<Begin Segment 65>

AI: Well, so since we were just now starting to talk about the issue of awareness and political awareness and consciousness among audiences and people in different cultures and countries, maybe you could just go ahead and say about --

RS: Right. The story I wanted to tell was one that happened about a year, two years ago. I was away on some lecture someplace and I came back to campus and I was looking at the campus newspaper and there were a series of letters to the editor that were written by Asian American students at the University of Kansas. And they seemed to be divided. And it was over something that happened on campus the day before that. And so, and I didn't know what that instance was. Some were, some of the letters were saying, "I'm insulted, I'm Asian American, I can't believe that I would have to experience this on this campus." And then some of them said, "What's the big deal? I'm Asian American, too." And so I went over to the journalism school, got the back issues to see what happened. What happened was that there was a new Internet program called "Mr. Wong." And Mr. Wong was this yellow-skinned, buck-tooth, slant-eyed, Chinese guy that had a leash on him that connected up to this tall brunette white woman, sort of had him as a mascot. And she would tell all of these very racist jokes about Mr. Wong and, of course, completely confusing Japanese, Chinese, that whole thing again. Well, there were a group of students that were publicizing this Internet show and handing out fortune cookies to students that were walking by. And the fortune cookies had fortunes in 'em that had these racist jokes about Mr. Wong. Okay? And so a lot of the Asian American students caught wind of this and were really upset, but there were also students, Asian American students that said, "What's the big deal? Why don't you guys lighten up? This is funny." And so it was clear that there were two groups.

Well, I was on my way out of town right after that again to go to the Bay Area because "American Diary" was at the San Jose Art Museum. And I had lectures at Cal, with Michael Omi's Introduction to Asian America or whatever. And, and I was lecturing some other places, too, but anyway, I went to Michael Omi's class and I specifically wanted to have lunch with Helen Zia, and Michael Omi and what's her name? California, Ethnic Studies, Elaine Kim. And so we all went out to lunch and I asked them, I told them what had happened with this. And they said, "Well, what happened is the fact that the letters from the students that were not offended by it were from students that are first-generation. They have no cultural history of what these things mean." And then Michael Omi told me, he says, "Do you realize that today in this country, seventy percent of all the Asians were foreign-born?" And he says they come into his class, the one I spoke at, that has 250 students in it, Introduction to Asian American Studies, and he says, "They have no idea of the internment, or anything like that, Asian exclusion laws, nothing." And he said, "By the time the semester is over, they come up and say, 'I wish I never took this class because I feel so lousy about this country and other issues related to that.'" And so that pretty much explained why. He says these, these people come in here pretty well-to-do. They're financially competitive with their white counterparts. In fact, more than competitive in many cases. So they feel in a superior situation. And so their orientation is completely different. And so I thought that was a really telling story about that whole aspect of things. And I found learning that, that it's true, right down the line, that students at the University of Kansas, or I imagine anywhere, doesn't have that kind of history in this country, have a totally different level of tolerance to stereotypes.

MT: So, what about your series "Stereotype & Admonitions"?

RS: Yeah, the "Stereotypes & Admonitions" are sort of a continuation of the paintings that, where I told you I depict myself as a stereotypical Asian person but it goes a little further in that, in that I made a list of stories that I recall in my life where I felt that I was treated unjustly because of who I was. And then that extended into another list of stories of national concern, things like Vincent Chin, a lot of older stories like that, but it's also contemporary enough to include the Representative Coble, the Yao and Ming, Abercrombie & Fitch episodes, the, "Do you speak English," from last summer, that happened to the kids in the ID district, so, still, sort of two ongoing lists of stories are each generating a kind of small painting. They're bigger than the "American Diary," but not too much bigger, and using stereotypes because in just about every incident it had something to do with stereotyping Asian people, although it does go a little beyond that. For example, the Representative Coble painting, I had my daughter, who is chief of staff for Jay Inslee, get a colored photo -- I e-mailed her and said, "Can you get a colored photograph of Representative Coble?" And she says, "Well, you know, we're not in very good stead with Representative Coble at this point." [Laughs] But she did get me this big colored photograph of him. And I did a painting of him in a guard tower dressed up in military uniform with his rifle pointing out like he's protecting all the Japanese Americans in the camp that are below him. So, they're paintings like that. And right now, I think I have about twenty done and my hope is to have maybe another fifteen or so. And the first time I'm going to show them as an individual group will be at Greg Kucera next March, up here. So, we'll see how that goes, but some of them are the stories that I've told you in this interview, like Aunt Fran and South Carolina, and episodes like that, that's -- cutting the grass around the swimming pool, my high school buddies in Broadmoor, stories like that. So, that's, that's actually what I'm working on right now.

<End Segment 65> - Copyright © 2003 Densho. All Rights Reserved.