Welcome to Sepia Mutiny. If this is your first time visiting and you found us by reading the MSNBC/Newsweek article which commenced with:
The bodies had barely been removed when the racial epithets started pouring in. Cho Seung-Hui, the 23-year-old identified as the killer of 32 on the Virginia Tech campus, may have lived in the state since his elementary school days, but to the bigots in the blogosphere it was his origins in Korea that mattered most. “Koreans are the most hotheaded and macho of East Asians,” wrote one unnamed commentator on the Sepia Mutiny blog. “They are also sick and tired of losing their Korean girlfriends to white men with an Asian fetish.“
then please understand two very important truths:
1) Four out of the five comments which followed that quoted ignorance repudiated it consummately…
For shame.
This entire post decried stereotyping, and look at what you wrote about Koreans. My thoughts are with anxious students facebooking each other, heartbroken family members and everyone else affected by this tragedy. How can yours even go there? [SM]
2) “one unnamed commentator” does not speak for or represent this amazing, progressive, close-knit community
In fact, the views in the soundbite which MSNBC/Newsweek opportunistically and irresponsibly highlighted are NOT shared by the vast majority of those who write, comment or lurk here; they are the exception, not the rule on a blog which was created to enlighten, not divide. We are saddened that such a reputable and established source of news would misrepresent our site’s purpose and imply that the words of a rogue commenter are somehow indicative of the work we tirelessly try to do.
The bitter irony of this situation is that this website exists to create positive change and yet we were mischaracterized by an article about the valid concerns of the Korean American community after Monday’s massacre; as South Asian Americans, we sympathize and understand such issues because we are far too familiar with the concept of “backlash” ourselves.
We pray that Korean Americans are spared what Balbir Singh Sodhi suffered, that the rage which is to be expected after something so senseless isn’t misdirected so that it harms even more innocent people.
Just as one anonymous person who isn’t even a regular contributor here shouldn’t tarnish the reputation of an entire blog, one troubled, lost soul who took his pain out on innocents shouldn’t tarnish the reputation of an entire ethnic community. We are all suffering; let’s put aside the generalizations, stereotypes and impotent rage and work instead towards healing ourselves, our communities, our world.
::
This is what they have to say for themselves:
Dear Mr. Reeves,
I appreciate your note. Our intention was not to chastise Sepia Mutiny in any way–many blogs have been receiving derogatory comments, and Sepia is just one example. I think that anyone who visits the site will quickly find out what you speak of: that it’s an open forum for commentary, and with that comes the possibility of potentially-hateful comments. We would hope that our readers who are concerned about this site check it out and find that out for themselves. Unfortunately, unless we’ve introduced factual errors into a piece we do not print retractions, and we stand by this piece. I appreciate your input and interest and will keep it in mind as we move forward in our coverage.
Respectfully,
Jessica Bennett
Thanks for writing them, Maurice. We appreciate your efforts to rage against the useless, sloppy, too-proud-to-admit-they-erred machine.
If a backlash does occur, I place a great deal of blame on the MSM for it. I’m sure everyone saw the pictures of the Cho that were being splashed every five seconds on the 24 hr news channels- all of them glowering and angry. It’s like they are putting him up and saying, “Here! This is the person resonsible for this. This is who we should hate.” They now full well the impact of that. People who look like him are going bear the brunt of what happened. The photos play such an important role in public perception. I get a lot of Asian channels, including Thai, Japanese, and Korean, they use pictures that are much less hateful.
The media should have learned the impact of their sensationalism after 9/11, but they don’t choose to acknowledge it, so more people are going to be harmed, IMO.
And then they do these BS stories to cover their asses, in case public blame falls on them, shifting blame, of course, to others.
Sorry folks. Somehow I skipped over the response. What a croc of shit. What an elitist attitude.
I for one greatly appreciate the work that ANNA and all SM intern and posters do. At the same time we all want SM to be the best it can be, and that is why criticisms are made as well. Sure there are some ppl who get petty and have no real purpose. B/c of this reality I encourage that the SM staff do not take things personally. And of course it’s easy for me to say since I’m not the target, but that’s the cost of building something great.
Again THANKS for all your hard work!!!
Rule #2: It is almost impossible for a party to defend itself against a charge of fomenting self-referential frontlash. This is partly due to the inbuilt deniability of frontlash.
See also, Chill v. Sepia Mutiny (2007); Alanis Morisette (1995).
Here’s what I see going on here:
MSNBC is certainly at fault here for being lazy. Web writing seems to have a fast turnaround, and my guess is deadline pressure is much more (not excusing, just offering explanation) Therefore, they did what people criticize Bill O’Reilly and Michael Moore for doing. Establishing a thesis, by taking a line from a source severly out of context, and unrepresentative sampling. And not allowing the response to be fully articulated.
But the question here is, what’s the damage? A few points to be made:
The MSNBC made a tangential references to blogs, the central thesis wasn’t to “prove” blogs are a festering swamp of unchecked hatred, with the prime example being SepiaMutiny. They provided no other “negative” information about SM, (like SepiaMutiny, a blog started to rail against the white community has gone after the Koreans now!)
It wasn’t an “attack” on Indians or the Indian community, they would have a chosen a blog with a more readily identifiable Indian name, like “Indianwriting” or one of those.
I can surely understand why blog admins would take such a reference not laying down, lets say your child made an unfortunate mistake (like throwing up on the couch or something), and the neighbors went around saying “oh, so and so’s kid always throws up on the couch, don’t invite him over” Your natural response is, “yes he did throw up that one day, but on most days he’s just fine, he plays he behaves, he does this, he does that..”
Honestly, I think the MSNBC article would’ve been just as effective (from their POV) if they quoted the “anti-Korean” lines verbatim, without referring to the blog in question. The article wouldn’t be any less “sound” about the statements it made regarding “anti korean sentiment brewing in the blogosphere”
you could be a friend of the author of the MSNBC article, an editor associated with that magazine…not saying you are, but in that case you wouldn’t necessarily be a neutral observer.
Coach and Anna I hope I did not come off as saying that you guys don’t do your job on this site and I apologize if I did,I tried long and hard to come up with a response to that statement I trust me I will handle her in due time. I am just not the type to come off and say things to a person on the internet that I would not say to them in person I am a firm believer in “keep your words short and sweet because you might have to eat them.” I love the job you are doing on this site Anna and I appreciate your hard work and dedication.
Anna, youre greek church story made me cry.
Comment #176 by Prema
The angst of east asian men losing their women to predatory white men.
Wow Prema, I was unware that white men who dated korean women were predatory. Thanks for letting me know that.
Funny I wonder if somesaid desi men instead of white men, I wonder how that would make people feel.
are you asserting it because you feel like going against the grain or because it’s actually what you believe and you genuinely care that the vast majority of us seem to have it wrong?
I genuinely disagree with the majority of posters. That does not mean I have a personal grudge and am surprised that everyone has taken it that way even implying that I may be related to the author of the article. I genuinely believe that this is an over reaction and that a majority of people reading the MSNBC article will not make the connection most people are worrying about. I directed a few people to that article (varying backgrounds) and no one made the connection that the blog was bigoted necessarily. No one even paid much attention to it. I felt that since most of the posters here are so vested in SM they needed to hear from someone who isn’t that this article would not create the impression that SM was bigotted. The article went no where near asserting this blog was always making racist comments.
I am not trolling here and I resent that because I have a dissenting opinion I have been called one. And, I certainly do not like the tone everyone here takes with with any dissenting comments. Again, I have nothing against the SM or Anna. I surely agree with the other posters here that she does a great deal of work writing for this blog and moderating the comments and that she is passionate about it. At the same time, does that mean I or others cannot disagree with her without respecting her? Am I not allowed to point out contradictions in someone’s arguements simply because they are hard working and much loved? I respect the work you do and I respect you enough to have a dialogue with you.
Look.
I want to remind you of ONE thing. Though it may not have seemed like it lately, there are FOUR OTHER permanent bloggers here. I am not a dictator in this space. I do not control what other people delete or don’t delete nor can I explain the judgment calls they make. I more than answer for what I do and why I do it. If there are “inconsistencies”, maybe that’s because five very different people have five very different perspectives and frankly, it’s miraculous that we’ve come to a continuum we can all live with. Please don’t guilt trip me about a comment I never saw and how it oppressed you and how I should be ashamed of myself.
SM is an all-volunteer effort. I do my best to cover for others but I am one woman with two hands. I am not an entire paid staff. And I am extra-stretched thin this week, because of all that has happened and the inevitable trollery that every tragedy brings.
Further comments about “you didn’t delete this one!” and “isn’t this racist and bad and …” will be deleted. Your point is not well-taken. In fact, I’m not taking it at all. This thread isn’t about “let’s spot where SM fucked up!” This is about an unfair development thanks to lazy journalism that none of us deserved.
It’s not dissent, it’s your tone. There’s nothing to go by in cyberspace but what you type and how you choose to phrase things. If your last comment was how you had sounded all along, maybe it would have been different. I just think that everyone is heated right now and we should all go to sleep. Maybe a few hours away will give us perspective.
Often “dissent” or “criticism” of Anna doesn’t come from a sincere place, and that’s been the case here for years. If anything, 2007 is the first time when she’s had this much support that people now accuse commenters of kowtowing. In 2005, it was an entirely different world in here. Anyway, a lot of times, it’s just plain misogyny and nastiness, not constructive suggestions or genuine concerns. Your last comment was thoughtful and genuine, it’s obvious now that you aren’t part of the hate-brigade. I’m sorry I initially thought you were.
Woah, okay I would like to sincerely apologice if I have made you feel that way. I understand that SM is very important to you and I wasn’t trying to single you out. I felt that I was addressing things you said directly. Still, that’s not important, I don’t want you to think I think you’re horrible. I’m truly sorry if any of my posts made you feel that way. I am respectfully withdrawing from this conversation. Peace out.
Just to expand upon Anna’s last comment, some of the bloggers here get sick of the endless navel gazing mixed in with some commenters who are bigots and others that are way to damn pc. We stop reading the comments on even our own posts. So it is very possible that some comments get past our radar. It’s your own fault for deciding that you have to write down every thought that pops into some of your heads.
The same MSNBC article also notes bigotry in Facebook (which most ppl know about), but LOOK AT THE DIFFERENCE:
Apparently half of the online commentators in Facebook were against the comment. Why is this retort missing for SM where MORE THAN HALF of the replies after the the bigoted comment were against it. Hmm, selective journalism??
As a journalist I assume when associating a negative aspect from a source, it is wise to understand what the source represents and what context the aspect is in. Apparently MSNBC chose to do that with Facebook but not with Sepia Mutiny. Facebook also benefits from not being on the first paragraph of the story. Double Standard???????
Chill, that was aimed at the two people I had to delete before that comment– not you, at all. I’m sorry, too. I do appreciate what you were trying to do, but I’m just exhausted and can’t engage you in a way you deserve.
(Though part of me is grateful that my meltdown caused you to see me in a more sympathetic light. Silver lining? 🙂
A purported private site comments on public issues and then gets publically humiliated in a quasi arena with fuzzy definitions of conduct and an excess of guillotines.
Definitions of context are relatively useless if they can be consistently made to disappear and rearranged by the power of others.
Degrees of reclamation of context shakily depend on vigilance to secure the integrity of desired propaganda. There is no absolute guarantee in an arena where power is available, at a minimum to the whims of the individual.
The amount of vigilance is always less than the extent of territory to which one broadcasts.
I heart oligarchies.
GOGOL too had to define himself. And will continue to do so. Perhaps SEPIA will too.
Namesake
Gosh, Gogol…I hope your comments emanate from a true place and are not at all affected by the sorts of inevitable biases we nurture when it comes to exes…
last comment??????????
sorry pied piper, I was not talking about you but a comment that was left that was already deleted.
Forget about Namesake, I will never be able to watch Harold and Kumar etc with the same degree of vigor ever again.
I blame everything in the world on this movie.
“I detest american television.”
Just a quick shout-out to Anna and all the Sepia editors: I’ve been a member of this community (mostly lurker, but an enthusiastic one) for two years. I’ve always enjoyed the seriously smart crowd here. I’m so sorry that a news network took a single quote out of context; It doesn’t make sense and it is NOT responsible journalism for MSNBC to excerpt a random comment without contacting the site’s editors. Pied Piper is right. You all deserve better and I’m glad members of your community are out there advocating for you. Please count me in.
P.S. Anna – come to BlogHer ’07 in Chicago – we miss you! 🙂
There is no perceived substantially threatening ‘Indian’ advocacy group. There is little control of the media by minorities. There is no Ali Baba Sharptongue as a focal point to hypocritically rebuke those who misbehave. Fractious minorities have yet to prioritize what is meat and what is fat.
Checks and balances have yet to mature. Therefore, language and image must wage a war.
As much as I respect free speech, I found this on Youtube, very very revolting. I don’t know about you, but if I moderated content at Youtube, I would flag this one down.
Sorry about the tangent above ^^ I guess i was too frustrated to post anywhere else.
You know, this whole MSNBC debacle reminds me of Naina’s posts on Dana Parson’s columns. The whole literal vs. connotative debate. Because if you look at MSNBC’s article, nothing about the part mentioning Sepia Mutiny is factually incorrect. SM is a blog, it’s part of the blogosphere, a commentor left a racist, idiotic comment on it which can be viewed as evidence of anti-Korean sentiment on the blogosphere. But if you read between the lines (which I and several others were trying to do with Parsons, and which I think led to Naina’s eventual smackdown on those who kept trying to play it as an anti-white thing), it’s evident that it’ll lead MSNBC readers to believe that SM is an online space which encourages racist comments like Prema’s. Which it doesn’t, hence the appropriate outrage. And Parson’s descriptions were not factually incorrect, but some of us felt that the way he spun things and what he left out and how he posited here vs. there was just part of a long history of misrepresentation in the media when it comes to all things “Third World.”
Because your average reader will now come away associating SM with bigotry, and Nepal and India with…dirt and shit. Basically, it just sucks when a broader picture isn’t painted. Anyway, I’ll just shut up about this now since I don’t want to make this thread about all that.
Basically, it just goes to show how some reporters do things. Like Razib said above, I’ve seen with my own eyes reporters jot shit down on their pad without even attempting to get a direct quote, knowing full well that they are going to paraphrase the “essence” of what the source was saying. I wouldn’t go as far to say that all MSM sucks – there are some great reporters out there producing wonderful pieces, and blogs like SM often use MSM sources as springboards for posts – but it just goes to show how the game is played once the pressure is on.
I have no reason to think that Jessica Bennett gives two shits about Sepia Mutiny, and in the process of writing her “factually correct” story, she’s slandered a very intelligent, thoughtful community. Hey, SM and I don’t see eye to eye all the time (and there are days when I have to force myself not to click on my Sepia Mutiny bookmark lest I get emotionally over-invested in a post), but there’s something about it that keeps me coming back for more…and it’s not bigotry.
What utterly irresponsible BS on the part of MSNBC. FWIW, everyone knows that very respectable newspapers and blogs can have crazy comments sections (e.g. Ha’aretz), but that was really nut-picking. If you’d like to put together a letter to send to MSNBC, I would be happy to sign it and I’m sure many here would.
Hello,
I have never posted a comment here, so this is the first. A couple of things:
I read the original article and nowhere did it say or imply that Sepia Mutiny itself is racist and bigoted. The two places that are referenced are:
The article specifically stated “commentator” and “comments like these”. I think the writers were assuming that anyone who is familiar with blogosphere knows that blogspace is basically free, anybody Joe Shmoe can post a comment, and that commentators do not necessarily reflect the ideas, views, and opinions of the bloggers.
Secondly, I do agree with others here why Debbie’s blog didn’t get quoted or cited, especially since she is a much bigger big-wig (being a right wing political commentator and whatnot). I had read her blog last night and I was thoroughly disgusted by her virulently racist comments; I wonder why MSNBC didn’t pick that up.
Lastly, a few have mentioned that the media has conjured up this notion that there might be a backlash against Asian Americans. If I may play devil’s advocate and in defense of the media (as shitty as most MSM is), I think most of media want to drive the point home that you really can’t hold an entire community responsible for one nutcase’s actions. Most of this fear of backlash looms from what happened post 9/11, of which members of our own community were dispproportionately affected. And no matter how much some of us think that this guy’s ethnicity had nothing to do with the fact that he had deep psychological issues, there may very well be people who will notice and attack his ethnicity first. ANd racism is not dead in this country. Imagine what the entire situation would have been like if the guy had been another ethnicity, such as Arab or South Asian. And double whammy if he/she had been Muslim, too. Can you imagine what on earth would have been people’s reactions? And why would the situation have been different if it had been an Arab or South Asian? And why have people not jumped on the racial/religious bandwagon with Cho?
We can also ask ourselves: suppose a hate crime against Asian Americans did take place, and the media had not picked up on the fact that everytime some looney who is not white commits an atrocity, members of that group fear a reprisal. Then we would have accused the MSM of being totally out of touch with non-whites, or that they are blind, etc.
Last thought– journalism is basically a white industry. I am struck over and over again how at even “progressive” and “left wing” publications, most of the viewpoints are white and upper middle class. It is also very obvious that 85% of these journalists at progressive publications do not even know- let alone cohort with- people who are not white and upper middle class. You think you know how white and uppper middle class the whole business is until you are in it yourself and then you are astonished at how 95% of it is like that. There needs to be more diversity- not only of ethnicity and gender, but also of people who come from diverse backgrounds and have different perspectives to offer. So specifically in regards to this coverage: it’s the white journalism industry’s attempt at trying to understand different realities. They have been floundering- such as interviewing Korean Americans who speak for the “community” and “feel deeply ashamed” about what happened- in the sense that the media’s effort to counteract stereotyping is effectively nullified because they themselves are creating and labeling an entire community (the “Korean American community”) when the whole point is to show that no group is cohesive, monolithic, and homogenous and you can’t see them as collective bodies.
Here is another article that you folks might be interested in reading: Let It Be Some Other ‘Asian’ It is an article from the New America Media.
Desi Italiana: Werd.
Expectations and assumptions can be modified by intention.
People think in patterns. Not all patterns are publicly therapeutic. The mind can be quite inert. Language can be a terrible way to sanitize and camouflage a consistently impure symbolic organism. But it is one of the few ways we have of illustrating ourselves.
In that light as an avid reader of MSNBC, i am wearing a bullet proof vest to every Whitecastle I visit, all Harolds are guilty before assumed innocent, and Barak Obama must be stopped for his war on isolationism.
Sepia will probably overcome this very public phase of adolescence. I will not however.
Do not let Sepsis proliferate.
Desi Italiana, how dare you invoke the W-word and look at things from a racial point of view! Don’t you know that doing so and situating things in a “historical context” is all anachronistic academic puffery? It’s all about class, race doesn’t matter!
JOKING. Just joking!
Anyway, yeah, I can see where you’re coming from. I think the MSM started pushing the anti-Korean backlash angle because, well, many Americans do tend to hone in on the ethnicity of an individual(s) responsible for a tragedy and associate it with the entire group. We’ve been there, done that so many times, and I think the MSM was attuned to those past events. Hence the “frontlash” as one commentor put it.
I was reading some comments on various sites from Koreans and Korean-Americans who were so ashamed and apologetic about this incident, and the whole thing irked me. What does any Korean have to be ashamed and apologetic for? The killer’s “Korean-ness” had nothing to do with his behavior. Just like every disruption in the Middle East is not generated by some inherent, immutable attribute of Islam…ever stop to think that they may be reacting to foreign policy as political actors?
Still, I can understand reactions of those Koreans who are apologizing…I empathize with them…it’s basically a cry out to the world saying, “I’m not with him, and please don’t kick my ass.” Sad.
Having read the 220-odd comments today over two shifts, all I can say is Merde! Quelle fromage! The drama made me conjure up irrelevancies like whether our much dumped-upon heroine ANNA changed outfits between posts and why the ingenuously tone-deaf Prema continued digging herself in deeper and how lovely isn’t it that so many knights gallant (or is it knight gallants) charged the rapidly windmilling thread of posts and counter-posts.
But I have one complain: there should have been more songs. Preferably by Gulzar. On the impermanence of intentions (“mera kuchh saa-maan, tumhare paas parha hai…“) or something similar.
ANNA, may you be the mother of a thousand threads! And the rest of youse too, doodho nahaao, post phalo…
Gogol, I say this with pyar: you must start a highly esoteric fortune cookie business 🙂
Okay, I really must sleep!
P.S. Off topic, but…233 dead in Iraq today…damn.
I was reading this article on dnaindia.com and came across this comment from an american teacher in korea who though trying his best to avoid racial stereotyping points to something mentioned by university administrators in the past:
“Hurt recalls that a meeting some years ago, at which a group of US university administrators pointedly mentioned that of all their international students, the students who had the most disciplinary problems were Korean males. “They cited several incidents of physical conflicts with other graduate students over simple matters, Korean males threatening Korean women students for talking to a foreign man, and  in the case of Korean couples living on campus  instances of domestic violence.â€ÂÂ
link: http://www.dnaindia.com/report.asp?newsid=1091749
(its towards the end)
What would one call him?Bigot?
In some senses, the “Please let it be some other Asian” response is the flip-side to what people feel about Sunita Williams getting to go up in space, about Mohammed Yunus winning a Nobel, about Sanjaya taking the competition down one by one (God, is that possible?). There’s a counterpoint to ethnic pride, and while it might be great to take “the good stuff” and root for someone you identify with, it’s dishonest if you don’t examine and take some responsibility for “the bad stuff” when it happens. That doesn’t mean assigning equal blame, but it does mean that simply saying or wishing that people not stereotype or make group judgments won’t do the trick. Feeling a sense of shame or apologizing is, to me, a more honest reaction that expresses the impossible-to-describe connection that a Korean may feel with another Korean.
For that reason I personally think it’s more productive (though perhaps more futile) to go beyond ethnic distinctions and representational politics where possible. That’s why the SM posts that interest me most are the ones that deal with universal themes or that contain new info I didn’t know about, not the ones that rely overmuch on the “because it’s brown!” motif.
While I do think that the anti-Korean remark (like most racially-charged remarks) was an exception on SM and was called out very quickly (and that’s why the Newsweek out-of-context cite was so pernicious), I do think Huma has a point even if it was very overstated.
There are kinds of prejudice that we put up with or humour, for lack of a better word, because they are relatively more acceptable and prevalent among our “own,” kind of like humouring a crotchety or ranting old uncle – and stereotypes about Muslims or remarks about non-toughness towards Muslims as “appeasing terrorists,” while certainly not shared by anything near a majority of commenters, get rebuked in a less outraged sort of way than remarks about race (I’m thinking of our friend Moor Nam, for example, and some other “hawkish” commenters). Now this might also just be a reflection of the nature of American public discourse these days, or of the prejudices that persist in our own families (I, for one, have to patiently argue with loads of perfectly nice, otherwise intelligent and fairminded relatives regularly when they come out with startling remarks about Islam and Muslims). The more people we hear prejudiced talk from that we can’t quite ignore, the more we find ourselves trying to reason with them rather than dismiss them out of hand or call them idiots. I’ve noticed that a fair bit on some threads, though to everyone’s credit a prejudiced remark is usually critiqued eventually. Can’t expect the site owners to be responsible for deleting every two-bit idiocy, though – they have day jobs!
Ironically, DNA, a Bombay paper, had a headline about the killings that read “Korean’s rage kills city girl.” I winced a little bit at that.
This is a little late, but WTF?
Did MSNBC or Newsweek call out Debbie Schlussel’s blog or even worse, the notoriously bigoted Little Green Footballs where every other post, every single day is a call for Muslim genocide?
F—— A——-!
Nothing to add to all the things that have been said backing up ANNA and the Sepia Crew, supporting them 100% on this issue. That’s a sad thing that has happened. And all the people offering advice — they blog for us and give us comment space for international collective timepass for free and sometimes things slip through. So don’t criticise them, because they do their best and if you don’t like it, you can spend time on other boards most of which are unmediated sewers of racism and religious bigotry that makes SM seem like a meadow of cherry blossoms in comparison.
And the person who made the chauvinistic remark — it was unbeliveably crass and bigoted the first time I read it, and that you havent just apologised or at least slunk off in silence means you don’t even have a fuckin’ clue about what was wrong with what you said in the first place. Such crassness is remarkable.
This is false. Debbie typically gets half our traffic from what I can tell.
Sigh. For those who still don’t get it let me give it a shot. The problem isn’t that Newsweek is bigoted. The problem is not White Privilege. The problem is poor journalism. This post at Daily Kos which cites the article and our blog has provided the most concise related example I have seen thus far and nails the crux of the problem:
This type of journalism wasn’t an isolated thing. This tragedy will one day be seen as the event that first showed how impotent much of mainstream media has become in the face of blogging technology. Every piece of news I learned about V. Tech I learned from a blog or an alternative source up to 3 hours before CNN. It has been reported also that reporters have been hanging around Facebook and Myspace like vultures looking for a soundbites.
So what does media do now? They look to stir up controversy and create news so they can then report it first. Another great example of this is how they drummed up an anti-V. Tech police sentiment. The police did exactly what they were supposed to in this case (the day of the shooting). They had a firm suspect in the boyfriend of the first girl that got shot and were actively hunting him. And yet, the media has been on a crusade to try and get students to say that the police let them down by not warning them about a crazed gunman on the loose.
I think some of the commenters on this thread are getting tangled in the weeds without stepping back to see the bigger picture of how the MSM and alternative media have been interacting during this tragedy. And I dare anyone to find a more thorough, up-to-the-minute account of this story than the one that exists on Wikipedia.
I believe this was a concientious effort to link backlash issues to a community that already deals with them. There is a legitimate point to this, as South Asians can relate to fear of backlash. Most, if not all of the comments that dealt with backlash issues I read (or wrote) were empathetic to the feelings of Asians (in the sense that for most Americans, Asian only means East Asian) during this horrible time . However it seems clear that by including this comment, Newsweek was trying desperately to create another impression in the minds of its readers.
Frankly, I find it amazing that this blog can be ignored by major media when it comes to issues that actually relate to our collective experiences, but then suddenly pick one stupid comment as an example of bigotry on the web? Sorry, not buying it. The writers were obviously trolling for something that would create an emotional reaction (i.e., the hypocrisy and lack of empathy of brown people) and possibly try to soothe the troubled souls of those who immediately jumped on the “must be a Muslim (read brown)” bandwagon. To many Americans, India is in the middle east, and to the less initiated, there is little difference between Saudi Arabia and India. Again, I don’t believe the writers of this piece think that, but I think they were playing on those sentiments when they decided to use this comment from SM. I think they are well aware of its emotional effect and used it for just that purpose.
Anyhow, not only do I not remember this comment, I don’t remember reading any comments similar to it. Even if there were a couple of ignorant comments, the vast majority were positive, and it is obvious where the sentiments of this blog lie.
This is a blatant attempt to prey on the ignorance of some at the expense of our community, who if anything, were the first people to find solidarity with other Asian Americans and their conflicted emotions and fears at this trying time.
Want a stereotype? Our media is fucking joke.
While stereotypes and generalizations have their place (let’s be real, we all do it), what is deeply offensive about the comment in question, and those looking for small truths in it, is that these generalizations that are arguably harmless in a more every-day setting were used to try to understand behavior that is abhorrent to our very sense of humanity. It is simply false and painfully offensive to suggest that any culture could be even tangentially blamed for such horror. The cause was individual sickness, to look for a broader source is wrong — factually and morally. And this is not a time for highbrow discussions of more or less benign cultural generalizations and their sources.
Facebook groups have popped up declaring Cho Seung-Hui does not represent Asians, Koreans, South Koreans… etc. If we’re gonna say, lets get it right: Cho Seung-Hui does not represent humanity. The worst among us do not define us. Duh, we all know that. So lets stop digging for a cultural connection here.
Thanks Abhi – I’m glad my DKos post had some value. I don’t know how many people on Sepia Mutiny read DKos (I pretty much lurk here and lurk there) but misrepresentations like this get diaried and posted about all the time. These days, it’s very easy to find random information and take it out of context. It’s very hard to confirm its veracity and put it back in context so you can actually understand it. Those people who said back in the day you can find statistics to prove anything … they had no idea how much further that would go in the 21st century. Information overload + irresponsible journalism = RIP, truth.
At this point I don’t understand how to deal with this, because it’s rampant. You know those jerk radio hosts on TV who make it seem like they never lose an argument? This is basically their entire playbook. Random facts inserted out of context to derail and mislead. There’s no way to factcheck them in real time. So to win at their game you have to sell out, like they do, or you have to simply ignore them. In the words of one DKos commenter, “My idea for dealing with them would simply be to leave them behind … Writing letters to them just gives them a legitimacy they no longer deserve.”
I agree, but part of the reason for this is that blogs can speculate all they want and then revise later without too much backlash. The same cannot be said for the MSM, even though they do it too, just not the same extent and not as easily (especially in print, obviosuly). For example, the first day of the shootings, the name Wikipedia posted as the shooter was wrong. I’m not trying slam wiki or the blogs, because I agree that they are essential to the modern news process. But the MSM still does the leg work, the blogs usually just interpret it in more depth, while the MSM news readers make callow and pointless comments.
However, Debbie also gets frequent TV time, often with her moronic viewpoints unopposed or cheered on.
This is a good point, gone is the day when information was spread exclusively via the TV set. “Glued to the TV” will become an obsolete phrase, but news programs have much more overhead than blogs and online sources. So if they can’t report the real news first, they’ll use their resources to generate new ones. Makes sense.
Just had the chance to skim through the 240+ comments. And frankly, I wish that SM commentators were focused more on what Abhi wrote (# 242) and less on ‘perceived’ biases resulting from MSNBC/Newsweek mention of SM. The issues are:
With the fragmentation of news sources, the street creds of the sources are evaluated on a continual basis. If anything Newsweek goofed up, “elevated” SM to a higher playing field by providing a free advertisement. People who will act on this article and visit SM will form their own opinions about how bigoted the site is. The opportunity in this whole fracas lies with SM to speak in future (not necessarily in one voice) FOR the south asian community.
The thing that bothers me here is the level of pressure that is felt by most commentators to belong to a “model” minority. The shooter could have been from any place on this planet…yes..even south asian!
Exacly, which is why most of here where specifically shouting down anyone who brought up the shooters race as an issue.
The fact that this blog was picked out to be an example of bigotry and racism on the web is appalling. This has less to do with being a model minority and more to do with fair representation.
What MSM vs. the blogs have to do with I’m not sure, since if they had wanted to put a beat down on blogs in general, they could have picked ones that are legendary for bigoted commenters like LGF – you know where they call people Koranimals and slopeydopes.
This whole mention is a result of some assistant trolling “brown” blogs looking for hypocritical and “un-western” (perceived) bigotry.
Abhi wrote:
I noticed this from day one. The reporters were going on and on about how ‘enraged’ Vtech students were that officials didn’t do more–but every time they tried to get a student to substantiate this on film, no one would take the bait. Every student supported Virginia Tech–even proclaiming that the event made them a tighter, more supportive community.
You wrote to Hema when she critiqued SM…
OT, but I strenuously object to being dragged into this argument. 😉