A recent article from 8asians.com that I read off the nptech feed pointed out some remarkably insensitive marketing coming from a new German social bookmarking site called Mister Wong. It’s remarkable in this day and age that such obviously stereotyped imagery is happening in Web 2.0 world but apparently, these folks were not in the office when that memo was handed out.
I hope I don’t have to point out here why this is particularly offensive to myself as an Asian American despite their launch in China (with a Chinese support person on the front page). I think the name, the kooky stereotyped imagery and worst of all, the sing-song faux Chinese in the image above all evokes a kind of insensitivity to the way Asians have been portrayed in Western popular culture. They might as well have Mister Wong doing the dry cleaning and running around with a rickshaw. But Allan, one might ask, you’re Filipino American, not Chinese American. Well, I have to say that anti-Chinese racism doesn’t seem to recognize national boundaries in much the same way anti-Arab discrimination doesn’t seem to differentiate between South Asians, Arabs and Sikhs. Your average racist is usually not so mannered as to put a fine point on their target’s national origin.
As for me, I am more than sure that I won’t be putting “nptech” tags on the Mister Wong website until they get rid of the subservient-Asian-as-your-tag-coolie theme.
(5 votes, average: 3.80 out of 5)
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