When the Asiana Airlines Flight 214 jet crashed into San Francisco airlines, you would think that people would understand the seriousness of the situation. You would think that a crash which injured 181 people (22 of which were in critical condition) and killed two individuals would receive feelings of sadness and understanding. You would think that people would send their condolences to the families of the two 16-year-old female Chinese students,Wang Linjia and Ye Mengyuan, who died during the tragic accident.
And if you thought these things, as I had, you’re in for a rude awakening. This time of grievance was robbed by those who took this opportunity to instead show racism.
The Chicago Sun-Times angered many for there insensitive word play mocking the Asian accent. Often times, people will mix up the “L” and “R” sound to mock the stereotypical Asian accent. We’ve all heard it before, we simply never expected to see it headlining The Chicago Times– especially for such an inappropriate event.
While some argue that it may have been an unintentional typo, AsAm News is quite certain of the intentions and writes, “First, its pretty sick to use a play on words in a headline for a tragedy. Secondly, this one’s pretty racist.”
Editor-in-chief and publisher of Sun-Times, Jim Kirk argued, “”There was nothing intentional on our part to play off any stereotypes. …If anybody was offended by that, we are sorry.We were trying to convey the obviously frightening situation of that landing.”
With publications that show such insensitivity, its no surprise that the public follows in their footsteps. Many people voiced their reaction to the tragic accident in an atrocious manner on twitter. These tweets ranged from insults about Asians being unable to drive, small Asian eyes, and even insensitive remarks about North Korea being behind this.
And while we may be quick to point out the blatant racism towards Asians, we also cannot forget that we are just as capable of such insensitivity.
A Korean newscaster on Channel A, general broadcasting company in South Korea, allegedly reported, “The two deceased passengers were both Chinese. From our stance, it is fortunate.”
Poor choice of words during an insensitive time? Absolutely. The report angered Chinese and Koreans alike and the newscaster made a public apology explaining that he/she only meant that it was fortunate no Koreans were among the deceased.
With such a tragedy on our hands, you would think it wouldn’t be much to ask for some sensitivity with this issue, but more and more we find people using this opportunity to simply show racism and insensitivity.
Tell us what you think below.
