Two Trevor Noah stories

 This post is not particularly timely but I feel my memory isn't getting any sharper and I should get some stories out while I can. My girlfriend recently read Born a Crime for her book club and it reminded me of the two memorable times I saw Trevor Noah live. Longtime readers might remember I shared my excitement way back when he was announced as the Daily Show host in 2015.

The first story takes me back to November 10, 2016.  I wouldn’t normally recall the exact date of a comedy show almost a decade later, but as you'll see, this date was easy to look up. I was in Boston and it was Inbound, Hubspot's sprawling week-long conference. Hubspot in 2016 was the local tech startup selling software to marketers, growing like wildfire at the time, and tossing tech investor capital around like syrup on pancakes. This conference was not calibrated for return on investment. Renting out the entire Boston Convention and Exhibition Centre, they had a full on A-list cast including Alec Baldwin, Anna Kendrick, Serena Williams, Michael Strahan, Michelle Obama, John Cena and Ta-Nehisi Coates. The event planners must have been given the prompt "Indoors Coachella for marketers." The grand finale was a comedy showcase headlined by Sarah Silverman with Ali Wong as opener.    

But this team of marketers hadn't fully thought through every aspect of that week in November. I began my Tuesday evening at the convention floor, sipping a beer as the early returns had Hilary Clinton leading in Georgia. I ended that evening among a sobbing crowd at the Phoenix Landing as Donald Trump won Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin and the Presidential election. The next morning, commuting to work on a couple hours of sleep, I observed on the T that half of Boston looked like they'd been dumped. 

Sarah Silverman had been an ardent Clinton booster after Sanders conceded, even giving a speech at the 2016 DNC. On Thursday morning, she called in sick. She was understandably not in the headspace to do her comedy routine in front of a convention full of money people while dealing with the apocalyptic election shock. The Hubspot event team must have scrambled like fighter jets during a surprise invasion and somehow they booked Trevor Noah that same day. The logistics of the day are mind-bogglingly impressive.

My recollection and understanding is that this comedy finale was supposed to start at 6:30pm. The Daily Show was Monday-Thursday, with taping from 4:30 to 6pm. Trevor must have done the Daily Show that day and then immediately zapped to a private jet to fly to Boston.

They delayed the opening til 7pm. Ali Wong was slated to open and do a half hour of material. In an extraordinary effort, se managed to pull out extra material and keep the crowd engaged for a full hour. This was post-Baby Cobra and her humor revolved around parenting, particularly child birthing - I distinctly remember a long bit about what that did to her vagina. She was good, she got the whole place was rolling with some great timing on crude punchlines, but nothing was topical. She wrapped up to thundering applause at 8pm.

The next 20 minutes were awkward. I don't recall anyone making any announcement with any explanations, just an auditorium of businesspeople anxiously fidgeting in their seats as we waited for Trevor Noah. Everyone must have thought, "is he really coming? Should I leave? How long does it take to get here from New York? Surely he isn't taking Amtrak?" 

And then the bright lights came back on and he was there, and he just got into it. "Man, that just happened. Trump." While I can't recall the words he used or the jokes, I remember how I felt. There was some surface-level humor about how this unserious man was now in such a powerful position, but then some unique insights onto the American psyche, our position in the world and our perceived immunity from anything that would dislodge that position. It was nuanced, it was therapeutic and it was true. It showed the sharpness and the worldliness that had drawn me to him in the first place. He was not afraid to tackle the election that had just occurred, that none of us had processed yet, and he did it twice in the same night in two difference cities. 

He followed up with another half hour of prepared material, some travel stories and accents that I had heard of before, including a bit about Indians coming to England because the colonists had told them about it, and an imagined conversation between European settlers meeting South Africans for the first time. It was a lighter way to close the show and the conference but it was similarly stellar.

***

Almost 8 years later it's March 22, 2024 and I'm seeing Trevor Noah in Seattle. He's retired from the Daily Show and this is an ordinary show on an ordinary national tour. The theater is sold out and the warm up act is a local comedian, unlikely to be a future Emmy award winner. 

Trevor opened about airplanes. While there was plenty of Seattle-specific references to Boeing - this is only two months after the door fell out of the plane - a lot of his bit was about the mundane experience of waiting in lines through security and boarding a plane. When he joked about sitting near the toilet and hearing everything, I seriously questioned when was the last time he sat in economy. He got excellent laughs because he's an excellent comic, but his material continued to revolve around basic shit. I realized his jet-setting travel stories must not have resonated with the American audience, and having been here for 8 years now, he knew he needed to dumb down his routine. While I enjoyed him as always, it definitely made me sad.

Then Trevor abruptly finished a bit and asked, "Ok, who has questions for me?" The audience stirred awkwardly - was this real Q&A or just an elaborate heckle trap?  Someone yelled, "What is your favorite kind of chair?" Trevor blinked and responded, "That is one of the wildest questions any human being has ever asked me in my entire life!" A pretty zany question got a zany response.

"What do you think about the mayor of Seattle?" Perhaps even more unhinged. Here's a comedian from South Africa living in New York here in Seattle for a couple days and someone wants his take on City Hall.  But Trevor, smooth as ever, riffed his way through it — admitting he had no clue about Seattle politics, but weaving it back to homelessness, leadership, and empathy. I can’t recall the details, but it somehow landed as thoughtful and profound instead of ridiculous. He was genuinely bringing a perspective that only he could bring.  

Then suddenly in the middle of the Q&A, he goes, "Oh my, oh ok. There's a medical emergency here. Shine the light on that row. Ok, is there a doctor in the audience?" I was way up in the back and couldn't see much but evidently there was a commotion in the front rows. At Trevor's announcement, I could see many hands go up. "Oh wow, there are a ton of doctors in Seattle. We just need one, the rest of you can sit back down. Wow, this might be the best city to have a medical emergency." Even though we were in the throes of a confusing serious incident, that joke absolutely killed. Trevor calmly directed attention, kept the room under control, and injected humor without crossing the line. The person — a diabetic who needed insulin — was escorted out safely, and the show carried on. I recall Trevor talked about the incident for a few minutes more and probably had something else insightful to say. He added just enough additional banter to close the show naturally, not letting the medical scare leave the final impression. Even though the situation could have turned tragic, everyone left feeling warm and in high spirits.

At the risk of idolizing another human who is certainly as flawed as the rest of us, I have so much respect for how he handled these two emergencies - the election of Donald Trump and a hypoglycemic episode. He's a philosopher in an entertainer's career and I hope he's able to find his stride, hopefully in something internationally-themed.

Wringing Whitewashing Out to Dry

"Whitewashing" has been the term put to the casting of white actors/actresses into non-white roles. It has picked up steam as a mainstream issue, with Asian-American actors speaking up and Last Week Tonight doing a great hilarious piece covering the prevalence of this phenomenon. While I have no experience in the film industry, I have lots of experience as an Asian-American, and my journey co-opting my identity has been influenced by Asian-American representation in TV and film, and have thus observed this practice keenly.

Empress Dowager Cixi and advisor

In the pre-Civil Rights movement days, Hollywood whitewashing was flagrant, with blackface and yellowface deemed socially acceptable. The WTF-inducing examples are plentiful, from Mickey Rooney playing a Japanese landlord in Breakfast at Tiffany's, Laurence Olivier playing Othello in blackface and an ensemble of white people in 55 Days at Peking playing Chinese imperial figures.

Someone you know saw this in 1965

While plenty of articles grant this issue facetime and recount historical context, I haven't seen a fleshed out and nuanced understanding of 1) why is whitewashing an issue? and 2) when is something whitewashing? In creating this list, I found so many confounding grey areas. What is the right move here? What does the slippery slope take us to? This discussion deserves more back-and-forth than it gets.

Let's start with the easier question. Why is whitewashing bad? And why does it happen? In a movie like 55 Days at Peking, the whitewashing is dripped in colonialism. You can almost see the thought bubbles, "We need a Shakespearean-trained dramatist to portray Empress Dowager Cixi, not one of these Chinese actresses without theatrical class." We've certainly come a long way, but even if filmmakers nowadays do not harbor these same sentiments, they still need to be wary of belittling the abilities of minority thespians. However, the biggest complaints raised now is less the overt racism, but rather the institutionalized practice of reducing opportunities for non-white actors.  Filmmakers counter that they need bankable stars, so many of whom happen to be white. Minority actors rightfully respond that to become bankable stars, you have to get cast in the first place! Missing out on roles early on means missing out on exposure means missing out on more roles later on - producing a very white snowball effect. The mentality of sticking to "known quantities" reflects a lack of imagination, a peculiar quality for the film industry. The downstream consequences of this practice include an all white set of Oscar's Best Actor/Best Actress nominees #oscarssowhite.

The connections-heavy world of Hollywood, where many stars are themselves children of stars, poses a difficult barrier of entry. But less industry-specific causes exist too, such as self-segregation which pervades throughout society. I am sure there are many white producers, writers and directors who have primarily white friends - many who don't normally hang out in minority-filled crowds. The reverse is far less true, because minorities in this country by definition find themselves outnumbered by white people all the time. This bleeds into show business. So often you can just tell watching a show that their screenwriters are all white. Consider Friends, the successful decade-long show starring 6 white people, produced by another 10 white people. However this show was considered super mainstream. Lots of minorities watched it, and we didn't find that weird at all.  Sure the show only contained white experiences, but we're used to seeing that. Consider Tyler Perry's House of Payne, a successful show lasting 8 seasons, starring and produced, and watched nearly exclusively by black people. This whiteness-as-a-default is an entrenched characteristic of our society, (which is why fantasy characters or race-blind roles still so often end up played by white actors), and if you don't hang out with minorities, you only know the default.  Our society is moving towards Aziz Ansari's Master of None, which just as obviously appears written by a diverse staff who find it normal to discuss race.

In addition to depriving actors of color, when films addressing historical or cultural topics are whitewashed, the film itself can suffer. History and culture are passed down among sub-groups and latched onto one's core essence. It's very awkward then to see dances, rituals or poetry performed by people to whom they have not been passed down to. Not saying it can't be done with class, but I shiver hearing a white person recite translated Confucius. There is just this knee jerk reaction of "oh no you don't go there."

Where we draw the line is quite challenging though. Everyone gets offended differently and you can't please everyone, especially in this age. Zoe Saldana was criticized as being not black enough to play Nina Simone, and there was even furor at Irishman Pierce Brosnan playing Englishman James Bond.  As a stutterer, I would have preferred an actor with a real speech impediment play the main role in The King's Speech, though Colin Firth's performance won me over. Personally, when examining a casting or adaptation decision, my first barometer is the simple visual test: "does this person look the part?" Secondly, I believe strongly that power dynamics must be contextualized. Because French people do not face discrimination in America, we examine the Hollywood adaptation of the Count of Monte Cristo differently than an adaptation of the West African story of Anansi.  Thirdly, "cultural distance" too factors in casting. Certainly there are differences between Latin American countries, but a sense of cultural proximity might allow Puerto Rican Benicio del Toro to portray the Argentine Che Guevara. What determines whether cultural distance is too great though has no one answer.

When Natalie Wood plays Maria in West Side Story, she doesn't completely fail the visual test, but her casting is still squeamish because of the uneven power dynamic between white Americans and Puerto Rican Americans. When Gary Oldman puts on an accent as the Russian villain Ivan Korshunov in Air Force One,  it's just a good performance in an action movie. Despite the Cold War history, present day dynamics between Russians and Brits or Americans are not particularly sensitive. And in the Russian-German-Kazakh co-production of Mongol, the majority of the cast is Mongolian, but main characters Genghis Khan and his rival Jamukha are played by Japanese and Chinese actors respectively, who learned Mongolian for their lines.  They look the part though and the movie flows without a hitch (at least to the non-Mongolian speaker). When Korean-Americans Randall Park and Ken Jeong play Chinese-American characters, they basically pass the visual test and aren't stealing jobs from Chinese-Americans - in our current setting, they are all in the same boat (or fresh off it), struggling for limited roles.

I need to add that I am holding Hollywood to a very high standard. Film studios all around the world, whether it's India, China or Nigeria, practice their own local ethnic washing methods. When those studios become as rich as Hollywood and those countries become as diverse as 2016 America, we can judge them to the same standard. And I know that Hollywood studios face intense financial pressure, and that a huge chunk of Americans do not share my sensitivities, or even actively oppose them as too "politically correct." But we should challenge nonetheless, for not only does Hollywood exhibit a microcosm of American ethnic issues, but it also commands the rare podium to affect it.

I'd be remiss if I didn't mention that it is getting way better. We have Anthony Mackie playing a rewritten Falcon in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Irfan Khan in Jurassic Park, John Bodega in Star Wars etc. We have hit shows like Empire, Fresh off the Boat, the Mindy Project and Jane the Virgin.  And then there's Hamilton. The progress has been real. But now, let's explore how much further we have to go.

From least to most egregious:

#13 - Dr. Strange (2016) - Tilda Swanton as the Ancient One

There's a fair amount of uproar about this role of a Tibetan spiritual guru being rewritten as a "Celtic mystic." I actually have less problems with this than you might think. I'm not a reader of the comics, but given that this character was created by Stan Lee and Steve Ditko to be a wise male sorcerer capable of astral projection, I read this character as an exoticization of Tibetan culture and all things "Far East" by western society? Since the Himalayas have historically been so remote and inaccessible to foreigners, myths like Shangri-La have long fascinated western culture. This character is more a manifestation of these myths (and maybe reverence for the Dalai Lama) then a proper imagining of a superhero Tibetan. 

Furthermore this character comes with political baggage. First, there are 8 million Tibetans in the world but only around 9,000 Tibetans in America. It's fair to say that it is logistically challenging to find a qualified actor of Tibetan ancestry to play this major role. Second, Marvel wants that China audience and Tibet is a very sensitive issue to China. The PRC Ministry of Culture probably would have blocked the movie had it cast a Tibetan actor or acknowledging the character's origin as Tibetan. That doesn't mean Marvel must bow to this political pressure, but they are caught between a rock and a hard place. Furthermore, let's say a Chinese actor looked and fit the part. That would have been even worse (power dynamic)! That sort of casting would have further marginalized Tibetan people. Giving it to a Korean or Japanese or Indian actor doesn't feel right either.

All in all, reimagining the character as a female Celtic mystic and getting away from those issues and letting Tilda Swinton do her thing isn't too terrible to me. The worst sin is the studio's admitted effects of trying to make Tilda Swinton look more Asian - they should go all the way and make her look super Irish or Scottish instead. Since the movie isn't released yet, we can wait and see how awkwardly they appropriate Tibetan customs, but until now this more or less gets a pass.

#12 - A Mighty Heart (2007) - Angelina Jolie as Mariane Pearl

I never knew even after watching the trailer for this film that the wife of beheaded journalist Daniel Pearl was of part Afro-Cuban descent (and part European and part Chinese). With tanning sessions, Jolie actually arguably passes the visual test, though she does need to wear a wig, which crosses into the ickiness of hairstyle appropriation. The real life Mariane Pearl actually stated she was elated to have Angelina Jolie portray her. Hard to blame her, it doesn't get more flattering than that. You could talk me into compromising my ethnic heritage if Brad Pitt wanted to play me in my life movie. Pearl's opinion matters a lot here, especially her own racial self-identity, and since she's also part-white, it's not the greatest sin to have a more white actress portray her.

#11 - The Social Network (2010) - Max Minghella as Divya Narendra

Initially, this one also didn't strike me as too offensive. Minghella's father is Italian and his mother from Hong Kong, of mixed Chinese, white and Indian Parsi extraction, just like my family. His appearance could kinda pass for Indian. But it really irked Aziz Ansari, as he expressed in Master of None ("We're all 1/16 something. I'm probably 1/16 black. Do you think they're going to let me play Blade!?"). And so I thought about this from his perspective more, and I realized here you have this historical Indian-American person and over 3 million Indian-Americans. I think you can do a little better than someone who "could kinda pass for Indian." We also seem to have one level of credulity for an Indian actor trying to pass as white, but another level for a white actor trying to pass as Indian.  Chalk this up as passing the visual test with a C-, but denying opportunities and insulting a real life figure.

#10 - The Martian - Chiwetel Ejiofor as Vincent Kapoor, Mackenzie Davis as Mindy Park

Even without reading the book, during the movie I could tell from the names that the casting seemed suspicious. While the author was not explicit, Vincent Kapoor was envisioned as Indian and Mindy Park as Korean. In the movie, they are Black and White respectively. Fictional whitewashing isn't egregious, especially when the race of the characters are irrelevant to the storyline. But on the other hand, this still diminishes the types of roles available to Indian and Korean actors respectively, which is the whole reason we're having this discussion. In a case like this, I believe the minor role, in this case Mindy Park, is more aggrieved, because of course you can find an Asian actress to produce a quality 2 minutes of screentime. Vincent Kapoor is a major character, and if you think Chiwetel Ejiofor is the person able to bring the most out of that character, I'll at least entertain your argument. I'll make the argument that you could have cast an Indian actor and the film would have done just as well artistically and commercially.

#9 - Aloha (2015) - Emma Stone as Allison Ng

This one caused an uproar when it happened. Emma Stone's character was inexplicably identified as half white, quarter Chinese, quarter Hawaiian, and based on a real person director Cameron Crowe met. When I first heard about this, I actually got excited! I assumed that Emma Stone must have been part Asian and I just hadn't known, like Keanu Reeves. When I discovered she wasn't, I assumed Cameron Crowe must have been part Asian. How could a white guy just cast a white girl to play a character like this in 2015? It made no sense. I haven't seen the movie, but I read that Allison Ng's ethnicity is largely superfluous to the plot. It establishes her connection to the island's heritage, but can easily be written out. So why leave it in at all?

Crowe says the character was inspired by a real person of that ethnic background and super proud of it, who really did appear white. If Crowe really thought this Asian heritage was important to the story, he should have cast a mixed Asian actress like Olivia Munn or Chloe Bennet. If he was committed to Emma Stone, he should've left out that part. But the current status treats mixed heritage as a prop, something you can simply put on as opposed to something that defines who you are. It does no justice to the nuances of growing up as a mixed person, especially in a diverse place steeped in colonial history like Hawaii.

#8 - Prince of Persia (2010) - Jake Gyllenhaal as the Prince of Persia

So Persians are Caucasian, and Jake Gyllenhaal, a descendant of Swedish immigrants to America, is also Caucasian. Still I don't think I need to explain how culturally distant Sweden and Iran are, and this film gives zero fucks about that. This movie is the classic case of big budget Hollywood, casting a good looking, poorly acclaimed star and culturally appropriating non-Western concepts for a Western audience. The entire main cast is in fact white American or English actors, getting as diverse as Ben Kingsley, whose father was of Indian descent. If this movie were to be remade, it should probably occur in a fictional fantasy land without any obvious takes from real places.

#7 - Cloud Atlas (2012) - Jim Sturgess as Hae-Joo Im

If you haven't seen the movie or read the book, this entry may elicit a WTF reaction. But there are legitimate artistic considerations here. The plot occurs several time periods, with the same actors and actresses reprising multiple roles over the periods. This includes a futuristic Seoul where several non-Asian actors, notably Jim Sturgess but also Hugo Weaving, James D'arcy and David Keith, portray Korean characters. To make their facial features appear more Asian, CGI is used essentially to create epicanthal folds. The net effect looks completely terrible. Such obvious high tech yellowface is somehow not considered socially taboo, as opposed to blackface, which is avoided in the movie.

It's fascinating to me how blackface seems to be the only clearcut ban in the Hollywood whitewashing game. Its slavery-days origins means that using blackface is either explicitly racist or ignorantly insensitive. Using makeup to appear Hispanic, East Asian or South Asian does not have the same historical baggage - but it still looks ugly. When a member of a privileged class makes such effort to look like a less privileged class, the simple visual strikes a queasy feeling that strips away human dignity.

The decision to reuse actors to portray the reincarnation themes of the book can be judged solely on its artistic merits. The cast displays impressive range and the makeup artists deserve great props. The yellowface does not further this artistic vision. Though its a strategy more common for the theater than for the cinematic screen, I think keeping the actors' appearances minimally altered and letting the audience use their imagination would have been best.

Most stunning may be how little controversy this yellowfacing generated. Researching this, I unfortunately came upon a PopSugar piece praising all the transformations, and gushes over the Brit heartthrob like this: "I have just three words for you: Asian Jim Sturgess." Jim Sturgess' own deleted tweet from the controversy showed his own enlightened understanding of the issue. "Yellowface? Blackface? Pinkface? Pinkberry? Blueberry? Strawberry? Bananas? Frozen Yogurt? All the toppings?  ... Lovely!" What the actual fuck?

#6 - 21 (2008) - Jim Sturgess as Jeffrey Ma

We got a pair of Jim Sturgesses! I'm not great at Blackjack, but I think when you're dealt a pair of Jim Sturgesses, you never split.  In this version, Sturgess doesn't go yellowface - he just replaces the ethnicity of a real person, the Chinese-American MIT graduate blackjack-winning. Ma downplayed his whitewashing and said, "I would have been a lot more insulted if they had chosen someone who was Japanese or Korean, just to have an Asian playing me." Despite my Brad Pitt joke earlier, I totally disagree with Ma here. Maybe fame or financial gain were more important to him that historical accuracy, and the film was also a dramatized adaptation of a book that itself significantly dramatized the real events, and Ma was not very involved in the whole process. Instead of criticizing him, it is much easier to criticize the filmmakers who "would have loved to cast Asians in the lead roles" but such Asians were unavailable. I doubt the white filmmakers ever thought what it would be like for a non-white actor to portray them in a movie inspired by their lives. 

#5 - Elizabeth, Michael and Marion (2016) - Joseph Fiennes as Michael Jackson

I think this yet-to-be-released movie is one of the most interesting cases on here.  Unlike Mariane Pearl, Michael Jackson explicitly stated that he did not want to be played by a white person and was proud to be a black American. Of course, Jackson was a weird, weird man with the palest skin and facial features that didn't look like anyone. Most black actors would not look anything like him. It remains to be seen how good this movie's makeup team is, but Joseph Fiennes doesn't look anything like Jackson either. Maybe studio execs thought, "If we can make his brother look like Voldemort, we can make him look like MJ." I think the appropriate course of action is to search for a light skin black actor, maybe a Wentworth Miller or Jesse Williams. No you're not going to get a perfect casting here, but you can at least try to not insult the American audience. For his part, Fiennes is pretty incredulous: "I'm a white, middle-class guy from London. I'm as shocked as you might be." 

#4 - The Last Airbender (2010) - Everything About the Movie

We had such high hope M. Night Shyamalan. Normal hope, not the kind that culminates in winning the Razzie for Worst Picture. The movie is based on a Nickeldeon TV show Avatar: The Last Airbender that is not actually a Japanese anime as I had thought, but an American creation by two white guys, heavily inspired by Japanese anime. The Avatar universe is full of architecture, themes and people  heavily inspired by East Asian, Southeast Asian, South Asian, Inuit and New World cultures. Though voiced mostly by white people, the characters are depicted in the anime as variously Asian. We can have a separate conversation about whitewashing in voice casting (it's not as bad), but let's see how the producers and Shyamalan handled this film. On one hand, the cast is very diverse with many parts for young actors and actresses of color. On the other hand, the main protagonists are all white (and not well-known stars), and the antagonists South Asian or Middle Eastern. All of these characters in the TV show appear East Asian or Inuit. Now, you can do something creative in this fictional world and put characters of an ethnicity into clothing, cultures, and even names atypical of that race to stretch our assumptions. But when one ethnicity represents the good guys, minority ethnicities represent the bad guys, and none of them are true to the show, then people will start judging the cultural appropriation, criticizing the acting and eventually put your film on this list.

#3 - The Lone Ranger (2013) - Johnny Depp as Tonto

I'm sure this movie wouldn't have been made without a big name playing Tonto of the Comanche tribe, and none of the big name stars in Hollywood are significantly Native American. Way back in the 1950s, Canadian Mohawk actor Jay Silverheels played the same role. I'm not sure whether this indicates that Hollywood has regressed in 60 years, or whether Canada has just always been more progressive. Depp claims to be part Cherokee, or maybe part Cree, and it's all pretty dubious. If you want to talk about uneven power dynamics, no example is more skewed than Native Americans and white Americans. The producers touted the presence of a Comanche advisor on set and they had dialogue in the dying Comanche language. Whatever. The film is a stupid remake of a stupid radio show of a stupid racist genre and it deserved to lose all these producers millions of dollars.

#2 - Exodus: Gods and Kings (2014) - Christian Bale as Moses + Everything Else

This is basically the same concept as in Prince of Persia and Gods of Egypt (2016) with casting decisions that piss off modern Egyptians and don't give minority actors a chance.  Except the production team of Gods of Egypt actually recognized their mistakes, with director Alex Proyas and Lionsgate issuing apologies for not considering diversity. Director Ridley Scott of Exodus went the other way, dropping this memorable quote, "I can't mount a film of this budget...and say that my lead actor is Mohammad so-and-so from such-and-such...I'm just not going to get financed." This is not without truth, but it belies the fact that Scott didn't even try to fight this trend and simply doesn't care to understand why people like me are so bothered by whitewashing.

#1 - Dragonball Evolution (2009) - The Movie

The reason why I rank this movie with a $30 million budget worse than those larger films is because this one's personal. If you want to understand the backlash against whitewashing, you have to understand it on an emotional level, and no example causes more of an emotional response in me than this one.

I freaking loved the Japanese anime Dragon Ball Z as a kid. In elementary school and middle school, I made sure I was home at 5:30 on weekdays to watch Goku kick butt. I didn't think too much about the cultural setting of the show, or even that the main human characters are all supposed to look Japanese. I had no idea that Goku was inspired by Sun Wukong, 孫悟空, the Monkey King from the Chinese folktale Journey to the West. None of that was important, the show was just awesome.

When I heard about this movie, it'd been many years since I cared about Goku, but I still got excited. Then one look into the trailer I physically shuddered. It was bad enough adapting the Dragon Ball Z epic into an American high school coming-of-age story. It was criminal to put a white guy into the main role. It was worse to keep most of the supporting cast Asian. I felt like it was a direct referendum: Asians are not cool enough to be the hero. They can play the supporting role, the wise kung fu trainer, but white people will never accept you as a leader or star. Having a no name white actor (who the fuck is Justin Chatwin) playing Goku, name unchanged and all, and Emmy Rossum (Shyamalan-esque career post-Mystic River) playing Bulma, is so mind-bogglingly jarring I still cannot bring myself to see this movie. You can make all the intellectual arguments against whitewashing, but sometimes the best argument is a visceral one. Fittingly, this movie was universally panned.

Mixed Feelings

It's an all-too-typical scene for me: I walk up to the cashier at Manning's and greet the cashier with a casual "你好." Perhaps this is my giveaway - Chinese culture tends to be light on unnecessary formalities. "Have membership card?" the cashier replies in an incredibly strong Hong Kong accent. The slight is unintended and perhaps unperceived by you. But I come across it daily, and while I typically ignore it, today I take it head on. I ask him, "你可不可以同我講中文？ (Can you speak to me in Chinese?)" The cashier apologizes with a deep shade of embarrassment, and quickly tells me the price in Cantonese. I thank him after collecting my change and move on.

An all-too-typical question to me: "Which of your parents is white?" As many times as I've heard this question, I still lack a quick response. The answer the questioner wants to hear is "my mother", but this answer sells out my mother, with which I'm not comfortable. I gauge how long I want to spend talking to my conversation partner(s) and I choose either the simple answer. "Neither. They're both Chinese." A true statement that I'm perfectly comfortable delivering. Generally, this is accepted with minor acclaim and the conversation proceeds as normal. Occasionally, I get retorts of disbelief and accusatory follow up questions. I will hear "then why do you look like what you do? Are you sure?" from generally well-mannered people unaware how rude they sound while assigning someone a race to their own satisfaction. To avoid this line of questioning, I sometimes give a longer response. "Neither, but my mom's family is mixed. Both my parents were born and raised in Hong Kong." The conversation will never stop here. The most common followup question I hear is "oh so you're 1/4?" I'll generally take this comment in stride, while making a note to self that I probably shouldn't talk advanced mathematics with this person and their limited vocabulary of fractions. For these simple people, I'll sometimes say, "Sure," more willing to sell out a grandparent I've never met.

Young siblings

An atypical scene happened in the waning days of 2005. I was in the dark days of college applications, having just spent my entire winter break writing college essays for Ivy League schools and non-common app schools (damn you Northwestern). My parents had been overly involved in this process from the very first page of the application form and had poured a lot of sweat into making me express the very best of myself. For every application, I checked Asian in the race/ethnicity box without much thought. However as it came time for me to send out the application for Pomona, a school I only knew about because of my cousin Andrew Barnet, I thought about filling in an extra box. Andrew's father is a white man from Ohio, and I figured if my biracial cousin could get into Pomona, maybe I should try being biracial as well. I stealthily went back to page one, ticked "White" as well, and closed the application before I felt too guilty about it. It felt like a bold lie on an official form, but I told myself, "technically you are part white."

Tse family photo

The details about my ancestry get complicated quickly. Yes my mom is the mixed one, but her parents are both mixed. Further complicating matters, her parents/my grandparents were distant cousins, sharing the same full blooded white European ancestor. There is likely at least another white European ancestor in the family. The one I'm most aware of is Charles Bosman, a Dutchman who traded in Guangzhou and Hong Kong in the late 1800's. His son Robert Ho Tung was definitely a halfie, and he became Sir Robert Ho Tung, whose bilingual skills made him invaluable in the growth days of Hong Kong and became the first Chinese knighted by the British. My uncle has set aside a portion of his retirement into investigating our heritage, visiting Bosman's grave in London and publishing an ancestry book. He believes Bosman was Jewish with roots outside of Holland, but that we likely aren't related to him at all, instead having Parsi blood (Zoroastrian practicers banished from Persia in the 1500s and mostly migrated East) through some off the books relationship. The most precise fraction I've seen for our non-Chinese part is 13/64, and I've made sure this calculation is possible, but honestly I have no clue if it's true. But it doesn't really matter.  None of these details affect my identity. I don't have a direct fully Caucasian relative alive, and neither does my mom. She grew up what they call Eurasian in Hong Kong, speaking Cantonese primarily but English secondarily, and it was only after I came here that I realized how atypical her experience was from that of the average local. But she moved to the eastern US where she was just Asian, at a time when there weren't many, and I don't think being mixed has had any part of her identity for a long time.

My dad is "just" Chinese, but even his family history takes a few lines to retell properly. He was born in Hong Kong into a Shanghainese family who were refugees anticipating Cultural Revolution purges. They spoke Shanghainese at home and identified as Shanghainese, but in reality, their history in Shanghai spanned only two generations and their ancestral hometown was somewhere in Hunan. They claim to have some Manchurian blood, with some relation to the last Emperor of China Pu Yi, but the details may have passed away with my great-grandmother. My grandfather was extremely adventurous and quite a gambler, a combination that saw my dad move to Brazil, back to Hong Kong, to Sierra Leone, New York City, Boston, Cote D'Ivoire and back to Boston. He has since lived a decade in Shanghai, a city he visited for the first time in his 30's.

My own history is far less interesting. I was born and raised in suburban Boston, and I grew up Chinese-American. I had two Chinese parents, played chess and piano, excelled at math and sucked at basketball. I went to China for 3 months in college and for the first time, I was told by a society around me that maybe I'm white. Only two and a half years removed from guiltily ticking "white" in that college application form, I was giving an English lesson to a Chinese man, and somehow I ended up writing my Chinese name. He asked me, "how did you get this Chinese name?" and I replied that my parents gave it to me. "Really? Why? You're Chinese?" Turns out he legitimately believed the whole time that I was completely white, which was an utter shock to me. This was far from the last such instance.

Too often I am assigned an ancestral history that isn't mine, and often without me realizing it. Many times I've discovered years into a friendship that a good friend had thought I was half white the whole time. They were misinformed about me for years. To a great credit to today's society, this hasn't usually mattered much, because as far as I can tell, people have treated me the same whether they thought I was Chinese or half Chinese. But when I do correct people who mistakenly call me a halfie, they rarely get what the big deal is. "But it's a good thing! Halfies are really good looking!" said my friend after she introduced me as her halfie friend, for the second time. True, halfie is nothing like a racial slur and it seems for whatever reason that most societies' conceptions of attractiveness venerate Asian-Caucasian mixes. So really, why should I care that someone gets my racial background slightly wrong?

Because the truth matters. The difference between my experience and that of a half-Chinese half-White guy has significant differences. I was never a child walking down the streets with parents who looked nothing like me or each other, receiving bewildered stares from people. I never had to choose between adopting my father's or my mother's cultural heritage. I never spoke a language that only one of parents understood (and still don't, because I think my mom understands more Mandarin than she lets on). I never heard any lessons of "good old American values" from a white grandparent. I never grew up as a mixed kid - I grew up as a Chinese kid in America.  And guess what? I never thought I looked mixed. When you grow up everyday thinking you're Chinese, everyday you look in the mirror you're going to see the reflection of a Chinese kid. Now that I've had several years dealing with people telling me that I'm mixed, I start to look in the mirror and think maybe I look mixed. But I still don't think I look like a halfie.

I am also fully aware that I'm far from alone in the experience of constantly being on the receiving end of incorrect assumptions. I bet all mixed people have experienced this in some way. Most anyone who speaks a foreign language will experience this in some fashion. I will say though, I've been the "Chinese guy" who had to rely on a white person for linguistic help while learning Mandarin in China, and I've been the "white guy" whom Mainland Chinese people had to rely on for linguistic help in Hong Kong. I'm not sure that's a typical experience.

Anyway, while most Asian Americans I know are put off when people assume they can't speak English, the "Forever Foreigner" stereotype, that rarely happens to me in the states. Probably that's part of my privilege growing up educated in liberal diverse areas, but even when it does happen it's easy to shake off. That's because my Americanness is unshakeable - it's a permanent part of my identity that I'm totally secure in, partially because the concept of American is so fluid. Try as he might, not even Donald Trump could deny me my Americanness. I'm definitely less secure in my Chineseness, partly because it's not so well defined worldwide and some people have a very restrictive view of it.

So when a cashier doing his job assumes I'm not Chinese and speaks to me in English, it doesn't seem like a big deal. But it hurts me. The U.S. equivalent would be a Hispanic immigrant who spent many years in the U.S. and learned English going into a store and having a white clerk ask in 6th grade Spanish "tienes bago?" Many such shoppers would feel offended and wonder if they would ever feel truly accepted in this country. And perhaps for me it's even more personal. Even though English is my best language, I actually spoke Cantonese first. It is inextricably tied to my identity especially my Chinese identity. When I hear parents telling their kids "乖乖地,小朋友要聽話" it resonates back to my childhood. So when someone tries to deny that language to me, I feel like a dart has been thrown at me. Even more painful is when I'm debating Asian-American issues, and my argument gets this rebuttal: "well you wouldn't understand, you're mixed." Few things would get me more riled up, so luckily this has only happened twice.


So back to the cashier. Yes I get it. We all have to make some judgement calls and when I have to ask some Chinese stranger on the street, I will talk to him first in Chinese, even though I don't know for sure that's his first language. And when I see a Caucasian stranger, I will always use English first. The reasons why cashiers in Hong Kong instinctively use English has a historical backdrop in colonialism that has nothing to do with me. These instances occur much more often in places with a long history of service to westerners like Bangkok, Hong Kong and Philippines rather than say in Taiwan or South Korea. Hong Kong is a city where westerners almost never learn Cantonese, and both the local and western community seem to accept this without any qualms. The language situation here is another post entirely (and likely will get one soon). So when I am able to properly consider all that context...no I can't really fault the cashier. Yet at the same time, I don't fault myself for feeling bothered. It's certainly a paradox isn't it?

So how do I want people to interact with me? Don't get me wrong, I totally welcome asking about my race/ethnicity. I never shy away from asking others, and I ask directly (none of this 'where are you really from?).  The point is, we have to be more educated in the way we talk and think about race. Being mixed does not mean half one race half another race, and future generations hereon out are only going to be more complicated. You will also likely encounter more "third culture kids" of mixed race. If you don't learn how to talk to and understand these people, you will be that crockety old grandparent who embarrasses the younger generation. Reduce your assumptions as much as possible, and just ask curious but respectful questions. And even if you find to your satisfaction that the person in front of you has a grandfather from Italy, a grandmother from Korea, another grandfather from Turkey and a grandmother who was adopted into an Irish-American family...well that might not actually tell you anything about who the person in front of you really is.

P.S. Pomona was the most selective school that accepted me.

Georgetown as an Asian American

I started this post on May 29, 2010 and now I'm editing it on January 14th, 2011. Perhaps that's some indication of how much I have to say on this subject, or perhaps how difficult it is for me to say it. Without a doubt, transforming my understanding of race, especially my own race, was one of the most important legacies my college education left me. This post is titled Georgetown as an Asian American but it could just as well be titled America as an Asian American, or simply The Asian American Experience.

I would like to say this is not a social critique. I am not trying to make statements I am not qualified to make but simply to explain my own experiences. And on the whole, my own experiences are pretty good. I have never suffered a racist attack, been disparagingly called a racial slur or been directly refused service on account of my race. I don't think my being an Asian American has negatively affected my chances for success in my country and I don't use my race as an excuse for anything.

Growing up, we were taught that race matters.  We were also taught that we are all created equal and to judge a person by his/her character and not their skin color.  However by studying or celebrating race, whether it was stressing the history of Hanukah during the Christmas season or African-American History month, we learned that race matters.  This is good because it does. I’m fine with the education that I had and have issues instead with education that glosses over racial differences.  Ignorance of racial inequality in modern America is inexcusable for US citizens.

However, armed with this knowledge that race matters, our conception of different races would gradually evolve as we became aware of stereotypes. Sure, we were also taught in school that stereotypes were bad, but this didn’t correspond with what we could observe in society. Most of the NBA was black – the stereotype that blacks are good at basketball must be true.  The Asian kids at school were good at math – clearly that was genetic. Even when we saw contradictory examples, our mind ignored them. Stereotypes simplified the big, scary, complicated world and it was easy to choose to believe them.

So coming from a predominantly white town (87%) with a strong Jewish minority (about one third), I went to a diverse but small private high school where there were 3 and a half Asians in my graduating class of 50 – and I’m counting myself as a full Asian. Here I became very self-conscious of stereotypes. I was a strong, unique person, and I didn’t want people to be able to glean details of my life immediately upon meeting me.  Shedding stereotypes was a motivating factor in my decision to drop chess and piano and devote myself to sports.  I worked out obsessively, aiming to make up for my perceived lack of athleticism with hard work. It may seem silly, but I didn’t know if it was possible for me to succeed as an athlete.  I looked around for Asian athlete role models but there were precious few. Even at the ISL level, there were no Asian basketball players. I took this to mean that there was no way I could make varsity basketball.  Now this was true, I wasn’t a good enough dribbler, shooter or passer, but even if there was an Asian basketball star at RL, that wouldn’t have changed my ability.  I had never played organized ball and I didn’t have phenomenal hand-eye coordination – none of that had anything to do with race.  I did see Asians succeed in wrestling, including Milton’s star Ken Lee and our own captain Pete Holland.  I tried to model my own style off of their success, which turned out to be another ill-advised decision.  Ken was a sturdily-built Judo champion and Pete was a flexibility freak – they were not too similar to me athletically, even though they were both Asian.  It wasn’t until senior year when I developed moves that matched my own strengths.

From here I moved on to Georgetown where there were a lot more people of all sorts of backgrounds.  By the end of my freshman year, I discovered that there were two divergent stereotypes of Asians within Georgetown: the white-washed and the fobs.  The white-washed were described as Asians in appearance only, who hung out with white people and didn’t care about their cultural heritage.  The fobs were Asians who only hung out with other Asians and whose mannerisms and interests visibly reflected their cultural heritage.  I found the fob stereotype to be extremely unfamiliar.  At RL, it never crossed my mind to hang out with other Asians.  When there were only two and half others, this seemed bizarre and exclusive.  So who were these people who deliberately sought out other Asian friends? Were they uncomfortable hanging out with other races? But as confusing as the fob stereotype was, I was much more unsettled by the white-washed one.  Clearly, if people were to put one of these two labels on me, they would place that one.  But I didn’t view myself as white-washed – I certainly cared very much about my Chinese upbringing.

Now critics can say that I was white-washed.  Even though I spoke Cantonese and used chopsticks at home and technically was a minority, my social upbringing aligned me much more with the white majority. In outward style, mannerisms, speech and interests, I conformed to that of many white Americans.  There’s some truth in that. Certainly I don’t think the way I was raised qualifies me for affirmative action or that I was disadvantaged.  However, calling me white-washed is a very ignorant viewpoint that glosses over the experiences that all hyphenated Americans share, regardless of upbringing.  An article by Dean Obeidallah reminded me of this.  As Obeidallah writes, whenever an outrageous act of human criminal behavior occurs, minorities inevitably have the same fear: “I hope the guy wasn’t [insert own race].” When Seung-Hui Cho massacred 32 Virginia Tech students, like other Americans I was horrified and saddened. But I was also ashamed because Cho was Asian. I felt the need to prove to other Americans that we as a race were not bad people, that we belonged in this country. And Cho wasn’t even Chinese. I very much doubt that white Americans felt this way when they heard that Jared Loughner was white.  Another shared feature of minorities in this country is our mutual “perking up” of interest when we hear a member of our own race entering uncharted territories.  We naturally follow their careers, but might initially be reluctant to display publicly our support for fear that others will perceive that we are supporting this individual just because we share the same race.

Anyways there I was, not fully comfortable with my identity as an Asian American when I arrived in Beijing on June 1, 2008.  There my conception of race permanently changed. Obviously I saw a society nearly entirely run by Chinese.  Everybody, from the police officers, the street cleaners, the immigration officers, the beggars, the businessmen, the soldiers, the media and the politicians were Chinese.  This struck me because I was used to seeing Chinese people in only limited societal roles.  In the America I grew up in, Asians were either working in restaurants or were successful professionals who had studied hard and done well.  I didn’t know of too many lower middle class Asians or truly influential Asians.  Nor were there many Asians in Hollywood, professional sports, comedy or on the evening news.  But here they did it all, and I was confronted with the simple truth that race was not a physical barrier to any of these professions. There must have been other explanations.  I thought more about the subject.  In my American classrooms, Asians were immediately pegged as nerds.  Here however, there must be Chinese jocks and class clowns and prom kings.

The Chinese people I taught were wholly unaware of the stereotypes we have here in America. They may have had their own stereotypes about themselves, but the fact that they were supposed to be good at math did not affect their life nearly as much as it did mine.  Essentially that summer, I learned all about the power of culture.


In America, many relatively upper class Asian immigrants came to study more a generation or two ago. My mom was one of them. The linguistic and cultural boundaries that they had to overcome was tremendous. My mom wasn't used to learning quietly by rote memory, and was terrified of speaking in class and had to learn painfully how to write research papers before majoring in History.  To that generation, breaking into the white-dominated white collar world was very intimidating.  It was difficult to ace interviews, manage office politics or push people around. It was much easier to study, where hard work paid off in a much more linear manner. And so a lot of Asian immigrants went to law school or medical school, where their degrees were simply too valuable to not merit employment.  I'm forever indebted to my parents, who found success along this path. Perhaps however, this has created both an Asian American stereotype of nerdy bookworms and an Asian American culture of valuing education.  Especially nowadays for poor recent immigrants, education and hard work is seen as the only way out.  As a result, Asians have become so overrepresented at some areas of American life and woefully underrepresented at others.  


This bothered me a little bit, and I tried to live my life as best I could the way I wanted, and defy as many stereotypes as I could along the way.  However, I didn't realize how much effect this could have on young Asian-Americans growing up.  It was my senior year in college on an outreach day to a public high school in Arlington, VA that had hundreds of students of Asian descent. I saw many kids who had grown up like me feeling limited by the stereotypes in our country, but felt even more burdened by them because they were often not of the socioeconomic class that they were assumed to be. Unlike me, many of them felt pressured by their parents to work towards a certain esteemed profession, or rebelled against the high academic standards expected of them. I sensed some teenage angst from kids who felt misunderstood, partly since they couldn't understand themselves. I felt kids who didn't feel like they could complain because they were supposed to be the "model minority." I realized how damaging that term really is, to both other minorities implicitly belittled in the title as well as to the people supposedly exalted by the designation.  I realized then that the environment that Asian-Americans grow up in is extremely varied, evolving, prone to many different responses, and not studied nearly as much as it needs to be.  But culture isn't just about how you're raised, it's also about how society treats you, which is why Asian-Americans do tend to share similar experiences, whether they are wealthy immigrants of Filipino descent or poor 3rd generation Korean-Americans.

The environment in which we grow up is so instrumental to who we are. I now believe that culture is significantly more meaningful than genetics.  Both ultimately have a lot to say with how we look, act, think and believe.  However, lost in this discussion is perhaps the most important trait that defines us as individuals: our individuality. Excuse this recursive definition but I don't know how else to describe precisely those traits that can be wholly attributed to neither genetics nor culture, neither nature nor nurture.  These are the traits that may ultimately determine whether you are a good person or not.  Everyone is an individual first and foremost and should be treated as such.