It's Hard Out Here for a Pimpin' Korean

Dear Korean,

I have met many Koreans who are originally from Korea, as well as many who were born in the United States. Why does it seem like the Koreans born in the United States are overwhelmingly likely to turn into hard-thuggin' gangsta wannabes, even if they grow up in nice neighborhoods?

Mike

Dear Mike,

Honestly, I met more hard-thuggin' gangsta wannabe white kids from nice neighborhoods than Koreans. But yes, I do agree that proportionally, there is a greater proportion of KA kids who thug out KP ("Korean Pride.") Why is that?

The currently going theory starts from the fact that one way for the mainstream society to weaken the minorities is to depict them as strange and dumb, or--to combine strange and dumb together--feminine. This phenomenon happened consistently with each of the minority races in the U.S. If you look at the Jim Crow arts from the early 20th century, you would notice that denigrating depiction of a black woman is pretty rare. Women are not really denigrated because, well, they're really never a threat. (So Rosa Parks was doubly upsetting to the racists. She's awesome.)

It's a very curious phenomenon that occurs even to this day: it's always, ALWAYS a minority woman who becomes the first one to appear in mainstream TV shows or movies. (Unfortunately, the first Korean woman was Margaret Cho. Not that I don't like her, but it would have been nicer if it were Yunjin Kim.) The Korean's favorite example: the "yellow" Power Ranger from 1994.

Of course black folks are the ones who had to endure this shit for the longest, so they were the first to come up with the solution to this: ridiculously crazy overcompensation! So they grab their biggest guns and their overrated testicles to show the world "we got some black MEN here, crackas!!" All the black rappers' lines about being killahs, soldiers, wariers, or backhand-slappin' pimps are basically this. And they made a fortune out of it! Black people are great.

What KAs (and all Asian American males, for that matter) suffer through is not all that different. Name me one, just fucking ONE unquestionably manly Asian actor that would make you go "damn, that's a real man who throws it DOWN and gets ALL the bitches!" (Note: as much as I love them, martial artists don't count. They really fall into that "strange" category among the strange, the dumb, or the feminine. This might have changed if Bruce Lee lived longer. What a tragedy.) As a Korean man, all you ever are on TV is some castrated male while your women are snapped up by honkies. Wouldn't that make you want to scream "thug life!" and empty the clip? Don't be lookin' fo' me, the Korean is out to get some guns. (Or a machine gun-firing sentry robot. See the post below.)

Got a question or comment for the Korean? Ask away at askakorean@hotmail.com.