some of the languages whose phonology I had "appropriated." No one ever said anything about my having done so. Not once did I feel like I was engaged in racist stereotyping. But, who knows, maybe I really am a racist dunce.
PS: I don't know what "Thoroughly Modern Millie" has to do with The Keon Affair. The two arguably stereotypical Chinese henchmen were played by actors whose parents were Japanese. Go figure.
Allow me a correction, third, but first, the songs were a good idea . Those could ONLY appear in Based in Lafayette, Indiana. Secondly, right now the public doesn't know what the difference is between accepting an apology and a reprimand. It appears the same. Now, the correction. The headline accidentally misleads. The chancellor didn't speak "Asian gibberish." That would mean that there was something inherently and authentically Asian about the sounds he made. What he did was speak gibberish and then he labeled it "Asian." That's not a small point, and this key difference highlights the offense.
Fair point.
So you like the Christmas songs too!
I still don't understand the nature of the offense. Is the claim that Keon was somehow "mocking" Asians? That seems pretty far-fetched, particularly given that, as best I can tell, he has no history -- none -- of mocking or otherwise behaving badly toward Asians in his personal or professional lives. If anything, he was mocking himself: He was demonstrating how Asian languages sound to Americans who don't speak any Asian languages. (And he did a pretty good job of it: That's what Asian languages sound like to me). This is really a self-own: It's a way of saying, "Unlike non-native English speakers throughout the world who spend years learning to speak English, we Americans generally -- me too! -- can't be bothered to learn foreign languages, and especially non-Indo-European languages, and so they often sound to us like gibberish." Keon's emulation of what Asian languages sound like to him is only an offense if you make some weird and wholly unwarranted assumptions about his intent -- like, say, assuming that the real message he was trying to convey was that Asian languages, and the people who speak them, are somehow inferior to 'Murican English and 'Muricans, and that they should learn to speak 'Murican, damn it! Does anyone seriously think this is what Keon was up to?
Asian languages sound like gibberish to me. That's clearly a "me problem": I don't speak any of them. (But for the cognates, most Indo-European languages that aren't English sound like gibberish to me.) I've done precisely the same sorts of impressions of what Asian -- and many other languages -- sound like to me, both with my family and friends, and even in some improvisational sound/music/dance performances. Sadly, I'm not nearly as good at it as this guy:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QxrDNRhYFyI
Or this woman:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ybcvlxivscw&t=0s
The problem with Keon's "performance" clearly can't be that it's "racist" or "anti-Asian." In the absence of any additional evidence to support the proposition that he is racist or anti-Asian, it seems ridiculous. Maybe it's just that it was too goofy, and thus, contextually inappropriate and unprofessional. Maybe I'm missing something. Help me out!
There's lots of "yikes" in your narrative above. I encourage you to share it with several friends and a pastor. Amongst those friends, please also share it with your Asian-American friends. Make sure they have a printed copy before you chat with them.
I take no position on whether Keon should be removed. I don't work at PNW and don't know his history. I DO know he is enacting the kind of Yellowface performance we saw in Mickey Rooney's fail in BREAKFAST AT TIFFANY'S and in THOROUGHLY MODERN MILLY. These are not acceptable performance modes now, just like minstrel shows fell away.
I'm Asian-American and I find it quite noxious. If I was in a business office and a boss did that at a meeting, I would request a transfer. Faculty and students can't request transfers. So then what? Cancelling the man is odious to many. Leaving him is equally odious to many. Where I land in this minute, and it might change, is here:
The expression is unarguably racist, regardless of the intent. It's racist because it draws from a racist history of Asian-American depictions. The bigger problem is, and outsiders wouldn't know this, is that for at least the past decade, such incidents tend to always get a finger wag and a pass. If you are a person of color, or an LGBTQ citizen on one of the Purdue campuses, or even just living in I.N., you right get frustrated that every incident gets described as "isolated." He/She isn't a bad person, they just slipped up. I totally get that caution. Still, that means the system is built to perpetuate "isolated" situations, all the while the people they impact experience a quite solid and consistent wave of insult. For us, it's not isolated. It's built into the culture. Your Youtube links serve to disprove your point. Watch them again and then watch the Chancellor's video clip. Reflect on the differences.
See what I did there? I moved past Keon to answer your question. In the end, Keon isn't the issue, and again, I take no position on his ouster. But please, after the January break, report to us what your Asian-American friends said after reading your full comments. My father immigrated from Mainland China in the early 60's, full disclosure.
Once I got past your initial paragraph, which involved little more than attempting to shame me for being a (presumptively racist) dunce, you then pretty much lost me completely with this sentence: "I DO know he is enacting the kind of Yellowface performance we saw in Mickey Rooney's fail in BREAKFAST AT TIFFANY'S and in THOROUGHLY MODERN MILLY [sic]." Your characterization of Keon's spontaneously improvised remarks -- over in a few seconds -- as a "Yellowface performance" on par with Mickey Rooney's elaborately scripted portrayal of Mr. Yunioshi -- a rather deliberately grotesque caricature of a Japanese man involving painted-on yellow skin, fake buck teeth, taped eyelids, etc. -- seems facile to the point of meaninglessness.
Never mind that Keon was obviously not "performing" -- except in some high-falutin' lit crit sense of the word -- and was neither literally in yellowface nor engaged in any other sort of behavior that could be read as embodying a racist Asian stereotype. The film seems to mock Mr. Yunioshi for speaking English with a "Japanese accent," not for speaking Japanese (a language that Holly Golightly probably wouldn't have understood.) Keon, on the other hand, wasn't obviously mocking any individual or group for their inability to speak unaccented English, or their inability to speak English at all (unless, somehow, you think that such an inference is supported by other evidence). At worst, he "performed" an impression of himself, giving voice to what Asian languages sound like to him as someone who doesn't speak an Asian language.
If this is "racist," either intentionally or "objectively," then I'm guilty of the same thing. When my kids were young, we often "spoke" to each other in a pseudo-language we called "Toonah." It had no formal structure and was completely improvised, using phonological elements borrowed in an entirely ad hoc way from a variety of languages none of us spoke but to which we'd been exposed. This included Indo-European, Asian, and African languages (especially Swahili, a language that my wife speaks, and Xhosa, a language whose phonology she studied). I also know some biblical Hebrew, which I acquired in 7 years of Hebrew school as a child, and threw in some of that as well. I used a similar sort of pseudo-language, composed of similar elements, to accompany improvised modern dance performances in which some of the performers -- and some audience members -- were native speakers of some of the languages whose phonology I had "appropriated." No one ever said anything about my having done so. Not once did I feel like I was engaged in racist stereotyping. But, who knows, maybe I really am a racist dunce.
PS: I don't know what "Thoroughly Modern Millie" has to do with The Keon Affair. The two arguably stereotypical Chinese henchmen were played by actors whose parents were Japanese. Go figure.