Floyd Mayweather’s post on Twitter on Feb. 13 sparked plenty of outrage. He tweeted, “Lin is a good player but all the hype is because he’s Asian. Black players do what he does every night and don’t get the same praise.” He faced instantaneous backlash with this remark for its racist undertones. As if Mayweather’s comment was not enough, K-Pop singer/song-writer Jenny Hyun’s series of tweets will be sure to make things even worse. Hyun took to her Twitter on Feb. 16 in retaliation, unleashing insults far worse that what Mayweather had initially written.
Calling Floyd a “subhuman, ungrateful APE,” Hyun tweeted 19 times with racist comments that included: “we don’t know what it’s like with them not here. But imagine a world with NO BLACK PEOPLE. All the tension in every aspect of life would be drastically improved without them around. And ONLY them,” “Eradication of one toxic family is exactly what this world needs,” “Floyd Mayweather disrespecting Jeremy Lin because he’s Asian? Dude, come back when your people learn how to be human,” “Your culture is DISGUSTING, your people are equally as DISGUSTING. Disrespectful, violent, arrogant, stupid…” and “The only way black people are able to advance in any way is through white people. It reminds me of a little something called SLAVERY.”
Pro boxer Floyd Mayweather’s incendiary remarks about Lin appeared to enrage K-Pop song writer Jenny Hyun. | Kwesi Ampofo/The Minaret
Hyun also went on to compare the African American race to “CANCER” and “AIDS,” while also claiming that Whitney Houston’s death wasn’t “much of a loss.” She then asked, “Is it even worth listening to such a beautiful voice if it also comes with ALL THAT BAGGAGE.”
After several fans of Hyun tweeted her to stop, she posted an apology on her blog, though there was little actual apologizing to be seen. “I do not regret what I said, however, I now understand that there are some lines one cannot cross,” Hyun wrote. She then posted a meme on her blog that said, “I REGRET NOTHING.” She later removed the apology from her blog and tweeted, “I Love KFC #YaHeard,” and “This is not Black America, THIS IS ASIA AMERICA.”
Mayweather’s tweet insulted me upon first read. As an Asian-American, I was offended at Mayweather’s assumption that the only reason Lin received so much media attention and praise was purely because he is of Chinese and Taiwanese decent. It is bigoted and stereotypical to say that black people are better at basketball and that the only reason Lin received praise was because he is Asian. That would be the same as if someone claimed that an African-American who received praise for his or her work in mathematics only received that praise due to their race, since after all, Asians are supposed to be great at math. Promoting stereotypes like these only continue to promote racism.
Despite all the controversy that Mayweather’s tweet prompted, Hyun’s comments were far more insulting and degrading. Now I understand Hyun’s outrage at Mayweather’s tweet but attacking all black people in response to it was racist and quite frankly, ignorant. Mayweather made the comment. He did not speak for every single black person and no one asked him to. If Hyun did not like what he said, then she should have just directed her criticisms, which is putting it kindly, toward Mayweather. Not his race. Her tweets imply a much deeper and personal issue with the entire race.
Even if Hyun honestly felts that way, to compare African-Americans to cancer and AIDS and then to say that they can only advance through the help of “white people” is so terribly ignorant and racist that I am stunned. Her tweets were “DISGUSTING. Disrespectful, violent, arrogant” and of course, “stupid,” to use Hyun’s own words when attacking “black people.”
As a Japanese-American, I am offended by Hyun’s comment that this is an “ASIA[sic] AMERICA” and “not Black America.” The America I grew up in does not belong to Asia nor Africa nor any other continent or race. I am proud of my Asian heritage but would not use it to declare my own superiority over any other race. It’s 2012. We don’t have “SLAVERY,” and I believe the Civil Rights Movement brought about equal rights for all races. Maybe Hyun didn’t get that memo.
Hyun was insulted by Mayweather’s tweet but rather than responding in a reasonable manner to defend all Asians and fight against racism, she merely did what Mayweather had done but took it one step further with her overt hatred and bigotry. Neither Asians nor anyone else gained anything from these remarks.
We can’t fight racism with racism. Actions such as these will only hold us back in a country that is still fighting for equal opportunity for all.
Jessica Keesee can be reached at jessica.keesee@spartans.ut.edu.
Editor’s Note: At the time this article went to print, Jenny Hyun’s blog had posted that she has been admitted to the hospital and is “a paranoid schizophrenic and has been battling mental illness.” Most feedback is currently skeptical, with online comments on various websites contending that this is a poor publicity ploy to backpedal from her incendiary remarks.
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Late to the party, but I think people are failing to see some of the truth in what Mayweather said, or are very naive about about our media operates.
Let’s use another example. Are there Nascar drivers who have a better record than Danika that you’ve never heard of? The answer is yes. Then why does Danika get so much press? Because she’s a woman. So using the same logic that people are using here, if a guy was to say Danika is receiving the amount of press she’s getting because the media is fascinated by a woman holding her own in a sport primarily dominated by men, they would then be sexist. Maybe I’m simply being out of touch, but I don’t think so. In factI can remember when the initail interest in Tiger Woods wasn’t the fact that he was good, it was because he was a Black guy in a primarily white dominated sport. It wasn’t until later people started to realize that he was the real deal. This is the way media operates. They look for an angle, and race is definitely an angle they use. Btw. I’m surprised nobody seemed to find an article entitled “The Chink in the Armor” to be racist while in the haste to chastise Mayweather.
Okay, lets all try to be racists ! Koreans look more like African monkeys, they are short, they have flat noses, they Kpop male singers wear lipstick , they hate they yellow face , 95 percent of them get cosmatic surgery , they even get their forehead cosmaticaaly to look round, and cheek bones and jaw lines altered. They women wear high heals 24/7, and they copy black hip hop music cause they lack creativity. Now, how do I sound like, and to the idiots , who belive everything I write can be justified must get their brains xrayed and their dicks cut off. Guys think how retarded i sound like but but like her, i can justify it, asking the western teachers , yes white Americans, Canadians and new zelanders and even the white american solders , if what i say is wrong, can they too speak the truth !
>It is bigoted and stereotypical to say that black people are better at basketball and that the only reason Lin received praise was because he is Asian.
Where did you come up with that? Biased reading between the lines?
“Jeremy Lin is a good player but all the hype is because he’s Asian. Black players do what he does every night and don’t get the same praise,” Mayweather wrote on his Twitter account on Monday afternoon.
Where is the “better” part of it? Is the problem his use of the word “good”?
So Mayweather has an axe to grind and couldn’t bring himself to heap praise on Lin, but he never said what you claim he did.
But wait, on the other hand, are you suggesting there are no black players as good as Lin?
Obviously he was wrong to say what he did say, but you shouldn’t be putting words in people’s mouths that may give some rationalization of Jenny Hyun’s
choice of career suicide. And if Mayweather actuallyhad said what you attribute to him, his career could be much worse off than it is now.
btw phd is another asian racist.
Wow, did this idiot not realize that we, the NBA, the country, and the world at large had to the moral high-ground here? Mayweather was being inundated with condemnation from sports people, the entertainment industry, and all thinking people of the world including huge swathes of the U.S. We, as a people and as a world, were uniting in stomping out as much of the specter of racism here in attempts to usher in a bright new day.
Now, because of this guy’s tweets we can go ahead and lose some of that high-ground and the racism can continue a little bit stronger. He doesn’t realize that his attitude is alike to Mayweather’s and him being Asian allows us to look a little worse and pushes more racism to continue a little longer. The fools of the world today need to stop with the prideful ignorance we have been told to enjoy over the past few decades and have at least a little humility to stop and think about what they do. Good luck to us all.
actually this land of so called america was and is firstly populated and owned by the asians! They were here long before your great, great ancestors! And these asians today are a part of the recent and distant asian ancestors of then and now, respectively
it was poison and brutal anglo-caucasoid hate, violence that has destroyed this precious in which you stand and breathe on.