Ching chong, ling long, ting tong: The Alexandra Wallace tsunami

Monday, 21 March 2011 01:52

Written by Marvin Bionat

Alexandra Wallace, the UCLA student who recently posted an anti-Asian diatribe on Youtube obviously did not expect the firestorm her comments would create. In a matter of hours, she had to remove her video, after a barrage of condemnations, many too profane to print, and even death threats greeted her racist commentary. By then the video had gone viral and has now been seen by millions around the world and has continued to fuel widespread indignation.

What made the three-minute clip particularly incendiary was the timing. In it, Wallace complained about Asian students using their cell phones in the library. On a normal day that would have been a fair complaint, and there are a handful of people – white, black, brown, and yellow – who can sometimes be insensitive to those around them. But this was just hours after the devastating earthquake and tsunami hit Japan, when many Asians were on the phone trying to ascertain the whereabouts or safety of their loved ones. Worse, the whole tone of Wallace’s tirade was unequivocally racist.

“The problem is these hordes of Asian people that UCLA accepts into our school every single year, which is fine. But if you’re going to come to UCLA, then use American manners,” Wallace contends in the video. She goes on to express her old resentment against Asian students being visited by “their moms, their brothers, and their sisters, and their grandmas, and their grandpas, and their cousins, everybody that they know that they brought along from Asia with them” and being helped with grocery shopping, laundry, and cooking. When complaining about cell phone use, she mimics students speaking what sounded like Chinese: “Ching chong, ling long, ting tong”— drawing critics to sarcastically point out that Japan is a different country from China.

Mortified by the rising tsunami of negative reactions, including parodies, remixes, and commentaries reeking with outrage and contempt, Wallace issued a public apology a couple of days later: “Clearly the original video posted by me was inappropriate. I cannot explain what possessed me to approach the subject as I did, and if I could undo it, I would. I’d like to offer my apology to the entire UCLA campus. For those who cannot find it within them to accept my apology, I understand.” There are reports that she has decided to quit UCLA. She would have been a senior next year.

I felt compelled to write about this because I think it has created a teachable moment for many of us who often tend to stereotype people. When you’re among your own kind, the clannish instinct kicks in, and everyone, it seems, is given a license to make slurs against other racial or ethnic groups. I think people do it to reinforce their own ties or kinship to their group and somehow bolster a sense of superiority – in an “us versus them” mind-set. Filipinos, like others, are quick to pass sweeping judgments on other people based on race and origin. On countless occasions I hear compatriots slam blacks, whites, the Chinese, Muslims, and even those from other Philippine regions.

The problem with racial or ethnic stereotyping is not because it is morally feeble to be politically correct, especially if by “political correctness” we mean the fear of telling or confronting the truth, the political right’s modified definition of the phrase. Stereotyping is wrong because it is untruthful and unfair to assign whatever negative observations we have had of select members of a group to an entire class of people. Worse, studies have shown that often people behave based on what others expect them to behave. It can work both ways of course, as high expectations can push people to achieve. But what about those we stereotype as morally and/or intellectually inferior?

It is challenging to go against our clannish tendencies, but Dr. Martin Luther King put it aptly when he said that ultimately we want our children to “live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.” That’s the bottom line.

References:
Alexandra Wallace video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DoLLEZlpUxk

Sample responses: