http://www.dailycamera.com/cu-college-sports/ci_18839700#idc-container

Whether its racist or not is clearly debatable. What's really shocking is that the Fox editors thought that something like this was just ok to air. Not one person over at Fox thought to themselves "hmmmm....someone may find this offensive."

For the record, back when I was a student, there was a huge AAPI representation in the student section.

I would love to hear Prof. Edward's take on this.

I'd just describe it as idiotic with a big helping of xenophobia. They decided to go to a school with a lot of international students, focus on one segment of that population and mock their accents. Stunning, just stunning that this made this way up the tree without getting yanked. I'd heard about the piece and figured they'd be talking to a number of $C students and teasing them in various ways, and that the accent thing came up at some point. It was pretty surprising to see that seeking out Asian kids and making them say "Colorado" was only the whole point of the segment.

Just, wow.

In general, I'm pretty tolerant of ethnic humor and don't tend to cry racist at the drop of a hat, but this one is w-a-a-y over the line. As Beary says, the sought out Asian students (mostly probably foreign students) and mocked their accents and the fact that they weren't football fans. For the record, I wonder how good that d-bag's pronunciation of Mandarin or Japanese is?

OTOH, it is Fox, so what do you expect?

Really, really dumb and offensive.

ducky23;561568 said:

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http://www.dailycamera.com/cu-college-sports/ci_18839700#idc-container

Whether its racist or not is clearly debatable. What's really shocking is that the Fox editors thought that something like this was just ok to air. Not one person over at Fox thought to themselves "hmmmm....someone may find this offensive."

For the record, back when I was a student, there was a huge AAPI representation in the student section.

I would love to hear Prof. Edward's take on this.

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It was totally stupid to run, but FOX has since apologized for running it which they should have...the link is out there if you want to find it...but yes, a little common sense would have gone a long ways...just as bad as ESPN running that dumba$$ article about "what if Michael Vick were white"...what a bunch of maroons..

Fox apologizes.
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5jaZcMQubklov-BWyqyKyYoi5lxkg?docId=2849164705064954a4d6b9c7f0127f74

Maybe there is legitimacy in the claims of SC's academic rise.

Dan Rubenstein tweeted one of the original URLs when this video was first posted.. I immediately started posting it to the forums I'm on (though I skipped it here) and asked if I was crazy for finding it totally tasteless and offensive. I know it spread like wildfire, and within a few hours it had been deleted from a number of places including the fox/msn site where it originated, youtube, etc...

I couldn't believe somebody signed off on it..

Everyone of those students is probably smarter then anyone who worked on this "segment", whose best idea of humor is trying to make people look stupid because english is their second language.

Also it's only funny showing people ignorant of something if they are supposed to know about it, or claim to know about it. At a school with 36,000 students I think there are probably a lot of them who care about education and not sports- and I don't think that's a bad thing!

What??, I swore I thought that was filmed at Cal? j/k

Why would anyone be surprised by Faux anymore?

I suppose folks can decide to be offended if they view the piece as some "let's make fun of Asians" segment. I decided to be entertained by the fact that they're skewering the perception of USC students as being white trust-fund kids from the OC who are just there to party and cheer winning football. The Fox people would not have done a piece like this on the UCLA, Cal or UW campuses, because they're already known for having a large population of International Asian students who know and care little of football. Doing it at USC is what makes it funny, not that the students have trouble making the "L" sound. All you science and engineering majors who had Asian TA's already knew that.

http://thebiglead.com/index.php/2011/09/02/i-guess-fox-sports-agreed-the-video-making-fun-of-asian-usc-students-was-a-bad-idea/[URL="http://thebiglead.com/index.php/2011/09/02/i-guess-fox-sports-agreed-the-video-making-fun-of-asian-usc-students-was-a-bad-idea/"][/URL]

It's offensive gang.....so what can be done about it? Racism may not always be overt but it is there or should I say here....

Every once in a while I try to get my hot Russian friend to say "moose and squirrel." She always refuses. She doesn't know what it means, but she suspects I'm trying to make fun of her. Is that wrong?

BearsWiin;561692 said:

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I suppose folks can decide to be offended if they view the piece as some "let's make fun of Asians" segment. I decided to be entertained by the fact that they're skewering the perception of USC students as being white trust-fund kids from the OC who are just there to party and cheer winning football. The Fox people would not have done a piece like this on the UCLA, Cal or UW campuses, because they're already known for having a large population of International Asian students who know and care little of football. Doing it at USC is what makes it funny, not that the students have trouble making the "L" sound. All you science and engineering majors who had Asian TA's already knew that.

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The average national sports viewer thinks UCLA's and USC's student bodies are demographically identical. I am ready to guarantee that the producers of this segment weren't thinking that their cavalcade of Asians was a clever riff on a trust-fund stereotype.

unfortunately when you have a mix of ethnicities and cultures there is always going to be a little of this sort of stuff. im asian but frankly the way that ive always dealt with any situation like this is to give it as little attention as possible and to focus on what i need to focus on. generally this represents very little of how most people feel anyway

BearyWhite;561717 said:

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The average national sports viewer thinks UCLA's and USC's student bodies are demographically identical.

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Disagree.

I know that I'll probably get slammed for saying this, but I believe that Fox does know better, but frankly doesn't care if asians are offended. As an example, take Abercrombie and Fitch. Several years ago AF sold t-shirts that mocked asians. There was a national outcry by asian groups calling for a boycott against AF. AF apologized saying that they didn't realize the shirt would be offensive to asians, but by then many of the shirts had been sold and the damage had been done. AF had by then delivered its message that their products were "on the edge". Even after the apology, my son saw that the shirt was still being sold at the AF store in Sun Valley Concord. As an asian american, I am not surprised by the antics of Fox and their subsequent rote apology is meaningless. Several sports announcers have been fired for racist statements against ethnic groups that are not asian. I would be interested to know if anyone from Fox is terminated for this piece.

Smart people are capable of making jokes about race that aren't racist. The people who made this are not smart.

CalBearRJ;561808 said:

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Smart people are capable of making jokes about race that aren't racist. The people who made this are not smart.

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What do you expect? They work at Fox.

TouchedTheAxeIn82;561707 said:

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Every once in a while I try to get my hot Russian friend to say "moose and squirrel." She always refuses. She doesn't know what it means, but she suspects I'm trying to make fun of her. Is that wrong?

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Unsure. Are you Boris to her Natasha?

TouchedTheAxeIn82;561707 said:

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Every once in a while I try to get my hot Russian friend to say "moose and squirrel." She always refuses. She doesn't know what it means, but she suspects I'm trying to make fun of her. Is that wrong?

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I'm so confused.

BearsWiin;561723 said:

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Disagree.

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Of course there's no way to settle this short of commissioning a poll, so I'll restate my point like this -- the USC "trust fund white kid" stereotype is not so well-known nationwide that interviewing a string of Asian students can be assumed to be playing with this stereotype without some sort of prelude spelling that out explicitly, particularly on a sports network puff piece where the humor tends toward the obvious. Compare with, say, visiting MIT and interviewing only curvy bleach-blonde women. ("I think MIT is, like, the bomb because drag coefficients are, like, totally rad.")

CalBearRJ;561808 said:

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Smart people are capable of making jokes about race that aren't racist. The people who made this are not smart.

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That's a good way of saying it. There was a funny "King of the Hill" episode where Bobby watched a comic played by Chris Rock do a standup act that featured gags beginning with "You know, the thing about black people is...", and Bobby was so impressed that he decided to embark on the same career.

His first standup performance began, "You know, the thing about black people is..."

BearsWiin;561692 said:

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I suppose folks can decide to be offended if they view the piece as some "let's make fun of Asians" segment. I decided to be entertained by the fact that they're skewering the perception of USC students as being white trust-fund kids from the OC who are just there to party and cheer winning football. The Fox people would not have done a piece like this on the UCLA, Cal or UW campuses, because they're already known for having a large population of International Asian students who know and care little of football. Doing it at USC is what makes it funny, not that the students have trouble making the "L" sound. All you science and engineering majors who had Asian TA's already knew that.

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or they could just make fun of "white trust-fund kids from the OC who are just there to party and cheer winning football."

i do not give fox or the producers of the segment (and certainly not the idiot comedian) the benefit of the doubt here. it was a bad call and borderline racist.

and your comment on a lot of science and engineering TAs being Asian is not relevant. doesn't matter if the stereotypes are true (e.g., many foreign Asian students have a hard time with English and could care less about CFB), the segment was clearly making fun of these stereotypes.

what if there was a segment that made fun of football players and asked them relatively basic college level math and science questions. and let's say Fox edited the footage and made sure the players were all black and looked ridiculous answering the basic questions. would that be okay?

BearyWhite;561717 said:

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I am ready to guarantee that the producers of this segment weren't thinking that their cavalcade of Asians was a clever riff on a trust-fund stereotype.

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I would challenge your guarantee, actually. I seriously doubt that the Fox people were making this for the average national sports viewer; they were making it for viewers who already have an interest in both college football and the Pac-10/Pac-12. Those viewers are precisely the ones who would already have an understanding of the deep philosophical differences between the likes of UCLA and USC, along with their attendant stereotypes.

TheBearsHaveWon;561826 said:

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Unsure. Are you Boris to her Natasha?

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He's the moose.

CrimsonBear;561840 said:

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or they could just make fun of "white trust-fund kids from the OC who are just there to party and cheer winning football."

i do not give fox or the producers of the segment (and certainly not the idiot comedian) the benefit of the doubt here. it was a bad call and borderline racist.

and your comment on a lot of science and engineering TAs being Asian is not relevant. doesn't matter if the stereotypes are true (e.g., many foreign Asian students have a hard time with English and could care less about CFB), the segment was clearly making fun of these stereotypes.

what if there was a segment that made fun of football players and asked them relatively basic college level math and science questions. and let's say Fox edited the footage and made sure the players were all black and looked ridiculous answering the basic questions. would that be okay?

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I am interested in hearing why you think that this was racist instead of merely playing on stereotypes. Christ, if we can't laugh at ourselves and each other for the silly cultural, religious, political, and ethnic differences we all have, then maybe the terrorists should win.

As for your last query, google "Jay Leno Freddie Mitchell" and see what comes up. To my recollection, nobody said anything about that being even remotely racist.

BearsWiin;561844 said:

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I would challenge your guarantee, actually. I seriously doubt that the Fox people were making this for the average national sports viewer; they were making it for viewers who already have an interest in both college football and the Pac-10/Pac-12. Those viewers are precisely the ones who would already have an understanding of the deep philosophical differences between the likes of UCLA and USC, along with their attendant stereotypes.

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I was wondering if this was aired nationally or not; that would make a difference. Articles I read made it seem like it was directed towards Colorado fans, though, who can hardly be considered Pac-10 literate.

I agree with you that they were searching for college students who knew nothing about sports. We only saw the edited selections but if that led them to only interview Asian students... [shaking head]

BearsWiin;561847 said:

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I am interested in hearing why you think that this was racist instead of merely playing on stereotypes. Christ, if we can't laugh at ourselves and each other for the silly cultural, religious, political, and ethnic differences we all have, then maybe the terrorists should win.

As for your last query, google "Jay Leno Freddie Mitchell" and see what comes up. To my recollection, nobody said anything about that being even remotely racist.

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Since BW stuck up for me in the Steve Jobs thread, I am compelled to respond in-kind. BW has lots of Asian friends and even some of his closest friends are Asian. He has not iota of hatred towards Asians. He even let me, an Asian, join him by giving me not one but two tickets that went to Asians (me and my Asian friend) for the 2004 $C game at the Coliseum. We were probably one of the few Asians there that day since most of the other Asians were on campus at the library, or perhaps in the band. Probably. BW allowed us to see one of the greatest Cal losses in our history (the 1991 UW game being probably our greatest loss). Thanks for being such a great friend to the Asians, BW!!! Loll on you Bear!!!

DavidDempster;561829 said:

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I'm so confused.

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Does this clear things up?

Well said gobears725.....ditto what you say!

koreambear;561851 said:

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since bw stuck up for me in the steve jobs thread, i am compelled to respond in-kind. Bw has lots of asian friends and even some of his closest friends are asian. He has not iota of hatred towards asians. He even let me, an asian, join him by giving me not one but two tickets that went to asians (me and my asian friend) for the 2004 $c game at the coliseum. We were probably one of the few asians there that day since most of the other asians were on campus at the library, or perhaps in the band. Probably. Bw allowed us to see one of the greatest cal losses in our history (the 1991 uw game being probably our greatest loss). Thanks for being such a great friend to the asians, bw!!! Loll on you bear!!!

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lol

KoreAmBear;561851 said:

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Since BW stuck up for me in the Steve Jobs thread, I am compelled to respond in-kind. BW has lots of Asian friends and even some of his closest friends are Asian. He has not iota of hatred towards Asians. He even let me, an Asian, join him by giving me not one but two tickets that went to Asians (me and my Asian friend) for the 2004 $C game at the Coliseum. We were probably one of the few Asians there that day since most of the other Asians were on campus at the library, or perhaps in the band. Probably. BW allowed us to see one of the greatest Cal losses in our history (the 1991 UW game being probably our greatest loss). Thanks for being such a great friend to the Asians, BW!!! Loll on you Bear!!!

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I only did it to assuage my white guilt for Manzanar.