Asian Fortune Your source for all things Asian American
By Alan Mi
By now everybody has heard it. On a recent “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” show, a 6-year-old boy said that America should “kill everyone in China” as a way to solve the national debt problem. It’s just a joke, right? Kid’s words, right? Not so fast.
Kimmel repeated the kid’s idea of genocide with a chuckle, “Kill everyone in China?!” No one disapproved. Rather, the audience had a good laugh. Another boy suggested to build a wall and Kimmel dismissed that idea. Kimmel then asked, with the voice raised, “Should we allow the Chinese to live?” The boy who suggested killing said “No”. For 13 long seconds, or one-sixth of the whole sketch, Kimmel facilitated the four kids to brainstorm on killing all the Chinese, the if’s, how’s, pros and cons. And Kimmel said the kids “have been wonderful”.
Kimmel got the laughs that he wanted. The brainstorming session was too distasteful and infuriating for Asian Americans. But what’s the most chilling and appalling was his question whether the Chinese are allowed to live. Kimmel dismissed the benign idea of building a wall but acquiesced to the idea of killing off a nation of 1.3 billion people. Kimmel orchestrated all this. ABC approved it to air.
Ethnic genocide is never a joking matter. Such humor can never be justified. A joke about killing people of any ethnicity is deeply hurtful, offensive, and wrong! For one thing, it poisons children’s minds with the sneaky message that killing people is okay.
Killing the Chinese? Twenty-three million ethnic Chinese were slaughtered during WWII. That’s about the number of Americans who catch a flight to head for home during the Thanksgiving week. Could anybody fathom the historical atrocity that so many innocent civilians were simply just butchered? Any mention of killing the Chinese by an adult would be guaranteed to touch a sensitive nerve. If a people suffered massive killing in the past, it is absolutely wrong to joke about killing that people again: not the American Indians, not the Armenians, not the Jews, and surely not the Chinese. Anybody who finds Kimmel’s genocide joke funny actually gets the laughs at the cost of Asian Americans’ agonies.
Kimmel’s racism wears many layers of camouflage and has unfortunately earned undeserved sympathies. The show is actually not a live show, unlike what the name suggests. Kimmel called the sketch “non-scripted”. The words are within the sensitive topic of China and it can go wrong in many ways. Kimmel had picked the topic. Many people mix up “non-scripted” with “random”. And people tend to mix Chinese people and Chinese government together. They are kid’s words, right? Wrong. No sooner than the sketch was aired, kids’ words became the message of the adult. Kimmel manipulated the kids to instigate violence, race-disparaging attitude, and hatred against Asians.
Kimmel’s offense is egregious. Simply removing Kid’s Table sketch is far from enough. Kimmel’s judgement has a racism problem; he can’t be allowed on air. This is only a minimum gesture of contrition. ABC executives are responsible for failing to make and enforce a network airing standard that would otherwise prevent from airing the racist sketch.
Watching ABC evening news had been my daily ritual for two decades. I love Diane, George, Charles, not to mention Peter Jennings from whom I learned how to speak English elegantly. I feel an personal betrayal. It’s unfortunate that ABC executives have sunk its brand into a low moral place. How could ABC news criticize anybody of racism any more?!
How many times has ABC’s George Stephanopoulos given advice to the effect that “when there is a political debacle, you’ve got to get ahead of it. ” Well, ABC doesn’t even listen to its own advice.
Alan Mi has lived in Dallas since 1989, when he fled China. He is a software engineer at a large national retailer.
