On the 14th of February 2021, a Tiktok was posted by a player on the N.E.C. women’s soccer team which quickly became a hot topic of conversation among students. The video itself documented the student and her boyfriend sitting down to a restaurant-style Valentine’s Day meal, served to them by the student’s two teammates. The video would be nothing other than a heart-warming depiction of a young couple having a nice meal despite the constrictions of the COVID-19 pandemic…if it had not been for all the racist parts.
In the Tiktok, the poster’s two teammates can be seen wearing a bathrobe and a floral kimono, respectively, both with their hair in tight buns. At the very start of video, the girl in the bathrobe says to the camera “Welcome to Kung Pao Pow-Wow,” as if to welcome the viewer into their warped version of a Chinese food restaurant.
After the poster and her boyfriend are seated at the table, a handwritten menu is placed in front of them listing the food options. Although this menu can only be seen for a fraction of a second in the video it is clear when paused that it is written in a way that is meant to mimic the stereotypical Asian accent. The last line of the menu, written in bold highlighted letters reads as such:
“Tank yew, peas come back in 15 minutes for pork fried wice.”
As the video goes on we see the poster and her boyfriend indulging in their meal while also experiencing what the poster captioned as “dinner and a show.” The show in question is the two teammates engaging in what a more generous person might call a dance, but might more accurately be called a minstrel show. The two teammates, still clad in their bath-wear perform a series of out-of-sync movements one could venture to guess are very loosely inspired by Asian martial arts as well as the study of tai-chi.
Finally, after a painful fifty seconds, the video concludes with the poster and her beau eating a lovely dessert consisting of chocolate-covered strawberries, decorated to spell out the word “Love.”
To be clear, this video is not racist because the poster and her friends decided to enjoy some Chinese food and Valentine’s Day while documenting the experience. This video is racist because a group of white individuals thought it would be entertaining to construct a half-assed mockery of what they perceive a Chinese Restaurant to be like, and then to go further, two of these individuals decided to costume themselves in half-assed costumes and then make a mock of Chinese people and Chinese culture. If this video is any representation of the beliefs of these individuals, anyone with sense can guess that they believe Asian people are nothing more than bumbling idiots who wear silly outfits and serve fried rice.
This video posted is comparable to a number of other incidents that have occurred on college campuses compiled in this New York Times article, including the “Straight Outta Compton” black face party that was held at Georgia State in 2004, as well as more recent incidents, such as the group of students who decided to dress like gang members at the California Polytechnic University in 2018, and the student from the University of Arkansas who posted a selfie in black face to his Snapchat story with the caption “I hope this offends someone.”
It goes without saying that this video is hurtful, especially to the Asian American students who have to exist on campus with these individuals. It also goes without stating the harm a video like this can cause to the greater community, especially during this pandemic when Asian Americans already face a new wave COVID related racism.
Although at this point the video has been removed from Tiktok, any further statement about the video has yet to be made by school officials or the creators themselves.
Pack it up… You all are so dramatic. Get a hobby. If you don’t like what other people are posting then simply don’t follow them. The person that is in the wrong was the girl Lila Leah whatever her name is. Clearly she is not happy with her life and need to search for a tik tok and make it something that it wasn’t. You just are simply not getting attention in other areas of your life so you have to bring down other people… Who I bet you don’t even know. You made a huge issue that impacted other peoples lives so you could feel powerful on an opinion that no one asked for in the first place.
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OMG. Why do people want people to be racist so bad? I am more concerned about the other student athletes who threatened the school on twitter last week. Where is that article?
I would be interested in knowing why the athlete was allowed to be on campus and participating in the women’s hockey game on Friday. Sounds like there is no discipline or actions being taken by the NEC Athletic Director or NEC Student of Discipline and President Perkins for something so serious, in this day and age.
Taking into consideration, there was a shooting on campus last February around the same time as this threat.
Pretty unnerving to say the least.
As someone who coached at NEC. The Athletic Director nor the Head Coach will do shit. The girls would leave the school if they where punished. Then the President of NEC would get fucking pissed at the AD and Head Coach because they would lose the revenue from the girls tuition. Coaches are told to keep an absurd amount of players on their rosters for that exact reason.
That student who tweeted did receive punishments and apologized to everyone they have been in contact with and the majority of the student body knows this. The school does not need to provide every detail of punishment about every case. This article was published because the student body did not receive any sort of apology until after this article was published. Also, trying to connect the tweet about Covid-19 to a shooting that did not happen on campus last year is a stretch and you are just trying to insult the school. As someone who was there, the shooting happened in Henniker, not on the NEC campus.
I would like to know why people are so childish to bring up an issue that is not involved with the main purpose of this original article. Since you are so curious the person who posted that tweet weeks ago has indeed face punishment both from the athletics department, school, and is still facing consequences. So before you want to go comment on an issue why don’t you get your facts right. The person involved is a genuine person who is deeply sorry they offended anyone by the tweet, they just wanted to shed some light on a rough time. Now if you have any other issues, suck on a toe.
[…] N.E.C. Athletes Post Insensitive Tiktok on Valentine’s Day […]
This is both racist and bigoted and I wish the school wpuld do more than just letting these athletes give a sad attempt at an anonymous apology.
This is the most ridiculous article I have ever read. A simple dinner. Seems like these college students who have been offended have had too much time on their hands. I think there are lots of things to be discussed on campus other than ridiculous like such as this….
Imagine commenting and saying people who use alias’s are cowards WHILE USING AN ALIAS. Must be hard to be that stupid.
Chinese isn’t a race. Stop muddying the definitions of words. Was the video bigoted? Yes. Racist? No. Slapping the label of “racism” on anything involving bigotry cheapens the meaning of the word.
I might take this comment more seriously if you weren’t out here pretending to be the unibomber online
Han Chinese IS an ethnicity and represents around 90% of the population of China, and nearly 100% of all the first generation Asian immigrants speaking “Engrish” like the girls in the video and running Chinese food restaurants.
The line between Nationalism and racism is so fine as to be transparent, Ted.
Yeah that’s a racist from me dawg