The latest college-paper slur-fest (just a month after Dartmouth's scalping-Indian cover) comes from the Daily Princetonian, which included in its annual joke issue an essay by "Lian Ji." It's a play on Jian Li, who recently sued Princeton for racial discrimination after the school rejected his application despite perfect SAT scores and a high GPA. The essay includes passages like the following:
Just in cases, let me refresh your memories. I the super smart Asian. Princeton the super dumb college, not accept me.
Dean of Admission Janet Rapelye say, "Anything that seems unfair is under scrutiny." Hello? Ni hao ma? Does Rapelye have any idea what unfair means? Did she have to be work on the Union Pacific railroads and haul ass? I don't think so. Woman.
It's not exactly a candidate for Best Student Journalism. The Boston Globe predicts some action will go down over this essay full of tired Asian stereotypes. This essay is just vile.
Aren't we in an age when racial jokes are okay? Sure. But "racist" humor only works when it's not actually racist. And to rise above racism, it has to be funny. Racism isn't a joke, it's a setup, and these jokes are just slurs. Never mind that they're such old slurs they don't even shock: The character Ji plays the entire string section and memorizes pi. He eats dogs and does laundry. His broken grammar isn't even consistent.
What points are made here, what preconceptions are challenged? This isn't an insightful lampoon of a zealous racial group or a cutting questioning of the real Jian Li's motives. It's just mockery of a stereotyped race, and the only way it is funny is if the reader enjoys perpetuating those stereotypes. Even Monty Python's "I Like Chinese" is fresher. There's less to laugh at in this essay than the two lines about a Chinaman in The Big Lebowski.
Basically, if a comedian is going to offend (and the Princetonian writers surely knew they'd do that), they must do it to a higher end — say something so outrageous it blows away the preconceptions of racism. Pull a Sarah Silverman and say "I love Chinks." Twisting or mocking stereotypes (and those who hold them or fulfill them) is funny; reciting them is lazy and repugnant.
