Fanning the flames of hate

Joe Nguyen, AsiaXpress.com

Feb. 25, 2007

AsianWeek, I love you guys, but what were you thinking?

In the publication’s Feb. 23 issue, self-proclaimed “God of the Universe” Kenneth C. Eng wrote an opinions piece entitled, “Why I Hate Blacks” (The complete article and the Asian American Justice Center's official response). Since then, it has been removed from the website. In the article, he lists a number of reasons to discriminate against the entire race.

“Blacks hate us,” Eng says in the piece. “Every Asian who has ever come across them knows that they take almost every opportunity to hurl racist remarks at us.”

Photo courtesy of dnapress.com Kenneth C. Eng, shown in this photo, stirred controversy when he wrote an opinions piece entitled, "Why I Hate Blacks" in the Feb. 23 issue of AsianWeek.

And that was the tame one.

Maybe it’s just me, but I don’t think starting a discrimination war against another race is going to solve any problems. I understand fighting fire with fire, but this is like fighting fire with gasoline.

I have to question the AsianWeek editors’ decision to run the story. First, the piece generalizes the entire black population. How often have we, as Asians, faced that same issue? I think the cartoon “King of the Hill” showed this best when Kahn moves into the neighborhood and Hank asks him, “So are you Chinese or Japanese?” When Kahn says he’s Laotian, Hank asks him the question again.

Second, I could not find any journalistic merit to Eng’s writing. I know it’s an opinions piece, but there are some rules that apply across the board. One is doing research before writing anything. He has nothing to support his claims aside from his own personal experiences.

Third, he’s not a good writer when it comes to writing columns. I haven’t read any of his books, but if he was published when he was 20, I’m sure he has some talent – just not in journalism. In one part, he argues that “blacks are weak-willed” because they were enslaved for 300 years while inferring that Asians are superior because they “slaughtered the Russians in the Japanese-Russo war.” How are these equal comparisons? Being enslaved is not an option. Just ask the 200,000 women who were used as sex slaves for the Japanese during World War II.

Finally – and this is the most important part – it’s blatantly racist. The whole article is a cry for Asians to stand up and discriminate blacks. I mean the piece begins with, “Here is a list of reasons why we should discriminate against blacks.”

If that doesn’t signal a warning flag, I don’t know what does.

Joe Nguyen is the editor in chief for AsiaXpress.com. Joe can be reached at joe@asiaxpress.com.