The Last Word: Thumbs Down

First off, I wanted to thank Ed for pointing out the Kenneth Eng racist rant over in the Asian Weekly paper out of San Francisco. I also wanted to thank ExPat Jane, Darlene, Nubia and countless others who've voiced their disgust over the publication of his venomous piece. But this issue of racism goes beyond this one person, whose opinions aren't going to be swayed by either patience or reason.

The other part of the problem was the editorial staff of Asian Weekly, which has been run by the Fang family of San Francisco for decades. Why a family who has been at the helm of a paper would let something like this get to print, or even on the editorial table for consideration is beyond their peers in the publishing industry. What happened? Was it a fluke? Or is it simply the culimination of years of subtle racism within the staff and the family that has finally reared its head in a public way?

After reading the posts of Ex-Pat Jane's blog from people who had written for the Asian Weekly, I'd bet that it was the latter excuse. Racism existed, but no one in that staff had the guts to stand up to it, to say it was wrong. And so you have the ugly ramblings, which should have been confined on a Kenneth Eng Blog O'Hate rather than being printed up in a metropolitan newspaper. But here again is yet another example of blogging being mistaken for journalism.

This is made even more shocking by the fact that the Fang family has done business in SF for over 50 years. One would think that the publisher and his staff interacts with people who are not their own race and that they have heard of civil rights. Have they not been able to make even the barest of correlation between the strides made by leaders such as Martin Luther King as having some impact on the progress of Asian Americans? But what's even more apalling is this: the paper seemed not to have anyone on staff with a historical overview who could look at those rantings and say, "Nothing ever life sustaining has ever been borne by hatred." No, they just didn't get it.

Their decision to take a leap backwards recalls some of the same stereotypical accusations that were made against Chinese people in the 1800's. From the book Chinese Women In America (by Professor Judy Yung) is an opinion that appeared in Harpers Weekly in 1858: "The taste for the baboon-like faces of Hong Kong women is, I fancy, like that for mangoes, an acquired one. I have learned to like manoes; but my tailor's wife (who is Chinese) still excites in me only unmitigated disgust." Why would the Fang family let their editorial staff do what has been done to their own in the past? What's the point in going backwards?

With all the writers in San Francisco to choose from, it is farcical that they should choose the hate-rambling rant of this very disturbed person. Despite their politically correct apology and their newfound insight on the "importance of diversity," I think the publisher and the editorial staff of the Asian Weekly has shown themselves to be both late and pathetic.