Boston Marathon Bombing Fallout: Bangladeshi Man Beaten In Bronx For Being An ‘Arab’
ibtimes.comIn an incident that echoes the 9/11 backlash in New York City, a Bangladeshi man was assaulted after the Boston Marathon bombings by four men in the Bronx on the mistaken assumption that he was an Arab.
The New York Post reported that 30-year-old Abdullah Faruque, who was born in Bangladesh but grew up in the Bronx, was having dinner at a Bronx restaurant Monday night when three or four Hispanic men apparently wanted revenge for the Boston Marathon bombings earlier in the day (presumably they had already ascertained that the Boston blasts were perpetrated by Arabs or Muslims).
The paper noted that the four men viciously beat Faruque while shouting “f—king Arab” at the Bengali man as he stepped out of the Applebee’s restaurant on Exterior Avenue in Melrose for a smoke.
“One of the guys asked if I was Arab,” Faruque told the Post. “I just shook my head, said like, ‘Yeah, whatever.’ I didn’t even know that Boston happened because I had a busy day.”
As Faruque, a network engineer, turned to return to his meal, one of the other men said: “Yeah, he’s a f—king Arab,” leading to a brutal pummeling that dislocated Faruque’s left shoulder and left him semiconscious.
“Before I could grab the door, they started swinging at me,” Faruque.
“I’ve been jumped before. If you can’t win, you back up, you try to protect yourself.”
Only after he returned home and learned of the Boston tragedy from the TV news did Faruque understand.
“I saw the news, and then it hits me: That’s why I got jumped,” he said.
The New York Police Department is probing the beating as a hate crime.
People from South Asia, including India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, are sometimes targeted for violence and abuse by people who mistake them for Arabs whenever news of terror attacks emerge in the media.
This situation was particularly dangerous for turbaned Sikhs (who are not Muslims) in the wake of 9,11, leading to at least one murder and innumerable assaults.
Stay safe Asians …and Arabs. Muslims. Everyone.
"Fat for an Asian:" The Pressure to be Naturally Perfect
xojane.comI try not to talk about it, though, because the moment I do, someone always says, “Shut up, you’re Asian. You have genetics on your side.”
Very good read
“While yellowface representations may give us an externalized image to let us know what non-Asian Americans think of Asians and Asian Americans, it is not an Asian American self-representation. 'Yellowface logics,' then, are the logics that assume it is okay for the dominant mainstream to project an image of Asians and Asian Americans that it finds interesting, amusing, demeaning, off-putting, or simply worth projecting. It is the image projected outward for popular consumption, consideration, or discussion--the logic that privileges dominant stereotypes and representations over Asian and Asian American self-representations. The projection of yellowface logics offers up a mask of a people as a definition of the peoples themselves.”
—Kent A. Ono and Vincent N. Pham, Asian Americans and the Media
I just started watching Legend of Korra, and all I can hear and see are the white people voicing all the characters. I hate hate hate when animated productions show so much diversity in their characters but none whatsoever in their voice actors. Like, I can tell immediately whether someone is from an Asian family or not from the subtleties that come with growing up around an Asian language. So it’s disarming to hear the voice of a white person coming out of an Asian face (And I CRINGE every time anyone butchers an Asian word. There was absolutely no attempt to look up how to correctly pronounce yuan, which is constantly in use. Daniel Dae Kim messed it up too, giving it a Korean pronunciation, but at least his Japanese pronunciation is pretty solid. But legit, why weren’t they all given some training on this stuff?).
It just feels like a lesser form of yellowface.
Because 99.9% of the time, Asians and other POC are only allowed to voice characters of their own race, but for whites, it’s a free-for-all. Hell, we’re not even allowed to portray our racist-ass stereotyped representations. In the case of Korra, Daniel Dae Kim (5 episodes) and Dante Basco (3 episodes) are the only Asians on the IMDB page. And Asami’s voice actress Seychelle Gabriel (9 episodes), who is of Mexican, Italian, and French ancestry, is the only other visible POC. Asians are barely even allowed to play themselves in live action roles, but it’s even worse with animated roles.
