Kenneth Eng is a real piece of work. A columnist for the San Francisco weekly AsianWeek — “The Voice of Asian America” — Eng recently penned a column titled “Why I Hate Blacks.” This follows other articles of Eng’s, “Proof That Whites Inherently Hate Us” and “Why I Hate Asians.”
I’m embarrassed to say that Eng is a former NYU student who says he experienced racism after he “expressed my negative views on America, religion and African Americans.” Huh. Among Eng’s reasons for hating African Americans:
— “Blacks hate us. Every Asian who has ever come across them knows that they take almost every opportunity to hurl racist remarks at us.”
— “Contrary to media depictions, I would argue that blacks are weak-willed. They are the only race that has been enslaved for 300 years.”
— “Blacks are easy to coerce. This is proven by the fact that so many of them, including the Rev. Al Sharpton, tend to be Christians.”
Many in the Asian-American community are speaking out against Eng, and against the editorial decision to run this piece in the first place. Others, though, are making comments like “Rather than refute and bury this, we should be calling for a community dialogue to address this.”
Which is an interesting point. Yes, there are festering racial tensions between Asian-Americans and African-Americans, and among other racial groups as well (hello, Do the Right Thing). Yes, it would be valuable to have a productive conversation about these issues, and to flush them out and shine a light on them.
But columns like “Why I Hate Blacks” are not the way to start that conversation. What makes me nervous is that having a townhall discussion in response to hateful screeds lends those screeds a degree of legitimacy, and suggests that these kinds of conversations will only happen after an attention-hungry hate-monger kicks over a hornet’s nest. It justifies outrageously racist actions, from writing columns like this one to holding a Find the Illegal Immigrant hunt.
On the same token, it’s entirely possible to “refute and bury” off-the-wall hatred and still find a way to productively discuss issues of race and racism. I hope that’s what happens here. And in the meantime, I hope Eng is removed from his position and the editorial staff at AsianWeek uses better judgment in the future.
Thanks to Rizzo for the link.
UPDATE: An anonymous WSN source tells me that when Eng went to NYU, he applied for a position at the newspaper. One of his plans was to turn the opinion page into the science section, and run articles about issues like posthumanism, dimensional theory, string theory, and god knows what else. More than a year later, when the editorial staff had changed, he pitched the exact same column idea. The editor-in-chief rejected it, and Eng began making threatening phone calls to the office, calling her a “dumb white bitch.” It got to the point where security had to bar Eng from the building.
And according to his bio, he is the “youngest published sci-fi author in America.” For writing this. And yes, that is a dragon with an uzi.