Sunday, August 28, 2011

'Liking' racist Facebook 'like' pages

The other day I was scrolling through Facebook news feed and found myself laughing at a certain ‘like’ page. 



As funny (or not funny for some of you) as it seems, I thought it was ironic how I laughed at something about my own ethnicity.  What’s more, it seems like the majority of people who ‘liked’ these mocking pages are Asians themselves.  (Also note the enormous amount of people who ‘liked’ it)

Cultural cringe is more evident in the face of rising social network sites.  It has become somewhat like a casual joke to take the mickey out of your own culture, admitting to ourselves of our inferior complexes and informing others (usually to White people) that we know of it.  So why do we do this?

It seems like, to those of us who consider ourselves ‘Kiwi-Asian’, cultural alienation takes a large part.  As immigrants of New Zealand we assimilate into New Zealand culture, and at the expense of immersing ourselves into New Zealand culture we, to an extent, have to abandon our own ethnic cultural background.  Looking at myself, I can see how music, clothing, and even way of socialising have over the years shaped to meet the cultural standard of New Zealand.  Regrettably, I have inevitably come to devalue my own culture (although not entirely) and have a weak sense of cultural self-identity.  Although I hate to say it, this is probably why I find these:




‘like’ pages amusing, rather than being outraged at the racism in these texts.

Not only are such stereotypical texts evident in social network sites but are also increasingly being shown (and rather blatantly) on television shows.  In one of my favourite shows ‘Family Guy’, the character Peter sits an Asian male (who looks rather passive) on his desk during a test, and says ‘Cmon, do math!’

Link for anyone who wants to see:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p2EA2nA2ar0



Should I be concerned that I can’t help but find this funny?

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2 Comments:

At August 28, 2011 at 12:51 PM , Blogger CleverDisplayName said...

I just searched 'white people' on FB to see if there's any similar groups for white people. After scrolling for about ten minutes, all I could find were 'I-hate-white-people-who-try-to-be-black'-sort groups. Then I found this one, laughed, and gave up.

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Dont-you-love-how-there-are-no-good-white-people-jokes/380897917704

 
At September 5, 2011 at 7:18 PM , Blogger Sue Abel said...

No, I didn't get the one about the cow either.

One of the things I've been talking about in terms of 'race' and comedy is that so much depends of context - who is telling what to whom and where. I mentioned 'insider satire' - possible these websites are a place for 'insider satire'?

An interesting blog.

 

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