heres a response from JIN a popular asian rapper. http://www.alljin.com/Audio/Exclusives/jin-tsunami_response.mp3
This guy has a interesting take on this whole incident. It goes beyond just Miss Jones and the Hot 97 crew. He blames it more on the people who operate behind the scenes: the management and owners. It's sort of like a conspiracy theory to him but I agree 100% . Here's the link (quite a long read): http://p076.ezboard.com/fpoliticalpalacefrm57.showMessage?topicID=34.topic
Iused to know a DJ who was disenchanted with the industry and was learning to be a nurse. He said that everything on the radio is carefully scripted beforehand unless you were doing college radio. He'd even have to submit his script to a manager for approval before his show. IF HOT97 operates in a similar manner, it would seem to me to be a deliberate effort by management to get listeners by creating controversy. Perhaps it didn't quite play the way they'd hoped and now they're backtracking. I bet that the DJs and everyone else involved keep their jobs and get back on the radio once it blows over.
The thing that most offended me about the radio broadcast was the use of the word "chink." I find it blatantly racist. There is simply no reason for anyone to use that word. In any case, I find the Hot 97 song to be equivalent of someone writing/playing a song mocking the 9/11 tragedy right after it happened. For DJs who make a living in NYC and probably experienced 9/11 first-hand, I find it especially sad that they actually desired to laugh at the similar (if not worse) tragedy of others. If the tragedy was domestic, this song would never have happened.
Not to mention there were only a few Chinese that died in the tragedy (less than the number of Americans).
I'm out of the US right now and only heard about this last night when I got an email about this. Like everyone else here I'm really sickened by this but the more I think about it the less I'm surprised by it. In this age of pushing the envelope in regards to taste it was only going to be a matter of time before someone tried to capitalize on the tsunami for entertainment value, especially since very few Americans were directly affected by it. IMO this does raise many free speech issues and while I'm totally disgusted by the song and the people who came up with it I'm leery of making an FCC issue of it. As another poster noted free speech is a b**** and the point of free speech is to protect all speech not just speech that we don't find offensive. Since this is a commercial for profit station a better solution IMO would be to hit them where it matters by targetting their advertizers. They're certainly free to broadcast whatever offensive garbage they want but at the same time those of us as the listening public are free to boycott their advertisers to show that we don't approve of them financially supporting HOT 97's garbage. Leave the government out of it and use the freedom of the pocket book to enact change. A similar situation happened in Minnesota a few years ago when a local shock jock was broadcasting offensive comments and skits about the Hmong, an Asian refugee group that's settled in MN, a local coalition of Asian and other groups formed and threatened to boycott advertisers for that station. Sure enough after about a month and repeated refusals by the shock jock to apologize they issued an apology and dropped the offensive skits. As to the animosity between blacks in Asians this isn't something that's new but has been simmering for awhile. During the 70's and 80's Koreans and other Asians started opening stores and buying up property in innercity areas that were predominantly black. Many blacks resented the new immigrants and percieved that there was a systematic economic bias that favored the new immigrants over the people who had lived there before. At the same time Asian immigrants had been long fed stereotypes of African Americans as being lazy, prone to crime, ignorant and violent. These led to several incidents between the two groups in New York and LA including boycotts led by the Nation of Islam and Al Sharpton up to beatings and shootings by both sides. During the Rodney King Riots LA's Korea town was practically under siege and armed Koreans exchanged fire with rioters. Relations have calmed down somewhat sense but tensions are still under the surface. Also in regards to their not being Asian American groups who speak out against racism towards Asians there are a few. The most prominent is the JACL, Japanese American Civil Liberties, who have spoken out on issues like reproations for survivors of the detention camps, Wen Ho Lee and assaults on Vietnamese fishermen in Texas. Its sad this had to happened but it looks like this situation is being resolved quickly with the firing of the DJ's and an apology issued.
The DJ's are not getting fired. They are on vacation (maybe paid) so the whole thing can calm down. This whole incident was created to gardner more ratings for the show, at the expense of an under represented minority group. I now blame the management more than anybody else. This link explains it better: http://p076.ezboard.com/fpoliticalpalacefrm57.showMessage?topicID=34.topic
That's why it seems like just straight up hatred. Using this song to show their hatred toward Asian (in particular Chinese) people. I only heard that this has received much bad publicity in NYC. I wonder what the asian community is doing about this?
Well, that is just about the worst thing I've ever heard next to the wretching sound of a drunk in a stall next to me at the circus when I was 10. Interesting that the writers of the song had no problem using the terms "chink" and "chinamen" but decided to use "Africans" instead of a racial slur for the Somalians that were killed in the tsunami. Really pathetic. I'm glad they lost their jobs.
that response from Jin is a very classy, mature move on his part, i commend him for speaking out and recording a song about this whole incident...
