Off My Chest

Call me over sensitive, but since when is it acceptable to compare Asian women to tropical diseases? When I heard the white boy say he was trying to get at our Korean classmate because he had Yellow Fever, I first thought he forgot his inoculation while lollygagging in some tropical zone, until I caught on to the fact he was talking about “yellow” people. I thought I was just a little too Berkeley being overly PC until a Japanese man at the table confirmed my suspicions when he said, “dude, that’s not cool.” I suppose the boy didn’t mean anything by it, just his natural attraction to women from the vast and diverse continent of Asia. But still, how could one compare women to a disease and not think anything of it?

Lately these kinds of commentaries have been bringing the hot-head out in me. Just yesterday a classmate who is the leader of an NGO that works with orphans in Tanzania said, “most Tanzanians are shady.” The kid was referring to the fact that he had wired money to a Dar-es-Salaam-based lawyer who hadn’t been in contact with him since receiving the funds. He said this while preparing some of his volunteers for their upcoming trip to Arusha. I was surprised that someone who is supposed to be leading a group of young Americans to Tanzania would be a little more careful with filling their heads with stereotypes. Maybe this particular lawyer did rip the American off, but I would say that “most lawyers are shady.” The funny thing is that everyone at the table agreed with the guy while I was surprised that no one would argue with this when we all claim to be educated and open-minded individuals. The way that people handle money and circumvent systems differs by country and as they say, “never part with anything you cannot live without”.

Maybe I’m all ranty and ravy this week but I was also thinking about the book White Man, have you read it? By Tony D’Souza, about a peace corps volunteer in Cote D’Ivore (Ivory Coast). The book is supposed to be fiction, but please, all fiction is inspired by reality and I know he was there because I had a TA at CAL who was in the Ivory Coast with him until the war broke out and they ended up going to work in Madagascar and apparently this man was kicked out of the peace corps. Anyway, mostly D’Souza is a good writer but I really wanted to jump inside the book and slap him when he called the African women “all ass and tits”. He also was out there slutting around, sleeping with different women without protection which I found curious as he was supposed to be helping the AIDS pandemic not making it worse. But I was thoroughly entertained by this man who went oh so native, and when he wasn’t catering to the audience of playboy readers, his prose was almost impressive.

So, I am currently infuriated by the bull shight propagated by the Bruin Standard, UCLA’s republican paper of lies which I normally wouldn’t pay any attention to accept some male idiot wrote the most ridiculous article about the need to get Planned Parenthood off campus. Because they “force minority women to abort their babies.” Which, if you didn’t already know, is bull shight and I say let’s Abort the Bruin Standard.

to be continued.

But first, in the words of Audrey Lorde , “your silence will not protect you.”