Have you ever experienced racial discrimination? “Discrimination” is a strong word but racist jokes, racist gestures are also considered a form of racial discrimination. There was a tweet made by an Asian American, Michael Luo,  “Asian Americans, tweet at me your own racist encounters and I’ll try to collect them. Hashtag it like I did #thisis2016” and started a new trend.

 

It’s amazing how many Asian Americans in America are experiencing some kind of racial harassment. Here is an example of a tweet that was hashtagged with #thisis2016. “Being Asian means putting up with ‘acceptable’ racism in America. I experience an incident a week.” - @hipguide

 

The trend has even hit UME. As an Asian American, I can relate to this tweet. I had planned on interviewing my classmates, who make Asian jokes almost everyday, but I was not able to continue the interview because the students were not taking the topic seriously. But when asked the first question, “Why do you make racist jokes against Asian Americans?”  some said, they “don’t know why” and some said, “Because it is funny.”

 

The thing about racial harassment is that it doesn't matter if you did it to be funny or maybe to be “friendly,” if you say something that could be offensive to someone, it is not right and it is verbal abuse.

 

One Mountainview college professor said, “Racist jokes are not okay even if the person hearing the jokes say it is. You don’t know how it feels unless you are the race that is getting made fun of. You don’t know if they are keeping all their emotions hidden. It is never a good idea to make racial comments whatsoever.”

 

Making jokes about someone’s race may be fun, but it can also hurt people. In today’s world comments on race is are very sensitive and if you say something wrong you can really affect the person’s feelings and emotions. 10/31/16