I found the Jian Yang entry offensive. Within liberal culture, it's typical to allow offensive stereotypes against Asians, on the basis that it is actually mocking the stereotype, not Asians. But this is inconsistent, since no one would accept this logic if it were applied to Black people or gays.
Are you offended by the definition of Jian Yang, or the actual character in the show? That's like being offended by Wikipedia's entry on the KKK because it accurately describes their position.
Anyway–it's not stereotyping Asians, it's stereotyping Chinese-national engineers in Silicon Valley. That's a pretty specific cultural subset.
> no one would accept this logic if it were applied to Black people or gays.
No? Because comedies have never had characters like Tracy Jordan or Franck Eggelhoffer?
So, just how specific does cultural satire have to get before you won't declare it racism?
I ask, because "Chinese" includes about 56 recognized ethnic groups in mainland China. I don't think we can say whether this character is Han, Zhuang, Hui, or necessarily any specific race that happens to exist primarily within the borders of what we call the nation of China.
Seems to me that character is more making fun of the culture of a nation than of a single ethnic group (or even some set of ethnic groups). If they had a character that made fun of, say, British culture, would that be OK with you? Or only if the character was white? (Which would seem awfully racist to me.)
Or is it only safe to satirize culture if the subject of the satire has ethnic roots in the Caucuses?
Or is it not about ethnicity, but appearance? Is it enough if they merely appear white? Because that opens the comedic landscape far beyond the Caucasus. Can we satirize Mexican culture, provided we limit it to Mexicans of European descent? (Again, how racist is that?)
There are some real battles worth fighting, but this really seems like a cosmetic one to me, no matter how much you think it "smells like racism."
It's like some people have a sense of indignation that's only tuned to detect a few things, and throw any sense of nuance or concept of false-positives out the window.
Tracy Jordan's entire character is not being a Black stereotype, and making fun of the discrepancy between his character and the stereotype. Jian Yang is an Asian stereotype.
The character of Jian Yang is a very specific subset of Chinese nationals, namely those who come to work in a very specific industry in a very small part of Northern California.
That's like being upset about a show with a character poking fun at Americans who teach English in South Korea. (Which, I'm guessing, could provide some pretty good material.)
