Actor Brian Tee as Dr. Ethan Choi in NBC's 'Chicago Med'. (Photo credit: NBC)
According to studies, Asian Americans remain significantly underrepresented in American media, and when visible primarily relegated to flattened and stereotypical roles in support of a white lead’s personal journey.
It was therefore noteworthy when in 2015, Chicago Med — a spinoff of the popular Chicago Fire series situated in Dick Wolf’s Chicago universe — premiered with a multiracial cast of characters that included Korean American Dr. Ethan Choi (played by actor Brian Tee) as a series regular. Although it was possible to write Ethan Choi as stereotype — he is a doctor, after all — series writers chose instead to write a character that defied conventional stereotypes: Ethan Choi is presented as a principled military veteran and a National Guard reservist, and a dashing romantic love interest.
Chicago Med is airing its 100th episode this eveing, in a storyline that features Dr. Choi. To mark the occasion, I asked actor Brian Tee to reflect on his time playing Dr. Ethan Choi on Chicago Med.
By Guest Contributor: Muqing M. Zhang (@muqingmzhang)
On July 3, 2018, Rosey Blair, an aspiring actress and blogger, posted a nearly sixty tweet long Twitter thread, detailing every private interaction that a woman sitting in front of her on a plane had with the man sitting next to her, over the course of a roughly four-hour flight. (Editor’s Note: Reappropriate has chosen not to link the original Twitter thread in this post.)
Blair posted photos of the woman and a baby picture of herself that the woman had on her phone. Blair also heavily insinuated that the woman had sex with the man in the bathroom and shared personal information from the woman’s Instagram—all without the woman’s knowledge or consent. After its posting, the Twitter thread went astronomically viral, reaching nearly one million likes and 300,000 retweets as of today’s writing. It was covered in every major American news outlet including CNN, USA Today, and the Washington Post; the latter gushingly described the incident as the “love story of the summer.”
While many have received Blair’s thread as a simple feel-good love story—a love-at-first sight saga—it has been met with some pushback. Several writers have examined the story as an example of the prevalence of the dystopian gaze of social media over our everyday private lives, attributing a creepy voyeurism or even a malicious breach of privacy to Blair. Yet few have critically examined the saga through the lens of racialized and gendered power dynamics in online space.
“You’re out!” The umpire exclaims. I think to myself, “Geez Christian, calm down it’s only intramurals.” Student referees take their job too seriously
It was the third straight time of the season that I struck out while starting off at bat. There’s probably a better way of saying that but I’m not acquainted with baseball/softball terms; which is another way of saying, I don’t like baseball. So, why do I keep playing? If anything, I’m only perpetuating the stereotype of the unathletic, socially-awkward Asian. I keep playing because they don’t think we can.
Who is “we”? Who is “they”?
I go to a small private university in the South. Population 4,377. Population of Asians and Pacific Islanders: 45. Population of Asian Americans? 1. Me.
Safe to say that “they” are white people. “We” is myself, the lone representative of the Asian American community.
A version of this post first appeared on Just Add Color.
When I first wrote my article about BTS coming to the American Music Awards, I was excited to see this famous K-pop group that I’d heard so much about. I was happy that they would have the chance to perform on a major international stage like the AMAs. I believed that this appearance would serve as the biggest stepping stone yet for K-pop’s eventual domination of American airwaves. As I wrote on Twitter after BTS’ performance (and after I saw the crowd whipped into a frenzy), this must have been what seeing the Beatles for the first time was like. BTS has been on a roll since their big AMAs debut. They’ve hob-knobbed with R&B it-boy Khalid, and they have released a track featuring Desiigner and Steve Aoki,”Mic Drop”. Everything’s going well; or, it’s going well for BTS, anyways. The rest of K-pop, however, still hasn’t really “made it” in the States. While one might speculate as to the many reasons why K-pop has failed to penetrate the American music landscape — language barriers; stereotypes about Asian performers held by music executives; general American disinterest towards international music that isn’t British or Canadian — one major reason deserves more discussion: K-pop, as a whole, has a race problem.
Steve Harvey mocks Asian men in a segment last week on his daytime talk show. (Photo Credit: Steve Harvey show / Angry Asian Man)
Ugh, seriously? What the fuck, Steve Harvey?
A reader tip to Angry Asian Man drew our attention to an ass-tastic monologue segment by comedian/daytime TV show personality Steve Harvey on his show last week. Harvey, who is the host of the self-titled talk show Steve Harveyin which this segment aired, spent an uncomfortably long stretch of time Friday morning telling unfunny racial jokes about Asian men.
Last Friday morning, Harvey included a book titled “How to Date a White Woman: A Practical Guide for Asian Men” in a list of ridiculous self-help and self-care books. The 200-page book was published in 2002 by Asian World Press, Ltd, which judging by its Netscape Navigator-era website and the fact that it lists this book as its sole publication, was created solely for this purpose. The book’s writer is Adam Quan, who describes himself as an “International Business Consultant [who has] successfully dated women of many nationalities”. For unknown reasons, the book is listed on Amazon with an asking price of over $1800.
Customer reviews of “How to Date a White Woman” are less than stellar: one Amazon customer reviewer who appears to have purchased the book in seriousness says that it is poorly written and unhelpful. The race and gender politics surrounding this book’s marketing and framing are clumsily regressive, and those issues do not appear to be dealt with in its writing. There’s clearly a lot of fodder here for making jokes about bad self-help books. Indeed, Angry Asian Man reminds us that he’s been making fun of this book since 2004.
Steve Harvey, however, doesn’t take that route. Instead, he deploys cheap and unfunny racial stereotype against Asian Americans, invoking caricatures of asexual Asian men and exotic Asian foods (video after the jump) in “jokes” (and I use that term very loosely) only funny to Harvey and his studio audience.
