The lessons to learn from Capitol Steps skit

ASNE to take a hard look at why, during a strong year of hiring for new minority journalists, more minorities left the newsroom than entered it

By William F. Woo

I did not see the skit by the Capitol Steps troupe that mocked the speech and appearance of Chinese, but like many others I was appalled by Amy Leang’s description in the ASNE Reporter. The more I read about it, the angrier I became.

And nobody walked out? Understood the difference between satire and rank racism? But in the end, indignation gave way to Tim McGuire’s good point. What’s important now is not what one should have, would have, might have done. It’s learning and moving forward.

In that spirit, perhaps I can help with the learning, as a member of the Asian American Journalists Association and as someone twice elected a director of ASNE. There are several lessons here.

The first is that offensive as the skit was, that it occurred at the ASNE convention says nothing whatsoever about the organization’s deep commitment to bringing more minority journalists into our newsrooms. I’ve been there and struggled with the problem and I know the folks who wrestle with it now. That’s a non-issue.

But hiring more minority journalists is only a part of diversity. Keeping them in our profession is equally important.

One of the strongest tools for retention is making journalism a welcoming place for minorities. That’s not just cultural sensitivity, it’s a moral obligation. Everything editors do and everything ASNE does to further this matters. Similarly, everything that sends a contradictory message is destructive, which is why I believe ASNE erred in not decisively repudiating the skit at once.

The damage is not irretrievable, however, so let ASNE be on notice. Minority journalists will be watching to see what exactly it and our newsrooms have learned from this.

The second lesson comes from my perspective as an Asian American. I make no special pleading here. Other minorities have suffered from racism. Yet in recent years, the nerve endings of Asian Americans have been rubbed raw. I think that was reflected in the responses — so full of anger, pain and a sense of betrayal — to the Capitol Steps skit.

I am not referring to history — to exclusion laws, laws denying citizenship to Asians, miscegenation laws (which kept my own parents from marrying in Missouri) or the internment. Actually, we need go back only a few years.

Recall how Asians were singled out in the campaign finance controversy of 1996, known as the “Asian money scandals” when their illegal contributions were minuscule compared to those of non-Asians. It was open season then for politicians, public figures and, yes, the media.

There was Sen. Sam Brownbeck of Kansas having a high old time joking about “Two Huangs don’t make a right.” There was Ross Perot saying, “So far, we haven’t found an American name” among the suspects and asking his audience if it wouldn’t “rather have someone named O’Reilly instead of Huang.”

Michael Lewis, writing in the New York Times Sunday Magazine, declared “If riding a few Asians out of Washington on a rail helps to generate public support for campaign finance reform, well then, hitch up the ponies, giddyap!”

The National Review ran a cover of the Clintons and Vice President Gore with slanted eyes and buck teeth. You can find all this and more in a complaint filed with the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights by alarmed Asian Americans protesting stereotyping and bashing.

When the Wen Ho Lee case came along, the focus on Asian Americans as a suspect category returned. If you were a scientist and an Asian, you probably were secretly loyal to China. You weren’t a “real” American, after all, with a name like O’Reilly.

And now with the spy plane incident, it’s here again. A San Francisco Bay area disc jockey yuks it up and calls it a “fry over.” The cartoonist Pat Oliphant has a Chinese waiter dumping noodles on Uncle Sam and shouting “Apologize Lotten Amellican!” Some Midwestern radio personality tells listeners to boycott Chinese restaurants.

It’s not funny, and Asian Americans are wondering why over and over again this stuff gets said, gets published, gets broadcast and nobody else seems offended. That accounts for the sense of betrayal. You can think of the Capitol Steps skit as the last straw.

As it happens, there’s a third lesson. It comes from Ying Chan, a former prize-winning reporter for the New York Daily News and now director of the graduate journalism program at the University of Hong Kong. After the ASNE convention, Ying sent me an e-mail that I wish every young Asian American journalist would take to heart. As you can see, she’s angry, but so what? This has made a lot of good journalists angry. Hear what she says:

“See, by becoming journalists, we have chosen our battleground which is to deliver the best stories to our readers or viewers. We have to do our job no matter what. We can’t allow small-minded editors or mean bosses to get into the way of doing the work we love. Our best revenge is getting those damn good stories done in spite of our employers. Our vindication comes from recognition by our peers, not decisions in the courts.”

So let’s get on with it.

Woo, former editor of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, teaches at Stanford University.