Shirts show ignorance, old stereotypes

Yip is a fourth-year communication studies and Asian American
studies student. She is director of the Asian Pacific
Coalition.

By Cheryl Yip

In previous weeks, Abercrombie and Fitch has marketed ““
and has since pulled ““ a line of T-shirts portraying
one-dimensional, derogatory caricatures of Asian Americans ““
Chinese Americans in particular. Specific examples include
“Wong Brothers Laundry Service ““ Two Wongs Can Make It
White”; “Wok-N-Bowl ““ Let the Good Times Roll
““ Chinese Food & Bowling”; and “Abercrombie
and Fitch Buddha Bash ““ Get Your Buddha on the
Floor.”

These slogans were accompanied by century-old racist depictions
of Chinese laundrymen and restaurant workers with the stereotypical
slanted eyes and rice hats. While these images were intended to
provoke superficial amusement, they must be placed within a
historical context. These images are rooted in the history of
Chinese Americans.

The images of Chinese laundrymen and restaurant workers have
deep roots within the Chinese American immigrant experience, one
marked by hardship, toil and discrimination. This history, like
many other immigrant experiences, is built around labor.

As mineworkers, railroad workers, farmers and fisherman, Chinese
laborers were integral in tilling the land, laying down the tracks,
and sowing the seeds for this country. Had it not been for the
arduous labor of Chinese workers, the Transcontinental Railroad
would not be built, and agricultural lands would not have been
cleared for the settlement of and production of the capital in
America’s pioneer West.

These contributions were at first gratefully welcomed. However,
when these same Chinese laborers began diversifying and succeeding
economically, the warm reception quickly transformed itself into
bitter sentiments. White laborers began harboring anti-Chinese
views as they saw them as a threat to their economic
well-being.

Chinese Americans were effectively shut out of mainstream
occupations as a direct result of the growing anti-Asian sentiment
in larger society. Political propaganda facilitated the widespread
and unsubstantiated fear of “yellow peril” in the early
1900s. Derogatory depictions and caricatures dehumanized Chinese
Americans, thereby legitimizing and perpetuating anti-Chinese mob
violence. Acutely aware of the growing hostility looming around
larger society, the Chinese chose occupational niches that would
not compete with or threaten the white laborers.

At the time, only Chinese were able to authentically cook
Chinese food. White Americans could no longer scapegoat the Chinese
as being threats to economic competition. And as for laundering
services, this was considered women’s work, and generally
undesirable in the eyes of men. As such, these two occupations were
chosen for strategic reasons of survival.

This is the painful history that the images of Abercrombie
shirts are rooted in. These dehumanizing depictions made it
possible for this society to justify widespread discrimination and
violence against an immigrant group.

Today, these racist images play another role in popular culture.
We live in a society where Asian and Asian American culture is
continually made to seem exotic and used solely for aesthetic
appeal. Abercrombie and Fitch is not the first clothing label to
package Asian culture and history into a commodity that can be
bought and sold; oriental China dolls and kung-fu paraphernalia are
other examples.

Four years ago, Urban Outfitters carried a Halloween costume of
a Chinaman. The Asian American community rose up in protest, and
the costumes were immediately pulled off the market.

Recently, with the Racial Privacy Initiative, there has been
much hype about living in a color-blind society ““ one’s
ethnicity and race should not matter, it says. But how can we truly
believe we are ready to live in a color-blind society when we
aren’t equipped with a historically contextualized
understanding of how race and ethnicity still affects daily lives?
Whether the color of my skin is recognized legally or not, popular
culture will continue to perpetuate race and ethnicity-based images
of certain communities.

As a pervasive force in the popular culture and mentality of
this generation, Abercrombie and Fitch has profoundly offended a
specific community of color. By using images that are attached to a
racist history, Abercrombie automatically introduced elements of
race and ethnicity. The corporation clearly did not act out of
malice, but instead out of ignorance and upon stereotypical
assumptions. This incident is but one example of how racist
stereotypes are internalized, often without an active attempt to do
so.

Our society has little understanding of any immigrant
experience. It is absent in our K-12 education, our college
education, and beyond. Members in our society cannot critically
analyze these images because they are always presented in
isolation, with no historical reference or meaning. Our histories
as immigrants, Chinese Americans in this instance, are still
reduced and trivialized to comical caricatures and depictions.
Until we recognize and acknowledge painfully racist histories and
current realities, we are far from living in a color-blind
society.

As a member of the Asian Pacific Coalition, it is sobering to
see the persistence of such insensitive portrayals of Asian
Americans in larger society. But this is one of the many reasons
why APC exists, and why other student advocacy groups exist on
campus. What is needed most is a historical context by which we can
begin uncovering the intentions of these images and depictions.