If anyone knows, CARLOS KNOWS!

“Middle Eastern people you guys are upset, that’s cool. Complain to white people though. They are going to sympathize with you. Yeah, not us Blacks and beaners though, leave us alone. We are the last people you want to bring that too.
‘But you don’t understand they are looking at me funny because of the way I look. Racial profiling!’ said in a “Middle Eastern” accent.
Welcome to the club Mohammed!”

This exert was taken from a stand up comedy special by the controversial Carlos Mencia, a Honduran-American comedian. In the special, Mencia takes on the topic of race and racism in a post 9/11 world. In his in-your-face, apologize for nothing manner, Mencia strikes an interesting point.

“And you see everyone got picked on, everyone had a good time. But no. This is what people are afraid of; us enjoying making fun of each other… we go too far with this stuff. We go too far with political correctness… but apparently it’s not ok to have a sense of humor. No, that’s not cool. Because instead of uniting America we want to separate each other because Mexicans eat tacos and white people eat beef stroganoff and black people each fried chicken.
‘That makes us different,’ said in a satirical tone of voice.
‘No that makes you hungry… You see America is a giant game of tag. first it was the blacks. Then the Mexicans. And now its Middle Eastern people. Eventually, every race is going to be picked on for the stupid shit a handful of people did. But that’s just the way it is.”

This brings me to My Country Versus Me. Mencia would easily attribute what happened to Wen Ho Lee as Asian Americans being used as a scapegoat by mass media and the country as a whole. Top secret information was leaked to Chinese officials, who would do such a thing? A Chinese man! In the book, Lee goes on to describe how white counterparts, who visited China just as frequently and could have just as likely leaked the information, were free of suspicion. He also goes on to describe how the media proceeded to use tactics so as to convince the public of Lee’s involvement.
And as we have learned in class this year, this is the first time Asians have been used as scapegoats. First there was the Chinese in California during the gold rush which leads to the Chinese exclusion act. Later it is the Japanese and the Gentlemen’s Agreement at the turn of the twentieth century. Then it is Filipinos like Carlos Bulosan. Then back to Japanese after Pearl Harbor. Then Vietnamese during the Vietnam War. Koreans during the Korean War. The list goes on and on. And then who’s going to be next? Will it be North Korea and Kim Jong-il? Or how about China and its poor human rights history in dealing with Tibet and Burma, as is manifested in the protests against the 2008 Beijing Olympics?
Mencia is convinced that this game of tag is a necessary part of society because we are human, and we naturally look for someone to blame when things don’t go our way. But Mencia argues that instead of resulting to violence as in the case of Vincent Chin or Wen Ho Lee, we resolve our issues with comedy. As much as I would want something like this to work, I don’t think that the rest of America would be satisfied with making an Osama Bin Laden or Kim Jong-il joke.