Every few years, Flow’s editors select our favorite columns of the last few volumes. We’ve added special introductions and asked the authors to revisit their columns and add a comment afterward. We’ve also appended the original comments to the post. Enjoy!

Co-Coordinating Editor Alexander Cho:
Pieces like this are what Flow is all about. It’s a forum for testing out new ways of thinking about interesting issues in our complicated media landscape, like an academic stretching their muscles. In our semi-formal arena, Au is able to blend her own poignant experience with a political analysis that calls attention to the fact that social media is intimately threaded through with unspoken race and gender codes — unspoken, that is, until someone chooses to nominate themselves. What happens next — when so-called “bridging texts” are themselves colonized — is often overlooked in much scholarship on the supposedly liberatory potential of new media.

The army green t-shirt that catapulted me to internet fame for a day references a scene from Stanley Kubrick’s 1987 film Full Metal Jacket in which a Vietnamese prostitute says to an American GI, “Hey baby, you got girlfriend Vietnam? Me so horny. Me love you long time.”

The line “me so horny” has since been reproduced in countless pop culture texts, including rap group 2 Live Crew’s song “Me So Horny,” which reached number one on the U.S Billboard Hot Rap Singles in 1989.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Earlier constructions of Asian women as prostitutes actually predate Kubrick’s film by nearly a century. According to Robert G. Lee, more than ten thousand Chinese women were forcibly brought to the United States as prostitutes in the late 19th century, thereby reinforcing Edward Said’s claim that the West had Orientalized the East by exotifying Asian women (88).1 Since then, many popular culture texts and western practices have reproduced this narrow construction of Asian women as sexual playthings.

My shirt, which reads “I will not love you long time,” is a statement of resistance to the construction of Asian and Asian American women as objects of white male sexual fantasy both in Full Metal Jacket, as well as in the broader American imaginary. Through the act of wearing the shirt, the “I” on the shirt refers to me and the statement becomes my own. As Vincent Pham and Kent Ono explain, wearing or producing activist counter-shirts that requires linking knowledge of Asian American history to humiliating stereotyped constructions of Asian Americans is itself a rhetorical act that allows us to be seen, not as passive model minorities, but rather as activists and political participants (193).2 Indeed, disrupting this narrative of the apolitical model minority while contesting the construction of Asian women as prostitutes and sexual playthings was my intent.

Tasha Oren explains that recent public expressions of grievance like mine from the Asian American community have mostly been over our cultural significations, “media representations and the pernicious repetition of stereotypes” (338) such as those perpetuated by numerous offensive representations of Asian Americans in the media and illustrated on apparel.3

Corporations, she explains, “miscalculate the ’sensitivities’ of Asian Americans” because there is a lack of association between us and racial anger in the cultural imagination, which facilitates our positioning as a demographic “free of past grievance–in short as honorary whites” (353). In other words, Asian Americans might not be the target of racial insensitivities as often as we are if, perhaps, there were more visible public expressions of Asian American anger about our stereotyped and humiliating representations.

Oren explains that there are, however, several examples of counter-narratives that make these expressions public. Oren reads the Secret Asian Man comic strip by Tak Toyoshima as one such example of a widely-distributed mainstream cultural production that gives a voice to the grievances of Asian American activists. She also names the web sites Angry Asian Man and Big Bad Chinese Mama as texts that use anger and media criticism to voice racial grievance. She calls these “bridging texts” because they bring Asian American grievance into the realm of mainstream popular culture thereby disrupting the trope of Asian repression. Oren explains that they are effective because these “mainstream expressions of racial grievance, of anger, of a refusal to ’suck it up’ are at once metaphoric and actual interceptions. In their textual presence and performance they can short-circuit old ‘oops’ formulas by insisting on the specificity of [Asian American] experience” (356).

But the question remains, how do we figure whether Secret Asian Man and other bridging texts actually succeed in contesting dominant constructions of Asian Americans? My statement of resistance to the construction of Asian women as prostitutes became an interesting case for re-examining Oren’s argument about the resistive meaning-making that happens by way of bridging texts. When a very popular user on Flickr, an acquaintance of mine, posted the photo of me wearing my “I will not love you long time” shirt and the page hosting the photo made it to #1 on Digg with 5706 “diggs,” it reached a large mainstream audience and in that moment the photograph became a bridging text by Oren’s definition. The difference between this text and those cited by Oren, however, is that social media sites like Digg and Flickr invite public dialogue which effectively becomes incorporated as part of the text, while such opportunities for participation are absent from sites such as Angry Asian Man, Secret Asian Man and Big Bad Chinese Mama.

When audiences can contribute to the generation of a bridging text, such as on the Flickr and Digg pages that hosted my photo, they can shift the meaning of the text. I argue that social media web sites like these can in fact reignite expressions of traditional or “old fashioned” racism, which Chesler, Peet, and Sevig define as the “expression of traditional negative prejudice, bigotry, stereotypic beliefs about the inferiority or even dangerousness of people of color” (219), particularly when readers can post their contributions to the dialogue anonymously.4 Although theorists including Eduardo Bonilla-Silva argue that a more socially-acceptable “color-blind racism” (2) has replaced old fashioned racism, old fashioned racist sentiments seem to flourish when identities are hidden or falsified online.5

At least half of the comments on either social networking site could not be read, even generously, as a support for, or even recognition of my act of grievance. Instead, many of the comments are anonymous personal attacks condemning my opposition to the construction of Asian women as prostitutes and sexual playthings. Often they are neither subtle, nor color-blind. For example:

Sie Sind Schwach says: So, you won’t “Love me long time”, you’re scrawny, and quite angry. What use are you then? Are you good at math or something? It doesn’t seem like you have a developed sense of humor. I thought plain looking girls were supposed to try harder.

lossjim says: [to the owner of the Flickr page] you have one friend with SERIOUS issues, and, to boot, comes off like most “holier than thou” asian chicks, with a low self esteem, but need to be seen/appreciated? whatever, good luck with your “good friend”

Other comments reinscribe the very construction I was attempting to contest, the Asian woman as prostitute/object of white male sexual fantasy, or perpetuate other humiliating constructions of Asian Americans such as the non-English speaking foreigner. For example:

jonolan says: No boom-boom, no visa!

promqu33n says: needs more chinglish. me no love you longtime.

slider527 says: ahahaha me want fly lice with that asian girl.

A critical analysis of all the comments and the meanings they produce is beyond the scope of this short monograph (but forthcoming in a separate paper). What I am suggesting here though is that the narratives created in these spaces–one that condemns my act of grievance and another that reproduces and reinscribes common stereotyped constructions of Asian Americans–overshadow and displace expressions of Asian American grievance both literally and discursively. Oren points out the importance of bridging texts in interrupting narratives of Asian American passivity that can lead to miscalculations of our tolerance for racially offensive cultural significations, but the construction of a whole new text–pages upon pages of online reader-generated comments–clearly take up more space in a literal sense than the original bridging text. Space allotted to the act of grievance is effectively colonized by commenters, many of whom react with hostility. The examples of online expressions of Asian grievance that Oren cites do not provide a space for public dialogue as do social media sites such as Flickr and Digg. Thus, we need urgently to complicate our understanding of how bridging texts operate, or fail to operate when the texts themselves enable audiences to effectively re-author the content. What happened on Flickr and Digg around my voicing of racial grievance suggests that while any disruption in the persistent narrative of passive model minority is important, it is crucial to consider how the text might produce different meanings when it is visually and discursively colonized by oppositional discourse.

Vanessa Au is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Communication at the University of Washington. Her current research explores online public discourse around Asian American contestations of Orientalism in contemporary American popular culture. A software product marketing manager in a previous life, she is currently working on a manuscript for an edited volume on transgressions and web 2.0. Vanessa is a member of University of Washington’s Asian American Studies Research Collective and Women of Color Collective.

Vanessa Au revisits her column for Flow Favorites:
Looking back at my May 2009 FLOW article, Digg, Flickr, and the Colonizing of Bridging Texts, made me think more about anonymity on the web and whether the colonizing of “bridging texts” with blatantly racist and sexist commentary reveals a racism that still exists today despite popular claims that, since the election of President Obama, we live in a “post-race” society where racism ceases to affect the lives of people of color. Writing this article piqued my interest in a broader question that extends beyond the specificities of understanding how bridging texts can fail in a social media environment. Rather, why in the first place are people so eager to express such blatantly racist and hostile views and with such vehemence? What might this vitriolic racial backlash reveal about expectations of colorblindness and political correctness that have figured so prominently in American society since the 1990s? And, finally, how might we still use social media effectively in anti-racist efforts knowing the dynamics produced by anonymity and structures that enable users to colonize web space? These are the urgent issues facing race and new media scholarship, and shaping my own research trajectories.

Image Credits:
1. “I will not love you long time” t-shirt, author’s screenshot
2. Abercrombie and Fitch t-shirt
3. Adidas shoes
4. Digg page for “I will not love you long time” t-shirt, author’s screenshot

Original Comments:

Alex Cho said:

What an interesting experience, Vanessa. Thanks for writing about it. One thing I am curious about, since I don’t use digg – do people “digg” things they don’t like? For example, you mention you got 5,076 diggs (wow!); to “digg” something means to “dig” it, yes? I’m not 100% sure. But either way, I wonder if there are a lot of people who support your political statement implicitly by the act of “digging” – and thereby broadcasting to their own networks – but decide not to participate in active commenting. I hope so, at least.

This also reminds me of the mixed backlash when Chris Crocker, already a YouTube “celebrity” who challenged mainstream gender conventions, became world news with his “Leave Britney Alone” video. People in the comments section of his YouTube video page reinscribed all sorts of homophobic and patriarchal ideologies on his ambiguously-gendered performance. What could have been a “bridging text” seemed downgraded to a sounding board for reiterating conventional stereotypes. Or, given these two examples, is that reiteration an inherent property of a “bridging text”?
-June 1st, 2009 at 10:39 am

Vanessa Au said:

Hey there Alex, that is actually part of one of my arguments in the longer version of this paper which I’m working on for an edited book! Stay tuned and cross your fingers that the publishers take it! Thanks for commenting!!
-August 28th, 2009 at 9:05 pm

Paul said:

Nice page and a good expose of the foul stereotypes that Asian women have had to endure (your T is the perfect rIposte BTW!). The products from A&F and Adidas are incredibly insensitive and remind me of the images of African-Americans in US advertising half and century ago. I wonder, Vanessa, if you have read the book “Asian Mystique” by Sheridan Prasso? It’s on my ‘to read’ list and currently sitting on my bookshelf and I’d like to know you views on it if you’ve read it. Thanks also for the tips about where to dine in Vancouver on your website. I’m going there with my wife and baby daughter this Christmas and will check out some of the restaurants you mentioned. Regards, Paul in Calgary.

PS. I wouldn’t over analyse the purile comments left on your friends flickr page (some of which you’ve featured above). They are from idiots who are doubly racist and sexist and to comment further would give them more credence than they deserve.
-December 5th, 2009 at 10:41 pm

Vanessa Au said:

Hi Paul,

Thanks for your feedback! I hope you had a fantastic time in Vancouver.

I hadn’t heard of Asian Mystique. Great recommendation, just requested it from my library.

re: your PS. Great point about giving them more “credence than they deserve” though it is interesting to think about what provokes such responses and what they might suggest about our racial climate and what people long to say but only when they are anonymous.
-February 24th, 2010 at 3:32 pm

Please feel free to comment.

1. Chesler, Mark A., Melissa Peet, and Todd Sevig. “Blinded by Whiteness: The Development of White College Students’ Racial Awareness.” White Out : The Continuing Significance of Racism. Eds. Ashley W. Doane and Eduardo Bonilla-Silva. New York: Routledge, 2003. 215-30.
2. Pham, Vincent, and Kent Ono. “”Artful Bigotry & Kitsch”: A Study of Stereotype, Mimicry, and Satire in Asian American T-Shirt Rhetoric.” Representations: Doing Asian American Rhetoric. Eds. LuMing Mao and Morris Young. Logan, Utah: Utah State University Press, 2008.
3. Oren, Tasha G. “Secret Asian Man: Angry Asians and the Politics of Cultural Visibility.” East Main Street: Asian American Popular Culture. Eds. Shilpa Dave, LeiLani Nishime and Tasha G. Oren. New York: New York University Press, 2005.
4. Chesler, Mark A., Melissa Peet, and Todd Sevig. “Blinded by Whiteness: The Development of White College Students’ Racial Awareness.” White Out : The Continuing Significance of Racism. Eds. Ashley W. Doane and Eduardo Bonilla-Silva. New York: Routledge, 2003. 215-30.
5. Bonilla-Silva, Eduardo. Racism without Racists : Color-Blind Racism and the Persistence of Racial Inequality in the United States. 2nd ed. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2006.

Twitter geographic 2009: Where the tweets are

As the Internet came into popular use in technologically privileged countries in the mid-1990s, scholars began envisioning the web as a potential site of empowerment for the colonized, marginalized, and dispossessed. It was deemed a virtual (or “cyber” as it was often termed) space where such disenfranchised peoples could connect with one another and establish their voices, which are otherwise inaudible in the public sphere.1 While this is undoubtedly an exciting prospect, I will argue that we must complicate our understandings of the role of the Internet, Web 2.0-based social media in particular, in serving these users.

During the Iranian protest of the presidential election in 2009, many people turned to Twitter to share and search for information and links to photos and videos of the protest posted by users in real-time from Iran. Twitter and “status updates” on various social networking web sites2 have become the latest popular means by which people worldwide share and exchange short messages and photos instantly. An article on Slashdot about the protest in Iran proclaimed, “Twitter is providing better coverage than CNN at the moment.”3

Many of the news articles and blog posts about the role of Twitter and other new social media made similar comparisons between traditional news outlets and those enabled by new web technologies. Time Magazine suggests, for example, that “what began as a toy for online flirtation is suddenly being put to much more serious uses.”4 “Real-time, democratically produced live-blogging” a Salon.com article notes, “is quickly becoming a valid alternative to large-scale, ‘legitimate’ news outlets.”5 Sharing news from citizen journalists in the middle of the action has become just the latest in a list of exciting uses for mobile communication and social media.

The bloggers and journalists who authored these articles make several good points. Web 2.0 spaces such as Twitter, Flickr, and YouTube are invaluable for their immediacy, ubiquity, accessibility, and, as a result, their ability to (sometimes) stay ahead of government attempts at censorship. Indeed, many users from around the world can share and repost content in seconds with just a few mouse-clicks and no programming knowledge, and there are countless ways to mask, reroute, and mirror content to side-skirt government censors. However, there are also countless issues of power still entwined in the technologies themselves and also in their use. These issues are often overlooked by writers and bloggers celebrating the democratizing potential of social media, though some at least cite issues such as the credibility of online user reports. But even then, these critiques are usually an afterthought at best. Time Magazine mentions for example, that “the vast body of information about current events in Iran …is chaotic, subjective and totally unverifiable.”6 But these words of caution offered in passing miss larger issues.

Twitter icons colored green in support of Iranian protesters

While the credibility of people posting news and information online is clearly an important issue, it is also one that serves as an easy catch-all critique for commentators eager to celebrate the affordances of social media. But as social media technologies, practices, and structures increase in number and complexity, so must our analyses of the ways in which power is asserted and circulated through them. I point to some distinctly Web 2.0 structures and practices that demand greater critical assessment:

1. Ubiquitous web ranking systems and the hierarchical structuring of web content
While all web content might start out on the proverbial “level playing field” where anyone can put up a web site and establish a voice and presence, Web 2.0 social media sites tend to produce hierarchies of users and content. For example, the ranking systems of web content sharing sites such as Reddit and Digg rely on user votes (or “Diggs) to give content more or less visibility. Unpopular content and user comments are collapsed and hidden from view unless the user clicks to expand it, while comments with many votes of approval inch up to the top of the page.

Even Google uses links to web pages as one way to determine a web page’s “page rank” and thus visibility in its search results. These Web 2.0 features, which purportedly preserve the democratizing potential of the Internet, actually privilege dominant voices. As users participate in determining the popularity of various content and points of view, marginalized voices are crowded out as they are offline.

Sharing an Avatar article on Digg

2. The sharing/reposting of web content
The rapid sharing of content through reposts and links that is so often praised as revolutionary for the dissemination of news, particularly during such events as the protests in Iran, can also reveal interesting practices of transgression. This Web 2.0 practice, while it increases exposure for those seeking to publicize a little-known cause or point of view, can have the unintended effect of inviting surveillance. People can direct the public gaze to web content, while indicating either their approval, or disapproval of that content. For example, someone who Twitters a link to an anti-racist blog in which they critique the stereotypes and colonialist fantasies enacted in the film Avatar might find their link reposted to Facebook or Digg by the readers of their Twitter stream. Avatar fans on Facebook or Digg angered by the critique might then repost the link along with disparaging commentary, or even an invitation to others to post angry comments to that blog. Thus, people who meant for a potentially unpopular opinion to be read only by a small group of like-minded individuals might quickly find themselves the target of attack because of this rampant reposting of links. Simply put, not only is there is no protection from the panoptic gaze, there is actually greater power for users to redirect this gaze unexpectedly, and with the intention of generating opposition.

3. The colonizing of web space
When people direct the attention of outsiders to content that was meant only to be seen by a particular group or supporters of a particular cause, what can sometimes result is a “colonizing” of the web space to which the content was originally posted. Unexpected visitors to Web 2.0 enabled spaces can turn them into an arena for hostile comments directed at the author of the content, and for heated arguments among visitors to the site. For example, an individual might blog about how to find a hiring company that sponsors H1-B visas, and post a link to the article on Facebook for other potential immigrant workers. Another Facebook user who happens upon this link, and who opposes immigration might navigate to the blog to post his/her racist views on foreign workers. S/he might then post his/her own link to the blog inviting other anti-immigration readers to comment. In other words, the space that was thought to be your own can be reappropriated, hijacked, and sabotaged by those who have oppositional points of view. The rants and debates posted or provoked by visitors with opposing views sometimes even take up more visual space on the web page than the original content. In short, without careful administrative control over user commenting, a Web 2.0 space can be easily colonized. A rush of oppositional readers can take over the space and the power dynamics that take place in offline public discourse make their way online.

In sum, social media technologies such as those embraced during the recent events in Iran can deliver fast, accessible information that can enable the oppressed to skirt traditional power structures such as government censorship, but they can also be complicit in producing an intricate and dynamic system that reifies existing power structures. Web 2.0 thrives on user participation in ranking content posted by other users which brings dominant perspectives to the forefront while crowding out marginal voices and points of view. It would seem that this social media practice might then serve to protect these marginalized voices if they were intended to be heard only by a small readership. However, the popularity of retweeting, reposting, Digging, and other popular Web 2.0 content sharing practices means no one is safe from the panoptic gaze. In fact, once the proverbial spotlight falls on unpopular perspectives, mobs of oppositional readers can take over the web space with their views, and the battles in offline public discourse are effectively brought online. It is becoming increasingly clear that early visions of the web as a site of empowerment for the colonized, marginalized, and dispossessed have not materialized as they were envisioned. Instead, the circulation of power through social media technologies, practices and structures can reproduce hierarchies and complicate the once simple notion of giving a voice to the voiceless.

Image Credits:

1. Twitter geographic 2009: Where the tweets are
2. Twitter icons colored green in support of Iranian protesters
3. Sharing an Avatar article on Digg
4. Front page image

Please feel free to comment.

1. Gajjala, R. (2004). Cyber selves: Feminist ethnographies of South Asian women. Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira Press.; Mitra, A. (2004). “Voices of the Marginalized on the Internet: Examples From a Website for Women of South Asia.” Journal of Communication, 54(3), 492-510; Mitra, A. (2006). “Towards finding a cybernetic safe place: Illustrations from people of Indian origin.” New Media & Society, 8(2), 251-268.
2. Many Twitter users configure their accounts to replicate their tweets and post them as “status messages” on such Web 2.0 sites as Facebook and LinkedIn. While other Web 2.0 applications, such as Gowalla, allow users to post their status to Twitter or Facebook. This sort of movement and sharing of information is one characteristic Web 2.0.
3. http://ask.slashdot.org/story/09/06/14/183200/Iran-Moves-To-End-Facebook-Revolution?from=rss
4. http:/www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1905125,00.html
5. http://open.salon.com/blog/thomas_rogers_1/2009/06/15/how_to_follow_the_iran_protests_twitter_blogs_and_more
6. http:/www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1905125,00.html

The army green t-shirt that catapulted me to internet fame for a day references a scene from Stanley Kubrick’s 1987 film Full Metal Jacket in which a Vietnamese prostitute says to an American GI, “Hey baby, you got girlfriend Vietnam? Me so horny. Me love you long time.”

The line “me so horny” has since been reproduced in countless pop culture texts, including rap group 2 Live Crew’s song “Me So Horny,” which reached number one on the U.S Billboard Hot Rap Singles in 1989.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Earlier constructions of Asian women as prostitutes actually predate Kubrick’s film by nearly a century. According to Robert G. Lee, more than ten thousand Chinese women were forcibly brought to the United States as prostitutes in the late 19th century, thereby reinforcing Edward Said’s claim that the West had Orientalized the East by exotifying Asian women (88).1 Since then, many popular culture texts and western practices have reproduced this narrow construction of Asian women as sexual playthings.

My shirt, which reads “I will not love you long time,” is a statement of resistance to the construction of Asian and Asian American women as objects of white male sexual fantasy both in Full Metal Jacket, as well as in the broader American imaginary. Through the act of wearing the shirt, the “I” on the shirt refers to me and the statement becomes my own. As Vincent Pham and Kent Ono explain, wearing or producing activist counter-shirts that requires linking knowledge of Asian American history to humiliating stereotyped constructions of Asian Americans is itself a rhetorical act that allows us to be seen, not as passive model minorities, but rather as activists and political participants (193).2 Indeed, disrupting this narrative of the apolitical model minority while contesting the construction of Asian women as prostitutes and sexual playthings was my intent.

Tasha Oren explains that recent public expressions of grievance like mine from the Asian American community have mostly been over our cultural significations, “media representations and the pernicious repetition of stereotypes” (338) such as those perpetuated by numerous offensive representations of Asian Americans in the media and illustrated on apparel.3

Corporations, she explains, “miscalculate the ’sensitivities’ of Asian Americans” because there is a lack of association between us and racial anger in the cultural imagination, which facilitates our positioning as a demographic “free of past grievance–in short as honorary whites” (353). In other words, Asian Americans might not be the target of racial insensitivities as often as we are if, perhaps, there were more visible public expressions of Asian American anger about our stereotyped and humiliating representations.

Oren explains that there are, however, several examples of counter-narratives that make these expressions public. Oren reads the Secret Asian Man comic strip by Tak Toyoshima as one such example of a widely-distributed mainstream cultural production that gives a voice to the grievances of Asian American activists. She also names the web sites Angry Asian Man and Big Bad Chinese Mama as texts that use anger and media criticism to voice racial grievance. She calls these “bridging texts” because they bring Asian American grievance into the realm of mainstream popular culture thereby disrupting the trope of Asian repression. Oren explains that they are effective because these “mainstream expressions of racial grievance, of anger, of a refusal to ’suck it up’ are at once metaphoric and actual interceptions. In their textual presence and performance they can short-circuit old ‘oops’ formulas by insisting on the specificity of [Asian American] experience” (356).

But the question remains, how do we figure whether Secret Asian Man and other bridging texts actually succeed in contesting dominant constructions of Asian Americans? My statement of resistance to the construction of Asian women as prostitutes became an interesting case for re-examining Oren’s argument about the resistive meaning-making that happens by way of bridging texts. When a very popular user on Flickr, an acquaintance of mine, posted the photo of me wearing my “I will not love you long time” shirt and the page hosting the photo made it to #1 on Digg with 5706 “diggs,” it reached a large mainstream audience and in that moment the photograph became a bridging text by Oren’s definition. The difference between this text and those cited by Oren, however, is that social media sites like Digg and Flickr invite public dialogue which effectively becomes incorporated as part of the text, while such opportunities for participation are absent from sites such as Angry Asian Man, Secret Asian Man and Big Bad Chinese Mama.

When audiences can contribute to the generation of a bridging text, such as on the Flickr and Digg pages that hosted my photo, they can shift the meaning of the text. I argue that social media web sites like these can in fact reignite expressions of traditional or “old fashioned” racism, which Chesler, Peet, and Sevig define as the “expression of traditional negative prejudice, bigotry, stereotypic beliefs about the inferiority or even dangerousness of people of color” (219), particularly when readers can post their contributions to the dialogue anonymously.4 Although theorists including Eduardo Bonilla-Silva argue that a more socially-acceptable “color-blind racism” (2) has replaced old fashioned racism, old fashioned racist sentiments seem to flourish when identities are hidden or falsified online.5

At least half of the comments on either social networking site could not be read, even generously, as a support for, or even recognition of my act of grievance. Instead, many of the comments are anonymous personal attacks condemning my opposition to the construction of Asian women as prostitutes and sexual playthings. Often they are neither subtle, nor color-blind. For example:

Sie Sind Schwach says: So, you won’t “Love me long time”, you’re scrawny, and quite angry. What use are you then? Are you good at math or something? It doesn’t seem like you have a developed sense of humor. I thought plain looking girls were supposed to try harder.

lossjim says: [to the owner of the Flickr page] you have one friend with SERIOUS issues, and, to boot, comes off like most “holier than thou” asian chicks, with a low self esteem, but need to be seen/appreciated? whatever, good luck with your “good friend”

Other comments reinscribe the very construction I was attempting to contest, the Asian woman as prostitute/object of white male sexual fantasy, or perpetuate other humiliating constructions of Asian Americans such as the non-English speaking foreigner. For example:

jonolan says: No boom-boom, no visa!

promqu33n says: needs more chinglish. me no love you longtime.

slider527 says: ahahaha me want fly lice with that asian girl.

A critical analysis of all the comments and the meanings they produce is beyond the scope of this short monograph (but forthcoming in a separate paper). What I am suggesting here though is that the narratives created in these spaces–one that condemns my act of grievance and another that reproduces and reinscribes common stereotyped constructions of Asian Americans–overshadow and displace expressions of Asian American grievance both literally and discursively. Oren points out the importance of bridging texts in interrupting narratives of Asian American passivity that can lead to miscalculations of our tolerance for racially offensive cultural significations, but the construction of a whole new text–pages upon pages of online reader-generated comments–clearly take up more space in a literal sense than the original bridging text. Space allotted to the act of grievance is effectively colonized by commenters, many of whom react with hostility. The examples of online expressions of Asian grievance that Oren cites do not provide a space for public dialogue as do social media sites such as Flickr and Digg. Thus, we need urgently to complicate our understanding of how bridging texts operate, or fail to operate when the texts themselves enable audiences to effectively re-author the content. What happened on Flickr and Digg around my voicing of racial grievance suggests that while any disruption in the persistent narrative of passive model minority is important, it is crucial to consider how the text might produce different meanings when it is visually and discursively colonized by oppositional discourse.

Vanessa Au is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Communication at the University of Washington. Her current research explores online public discourse around Asian American contestations of Orientalism in contemporary American popular culture. A software product marketing manager in a previous life, she is currently working on a manuscript for an edited volume on transgressions and web 2.0. Vanessa is a member of University of Washington’s Asian American Studies Research Collective and Women of Color Collective.

Image Credits:
1. “I will not love you long time” t-shirt, author’s screenshot
2. Abercrombie and Fitch t-shirt
3. Adidas shoes
4. Digg page for “I will not love you long time” t-shirt, author’s screenshot

Please feel free to comment.

1. Chesler, Mark A., Melissa Peet, and Todd Sevig. “Blinded by Whiteness: The Development of White College Students’ Racial Awareness.” White Out : The Continuing Significance of Racism. Eds. Ashley W. Doane and Eduardo Bonilla-Silva. New York: Routledge, 2003. 215-30.
2. Pham, Vincent, and Kent Ono. “”Artful Bigotry & Kitsch”: A Study of Stereotype, Mimicry, and Satire in Asian American T-Shirt Rhetoric.” Representations: Doing Asian American Rhetoric. Eds. LuMing Mao and Morris Young. Logan, Utah: Utah State University Press, 2008.
3. Oren, Tasha G. “Secret Asian Man: Angry Asians and the Politics of Cultural Visibility.” East Main Street: Asian American Popular Culture. Eds. Shilpa Dave, LeiLani Nishime and Tasha G. Oren. New York: New York University Press, 2005.
4. Chesler, Mark A., Melissa Peet, and Todd Sevig. “Blinded by Whiteness: The Development of White College Students’ Racial Awareness.” White Out : The Continuing Significance of Racism. Eds. Ashley W. Doane and Eduardo Bonilla-Silva. New York: Routledge, 2003. 215-30.
5. Bonilla-Silva, Eduardo. Racism without Racists : Color-Blind Racism and the Persistence of Racial Inequality in the United States. 2nd ed. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2006.