Sometimes my brain thinks about things without my permission and goes through whole tangents on subjects I otherwise wouldn’t consider. And so I was thinking about the classic (racist) joke "Me Chinese. Me play joke. Me go pee pee in your Coke." And it’s basically "The Help" with the Chinese man being the protagonist and without the unnecessary addition of the unhelpful white savior woman.
Seriously, she nudged her way into their private spaces, gathered their stories, wrote a book, and made a bunch of money. She profited off the lives and misery of Black women and didn’t even give them any of the money she received in return. She was the worst sort of person.
"But she wrote a great book! Because of her, everyone in town knew that some lady ate a shit pie! How is that not life changing?!?"
And I get it. As a species, humans enjoy the thought of their enemies knowing that they’ve been revenged upon. It’s why a dying old woman was so gleeful as she said "Tell Cersei. I want her to know it was me."
But at the end of the day, what was the result?
Everyone in town knew that one of their members had eaten a fecal pie. And considering the number of people in town, that the pie maker was recently fired by the person before making the "apology" pie; it likely wasn’t too hard to figure out the identity of the pie maker, thus resulting in her having a hard time getting a job in the future. A job she very much needed.
Yeah. That lady was the worst sort of white savior. The kind that didn’t really save anyone. Only profited off the life stories of Black women whose lives were likely adversely affected by the secrets she’d told.
"But those women wanted their stories told! They just couldn’t write it themselves! They were happy to help her succeed in her fabulous life as a young white woman in America! It’s a success story. Like ‘The Blind Side.’"
"The Help" may have been an entertaining story and a great movie due to the cast of fabulous Black women (Octavia Spencer and Viola Davis for example) but at the end of the day it was intended for the white gaze. It’s one of those stories that someone can consume and metaphorically pat themselves on the back afterward. "I’m not as awful as those racists that abuse their maids. Hey, sub-minimum wage serving staff, feel free to use the servant’s toilet. Just make sure you keep it clean. I’m such a good person."
The Chinese man urinating in the rude customer’s Coca-Cola is a better story than "The Help" in that there didn’t need to be a savior figure to step in and make a point that much deserved revenge had happened. The Chinese man had his own autonomy. He made a decision, he carried it out, and he didn’t have to share any of the glory with some mild-mannered observer that made no effort to stop the racism as it happened but only stepped in afterward to make themself feel better.
Him holding his eyes in the inherently racist "squinty eye" gesture while speaking in broken English really got his point across.
White people telling that joke in the 80s thought they were hilarious, because "That Chinese guy was so dumb he peed in the Coke and thought it was okay to serve that to a person. He was so ignorant he didn’t even know better!" When really the joke is "A white guy was racist toward a Chinese person, and the Chinese guy turned it back on him by leaning into the broken English stereotype and playing up the assumption that ‘Asians are foolish’ and got a racist to drink his urine. And he did it in such a way that the guy couldn’t even be mad! Good joke, haha."
~Harper Kingsley
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