By Cindy Luo
for UConn's "Daily Campus"
Last week, UCLA student Alexandra Wallace published a heinous, vicious diatribe against Asian-Americans on Facebook, which was quickly reposted and went viral on YouTube.
She begins by adding a faux-disclaimer that her speech is not meant to address her friends, just "random people" she doesn't even know. Oh, and she reminds you not to "take this offensively," so if you do, it's clearly your problem. Next, she talks about "hordes of Asian people that UCLA accepts into school every single year, which is fine. But if you're going to come to UCLA, then use American manners."
Wait. What?
American manners? Who is she to define what qualifies as "American" and what's not? "American," in this instance, is used as a thinly-veiled synonym for "white." By using this kind of rhetoric, she's setting herself as the standard, and the Asian-American and Pacific Islanders (API) as the other. What right does she think she has to be the kind of student who says how UCLA students should behave?
First of all, the UCLA API community is very diverse. Wallace's ignorance is already showing – one cannot simply lump all API groups together. News flash: Asia consists of at least a dozen countries, ranging from Afghanistan and Vietnam to Yemen.
And that's not all.
She proceeds to complain extensively about Asian people without manners, Asian culture, and decides that Asians – all Asians, and only Asians – are the only ones who talk on their cell phones in the library.
It only gets worse.
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Alexandra Wallace, UCLA student who created offensive viral video withdrawing from school
BY NINA MANDELL
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER
Saturday, March 19th 2011, 3:08 PM
Alexandra Wallace, a UCLA student who created a video making fun of Asians, said she'll leave the university after her family received death threats.
"I made a mistake. My mistake, however, has lead to the harassment of my family, the publishing of my personal information, death threats, and being ostracized from an entire community. Accordingly, for personal safety reasons, I have chosen to no longer attend classes at UCLA," she wrote in a letter to the Daily Bruin, UCLA's student newspaper.
The chick had to be a blonde bimbo, too. Just had to be.
ReplyDeleteIn a way, it is unfortunate that it cost her her education. She clearly could have benefited from so much more of it.
ReplyDeleteBack in the day in the UC system there was a series of light-bulb jokes that made the rounds--one for each campus. UCLA's was "One. She holds the lightbulb up and waits for the room to revolve around her." I never quite got it until now.
ReplyDeleteOK, what she did was offensive in the extreme. But harrassment to her family? Death threats? If she's telling the truth about all that, that is deeply disturbing. I'm in no way excusing her actions, but the response to them is equally heinous. I agree with Prof. Glabella; what this girl needs is an education.
ReplyDeleteIf you haven't yet seen Jimmy Wong's musical response to this, you simply must: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zulEMWj3sVA
ReplyDeleteWhat F&T said.
ReplyDeleteAlso. At one point in my illustrious academic past, I attended a school where one of our fraternities had a "Bro's-N-Ho's" party...or maybe it was a "Straight Outa Compton" party...or perhaps a "Pimp and Slut" party? I don't know...they probably had all three. Anyway, blackface abounded. The university ruled that while the kids were certainly engaging in activities of questionable taste, they were also engaging in 'free speech,' ala Ms. UCLA.
They didn't get death threats.
Now. That might be a cultural thaaang because we also have Good Ol' Boys who fly the Confederate flag...but it might also be about privilege. If you're a guy and you pull this shit, you're just "being a boy." If you're a lady, you get death threats.
This is just now occurring to me, but the more I think about it...
ps: For those outside of the "thaaaaang" and Confederate flag belt, much of our questionable white male behavior down here is excused as "boys being boys." No, really. I asked a campus administrator once why he thought there were so many reports of rape in the Greek system.
ReplyDelete"Boys will be boys." That was his answer. I shit you not.
@CBB
ReplyDeleteI generally avoid 'Netspeak, but the Jimmy Wong response literally had me LOLing.
I think this is an object lesson for all.
Yes, Ms. Wallace's original diatribe was grotesque but Mr. Wong's intelligent (and pissingly funny) reaction is precisely the sort of response we need to arrogant ignorance.
Now ... can someone tell me why Rebecca Black (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CD2LRROpph0) has gotten so much more attention than Jimmy Wong?
@Blackdog "Boys will be boys?" That makes me feel sick.
ReplyDeleteA quick glance at youtube comments reveals that this girl is being called a "ho" and a "slut," etc. She's an idiot and deserves criticism but assuming any woman you don't like is a slut is just sexism, pure and simple. And, yes, we have seen that same sexism on this very site. Recall the poster who suggested that his female students trade sex for favours and spread STDs in the process.
Oooo, cool: poli sci? Raisin' up another informed teabagger.
ReplyDeleteI wonder whether Mr. Wong would like to take on Fred Phelps? He seems to have mastered the "fight appalling speech with more speech" approach pretty well.
ReplyDeleteAt the same time, it's worth noting that he injects a somewhat salacious note into his response, too; there's a "you know you really want me/us" theme running through it -- perhaps in response to the perception that white men are far more eager to date asian women than white women are to date asian men? Or perhaps it just seemed to him like an appropriate response to Wallace's particular combination of cleavage and cluelessness (which I, too, would say suggests a need for education -- about everything from critical thinking to self-presentation -- more than punishment; even if the video had gotten no, or more appropriate, responses, its continued presence on the internet, and the likely consequences of that for Wallace's ability to build a professional life, is punishment enough)? He's definitely not straying into name-calling territory, or anything resembling an outright threat, sexual or otherwise, but it's interesting to see that his response, too, veered in a sexual direction. Still, he, like Wallace is young, and he's funny, and his approach fits with the genre he's chosen for his response -- all points in his favor.
By contrast, any full-grown administrator who actually says "boys will be boys" should be out of a job by sundown.
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ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDelete***Sorry...my typing skills took a nosedive, thanks to the cat, who has reappeared***
ReplyDeleteMy response to the whole thing? Meh. Who among has not said something stupid/ill-considered/inappropriate at that age? I pity her, though; thanks to the power of the interwebz, she'll have this one coming back to haunt her for years, unless she goes to work for Faux News.
@CBB My cat just crawled behind the bookcase, thanks to your link and my laughter. He asked me to tell you that his revenge may not be swift, but will be horrible.
@Cassandra; I give Jimmy Wong much the same pass, noting he is both more attractive and a ***lot** wittier than "Miss Epiphany" (Wait! Maybe she should use that as her professional name; it would work in any number of settings!)
@Frog and Toad: Certainly the death threats (if they were actually that and not just "people like you deserve to die" messages on bulletin boards) were uncalled for. But as an Asian-American, I can see how one would be tempted to go all Tiger Mom on her and her family (in the Asian tradition, I hold her parents at least partly responsible for her jaw-dropping stupidity).
ReplyDeleteTrust me, if you've had to spend your whole life convincing job interviewers, colleagues, and even students that you actually do speak English (n.b.-I had a near-perfect verbal GRE score), then you'd really, really, want to punch that bimbo in the face too.
Especially when I realize that tomorrow (and the day after that, and after that) I'll STILL be trying to convince everyone I speak English. And that little twit will have most likely scored a million-dollar contract with Fox News. GRRRR.
I'd like to know what kinds of epiphanies she has in the library. Can't say I ever had a single epiphany in the library.
ReplyDeleteAnd why is "boys will be boys" OK but racism not? Is sexism de rigueur but racism not?
That Jimmy Wong video was phenomenal, and I hope Wallace watches it because it is perversely comforting - has just the right amount of scolding. She did something really, really insensitive and stupid and should be told that she has crossed any number of lines. But it wasn't hateful or angry itself; just gently mocking, which is what she deserves. I imagine it would make her burst into tears and resolve to be a better person, where an angrier approach would just make her sullen and defensive.
ReplyDeleteShe does desperately need an education. I hope she comes back to school, though probably not UCLA.
She also needs to change her FB security settings. Who posted this thing on Youtube?
OMG, it's Snookie!
ReplyDeleteRats and I wasted my story about this article on another forum last week. It would have gone over so much better here! Darn. Darn. Darn. Darn.
ReplyDeleteTotally Unfair, of course. And to be totally fair, it's not like Asians don't get death threats simply for being Asian.
ReplyDeleteBut I am still a bit of a softie about undergrads, which is to say I think they are still educable; there is still hope for even the most heinous of them unless they are sociopaths. I was raised by good white liberals and still cringe to think of some of the things I thought and said along the way. Never anything as foul as this girl, but stupid things, ignorant things, with the best of intentions. Knowing that I was a sheltered idiot, I went to a college that was very challenging on the social justice front, put my head down and read a lot, and listened a lot, took risks and got called out on my shit from time to time. I'd like to think this girl might get it, someday, but you're right, maybe she'll just end up running for president on the Know-Nothing ticket in 2032.
I know I'll be ignored but...
ReplyDeleteThis kind of crap goes on in the UC system all the time. Last February the frats at UC San Diego held a "Compton Cookout" where they all dressed like gang members and Internet personality "Jiggaboo Jones"* showed up to promote a comedy DVD. Then shortly afterwards a noose was found in the Geisel Library. UCSD has less than 2% percent black student population. It should also be noted that this is the same college where black neoconservative (and UC regent) Ward Connerly pushed for, and got, an end to affirmative action in 1995.
I think there is an underground of racial animosity within the University of California system, some of it the traditional white-black, some of it brown-black, some of it between certain Asian nationalities, and finally the small but boisterious battle of words between the Muslims/Palestineans and the Zionists/Jews
at UC Irvine (which is more political that strictly racial, but similar incidents have happened at other campuses in other states.) Some of this is to be expected due to the racial diversity of California, the rest to the culture of the UC schools: competitive, preppy, and time-stressed because they work in quarters. Finally I should say that no real good has ever come from somebody ranting into a webcam; either it goes viral or somebody takes the clip and modifies it into a mockery of the person or the form itself.
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* Yes, that is his real stage persona; in a YouTube video he is even seen wearing a shirt with that name printed on. And things actually got worse than the noose when the editor of the unofficial student "newspaper" "The Koala" went on SRTV (student run TV, channel 18) and called the angry student body "ungrateful ni**ers" for protesting the "Compton Cookout." Yes, this is the same parody paper that ran professional and amateur prono on SRTV in 2005. Stay classy, UCSD.
What I can't figure out is whether this video was meant to be trolling. This story adds more confusion to the mix:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.sacbee.com/2011/03/17/3481791/ucla-student-who-posted-anti-asian.html
Strelnikov, it's a small point but a meaningful one: Muslims are not all Palestinians and not all Palestinians are Muslim; likewise, not all Jews are Zionists and not all Zionists are Jews. You may not have meant this, but using that slash in "Muslims/Palestinians" and "Zionists/Jews" kind of reinforces a harmful conflation of nationality, religion, and politics. It would be helpful for us all to try to end that conflation.
ReplyDeleteOkay, I'm done. Sorry. You probably already know all of this but I just had to mention it.
Google served up an ad for AsianDating.com to go along with this post. What, oh what, is Google implying?
ReplyDelete@issivoo
ReplyDeleteMy internet was out, which is why I'm late...I agree it looks like is was conflating all Muslims with Palestineans and all Zionists with Jews, and that was not the intent. At UC Irvine the issue was between the campus Muslim club and a right-Zionist group called "Stand With Us." The Muslim club heckled Ambassador Michael Oren's speech last year and students were arrested.....the composition of the club was very multiethnic while Stand With Us was mostly white (you can see videos of the heckling on YouTube under the search "UC Irvine heckling.") Supposedly there had been bad blood between both groups before Amb. Oren came to the college and I'm sure it continued because many of the arrested hecklers were expelled from the college. There was also some blowblack when certain charitable foundations decided to no longer donate to the university. The whole episode reminded me of the "double-secret probation" from "Animal House", though I have no proof of that.