'Just a Joke' and Other Lies We Tell Ourselves and POC

J is For Just a Joke

It's early 2020 and we are all in denial of Covid-19. It's a disease of the ‘Far East’, as far as we (the rest of the world outside of China) are concerned. Sad, sure, but not our problem. This mentality is very Western and privileged at heart- that if it isn't affecting me and those around me then it's not my problem - and I'm ashamed I fall prey to it myself. I am low-key worried, but very low-key.

I have no idea, like my peers who continue to socially adhere to each other in packed spaces, the chaos and racial hate that would follow. But I get a taste of it one night at my favourite bar just before lockdown is announced in South Africa. While enjoying my time, minding my own business, some guy approaches me. Who knows what his intentions are- to get my attention or to irritate someone. But for some reason he decides to go up to a random Asian-looking woman (me) and say into her ear above the music, 'You look like you have Covid'.

The 'bat fried rice' Lululemon t-shirt that caused an outcry circa 2020

I am frozen, in shock. I just stare at him until he becomes uncomfortable and walks away, not getting the response he expected (a laugh, maybe?). Later my friend asks me why I seem upset and I tell her. She proceeds to find the guy and v̶i̶o̶l̶e̶n̶t̶l̶y̶ ̶t̶h̶r̶e̶a̶t̶e̶n̶ ̶h̶i̶m̶ ̶ give him a piece of her mind. Lovely of her, really, but I was less optimistic of the impact any sort of a talking-to would have. I knew what to expect. Sure enough he came up to me again and 'apologized'.

'It was just a joke', he said. 'No harm meant'.

Ah, the golden phrase of unaccountability.

The get-out-of-problematic-behaviour-guilt-free card.

'I have black friends' best friend.

I've had many instances of this behaviour in public spaces. Sometimes I don't even notice them, other people point it out (it's very much like drowning out the unwanted attention you get as a woman in any social setting; a defence mechanism). I've had grown, educated men in respected establishments point at me and pull slanted eyes at me in public, mocking me just for having the audacity to be there. For the most part I have chosen to take the high road, but when friends become irate and choose to educate people I let them go for it. The truth is that the response is always the same and not worth worsening my evening: calm down, it was just a joke. I've heard it so much, it's become a joke.

YELLOW FACE

Western media is largely to blame for this. The belittlement of and bemusement at the expense of East Asian people and culture is deeply entrenched in cinema and theater. This means it's been made normalized. From the 'fook mi' and 'fook yu' twins in Austin Powers: Goldmember, to the sneaky and evil Siamese cats of Disney's Aristocats, to 'me love you long time' of 1987's Full Metal Jacket. Where and why did this begin?

Much like the caricature of black people through 'black face' minstrelsy, East Asian people were made fun of and villianized at large by white actors with 'yellow face'. The first instance documented was in Voltaire's theatrical show, An Orphan of China (1767). This early depiction of 'Chinese' culture (which it was all whitewashed as, with little space for nuance between cultures hence why I stick to the word 'East Asian' as many people mean this actually when they say 'Asian') has lead to the dramatisation and exotification of East Asian culture which endures still today. This dramatisation is even idolised and romanticised by other people of colour, as well as in fashion.

East Asian people and cultures have been a joke for a very, very long time.

But it wasn't just for entertainment purposes. Minstrelsy and racist messages in Hollywood served a political purpose in indoctrinating the public at large, thereby allowing racist laws and anti-immigrant sentiment to flourish for political manipulation. In fact, these depictions peaked during key moments in Asian-American history: the building of the Transcontinental Railway of America in the 1800s (where Chinese workers were treated as paid slaves with no rights); then once they were done doing the dirty and dangerous work of the railway, the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 was introduced (banning Chinese immigrant labourers for 10 years); the Korean immigrant waves and subsequent banning of all Asian peoples (Oriental Exclusion Act of 1924) that led to an immigration station (where Korean War refugees and other Asian people were detained and excluded); World War II Japanese internment camps (where 120 000 people identified as being of Japanese descent were 'relocated' and incarcerated for four years, some dying from inadequate medical care and some at the hands of guards); and ofcourse the Vietnam war.

A Chinese Railway worker in Nevada somewhere between 1865-1869

'Anti-Asian sentiments' are connected to the strong anti-China rhetoric held by many American politicians and are worsened by negative political histories (such as with Japan) as well as racist political portrayals and commentary of the leader of North Korea, Kim Jung-Un. This is just the history of legal and social discrimination as well as violence towards Asian people in America we're talking about.

RACISM WITH GOOD INTENTIONS

Fast forward back to 2020, where for the first time since the 1918 'Spanish influenza' , a pandemic became geographically referred to. The term 'China virus' spread just as fast as Covid across international broadcasting and news outlets, being favoured over its official name. This irresponsible and deeply entrenched example of 'acceptable' racism became public and then resulted in anti-Asian rhetoric being widely spewed. Far from being 'just a joke', this ended in hate crimes across the world. The most notorious hate crime occurred in Atlanta where a 21 year old man shot and killed 6 Asian women at 3 different spas in the area.

But even in the reporting of these crimes, racism against East Asians wasn't even validated for what it was, preferring to operate under the guise of the incredibly vague, broad and less serious 'Asian hate' or 'Anti-Asian sentiment'. Even now, the concept of racism toward Asian people is highly debatable to other people of colour. Some still argue about the validation of Asians as POC at all because they are light-skinned (that is another topic for another chapter). Instead hate crimes are called 'Anti-Asian violence'. It's seen more as xenophobia and anti-immigrant sentiment. To be sure all of this is true - but it is not the exception for East Asian people and doesn't exist exclusively from racism. East Asian people are just exceptionally 'othered'. Even within POC languages and circles. 

This othering is a facet of 'nice racism', a branch of racism that is being brought to mainstream attention. The way it operates is subtle and publicly acceptable. It tells us some racism is more valid or acceptable than others. For example it enables the phrase 'just a joke' to thrive. Racism is a serious offence- hate is not as bad, it's an opinion therefore anything that springs from it in humorous form can be labelled 'just a joke'.

Back in 2021 I did a reel addressing 'nice racism'. So many people connected with this term and since then it has been coined by Robin Diangelo in her 2021 book on the subject. Yes, a whole book can be dedicated to this concept. I can't recall if it came to me or if I'd heard it without it registering consciously before. I like to think that this is an example of collective consciousness at work... Since then, the concept has taken off and more and more of us have woken up to this mechanism of 'othering'. But in 2025, it is still very much practiced and accepted.

CHINESE EYES

The other day I was in a waiting room with my daughter in the hospital. My daughter is mixed race- from my side she is Taiwanese-European descent, from her father's side she is a coloured South African (I will dedicate an essay to the concept of coloured as a racial category in South Africa in C is for Coloured and link it when it is live). She looks like me as a child I like to fancy, but she has her father's skintone. Because of this I wondered how the world would receive her. Would the shape of her eyes or her skin define her? I thought it would be many years until this question was answered but at barely 2 years old the answer was given. And I should not have been surprised, given my own experience as an Asian presenting person in post-Apartheid South Africa.

If something racist happens, but the intention is 'pure', does that make it any less harmful to the recipient?

As I was scrolling through my phone, a man in the waiting room interacted with Aya. I was paying attention, but not interacting with them. He asked for a high five, she gave him one willingly, and then he asked her, 'Are you Chinese? You have Chinese eyes'. He then pulled his eyes back, mocking her eye shape. To my horror, she tried to mimic it. My heart sank. In one moment, I knew this was the beginning of a long journey toward acceptance for her. Just the beginning of a series of micro-aggressions she would have to navigate with family, friends, at school and in her career one day. Not that similar things hadn't happened already, with her receiving comments like 'She has Chinese eyes' as a newborn (like, yes, she has an Asian mother thanks for pointing that out). But at this age, where she is extremely impressionable, beginning to understand words and actions and where her experiences are likely to shape her idea of herself and her place in the world, it is an incredibly stressful occurrence.

What could I say to this man, in this case, without the de facto response that he was 'just joking'? Infact, when I shared this with other people their reply was what I would expect from him as well. To shrug off my horror and say, 'it happens, he was just joking, he doesn't mean it negatively'.

There we hit the crux of the matter. Why nice racism is so prevalent and so difficult to address. Firstly, what can we say when we know the response will be to be shrugged off? Secondly, it confronts the question of intention. How can we embarrass and make someone uncomfortable by calling them out if they don't know any better and didn't intend to offend anyone? To that I ask the reader: If something racist happens, but the intention is 'pure', does that make it any less harmful to the recipient?

Growing up, the 'psuedo' racist language used towards Asians seemed innocuous but in hindsight it’s this very perception which has allowed it to grow into full blown ‘anti-Asian sentiment’. A term that is just a nice way of undermining the racism of even being validated as what it is. The Coronavirus pandemic awakened an awareness in the larger collective consciousness of this double standard in racism. But it would be simplistic to rule this as only racism, because its roots also come from anti-immigrant sentiments.

HONORARY WHITES

Asian people have always been seen as outsiders, outside of their ‘homeland’ despite having, like Western peoples, immigrated for almost as long to other countries. They have not been given the greencard to belong anywhere but in Asia especially in South Africa where their first major migration began in their work on the Transvaal gold mines in 1904. At least in America they are validated as citizens with a double barrel identity, but in SA Asians are still seen as immigrants regardless of when they arrived or how they became citizens. The ‘other’ label touches on this non-identity which stems back to Apartheid where confusing laws first deemed Chinese people specifically as non-white (Coloured), and Japanese people as honorary whites . This meant that they were treated differently according to the area they were in, the person and the situation. The end of the story being that they were simply largely ignored, and left out.

This non-validation results in ‘nice racism’ being allowed and allows us to say things that are deeply hurtful and problematic without even thinking twice about it. It’s a unique kind of racism that has been left to flourish unchecked, and unacknowledged, so that it’s so deeply ingrained it’s not even classified as racist. It’s why we're still singing ‘funky Chinaman, from funky Chinatown’ when Carl Douglas' Kungu Fighting plays on the radio, and why you are allowed to repeat it in everyday conversation. It's why when someone who looks like me calls it out, I'm seen as being dramatic or aggressive.

Nice racism is not nice no matter how we sugarcoat it; the simple act of othering someone and refusing to acknowledge it as such enables us to view them as something other than ourselves, therefore dehumanise them. So how do we move past this cop-out phrase, this veil of prejudice, this socially acceptable yet outdated humour of racial caricature? We become aware of the mechanisms that allow it to thrive. We call it what it is. Racism with ‘good intentions' is still racism.

'Alphabet of Othering is a collection of essays tackling the specific prejudices and unique experiences faced by people of colour from my experiences as a biracial, East Asian woman. It explores what it feels like to be a person who often ticks 'other' than black or white although it is not limited to biracial or East Asian people. 'Othering' is a term covering the various ways of excluding POC at large from what is considered the 'norm' therefore from fully belonging in various spaces. ‘Othering’ differs from racism as, although perfected by Western society, it is a form of hate that does not limit itself to whiteness. It is a device of white supremacy that has been ingrained and used by and between POC as well. With this alphabet serving as a guide to learn about and unlearn it, we can all free ourselves from alienation and move toward unity and acceptance.'