Andrew Yang Reaches Out to the New Saturday Night Live Cast Member Who Called Him a Racial Slur – Slate, Slate.com

          Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang has been more attuned to the changes inSaturday Night Live‘s cast than any political campaign in history, at first for a good reason and then for a terrible one. The good reason has to do with Asians overcoming white supremacy: The Democratic party has not historically done a great job of promoting Asian-American politicians — Yang is the first Asian-American man to run for president as a Democrat — and similarly,Saturday Night Livehasnot historically done a great jobof promoting Asian-American performers. So whenNBC announced that comedian Bowen Yang was moving from the writing staff to the castit was natural for one pioneer to salute the other:         

          Awwww! Much less heartwarming, however, was the news that one of NBC’s other new hires, comedian Shane Gillis, hada history of using anti- Asian racial slurs. And least heartwarming of all, from Andrew Yang’s perspective, wasthe news that Gillis had specifically referred to Andrew Yang, personally, as a “Jew chink” in a May 2019 podcast episode. Yang wasn’t impressed bythe non-apology Gillis offered on Twitter,and said so, tweeting at Gillis that he was willing to “sit down and talk,” perhaps in response to Gillis’ offer to “apologize to anyone who’s actually offended by anything I’ve said.”         

          Later, Yang clarified that he didn’t think Gillis should be fired fromSaturday Night Live, writing that “we would benefit from being more forgiving rather than punitive.”         

          It’s clear, however, that Gillis ’dismissive reference to“ anyone who’s actually offended ”includes Yang, and for good reason. The candidate wrote about his experiences with anti-Asian racism inThe War on Normal People, crediting his instinct to root for underdogs to the classmates who hurled racial slurs at him in middle school:         

          

I was one of the only Asians in my local public school. That didn’t go unnoticed. Classmates offered frequent reminders as to my identity:

“What’s up, chink.”

…

“Hey, Yang, what’s it like having such a small dick? Everyone knows Chinese guys have small dicks. Do you need tweezers to masturbate? ”

Most of this was in middle school. I had a few natural responses: I became quite self-conscious. I started wondering if I did indeed have a small dick. Last, I became very, very angry.

Perhaps as a result, I’ve always taken pride in relating to the underdog or little guy or gal. As I grew up, I tried to stick up for whoever seemed excluded or marginalized. I became a Mets fan. I’d go to a party and find the person who seemed the most alone or uncomfortable and strike up a conversation. I worked out a little too much in college.

        

          What’s striking here, besides the lifelong psychological consequences white supremacy inflicts on people of color, is a matter of chronology.The War on Normal Peoplewas published in the spring of 2018, and Yang, who graduated from Exeter in 1992, would have been in middle school from about 1985 to 1988. And yet in the winterof 2018,Louis CK was “pushing boundaries”by telling the same jokes bullies tormented Andrew Yang with during the Reagan administration. Worse still, it appears that when Shane Gillis “pushed boundaries” in May of this year by “referring to Andrew Yang, specifically, with an anti-Asian racial slur,” he was actually easily crossing a boundary that some anonymous middle-schooler had pushed decades ago. So either this country has a lot more boundary-pushing comedy geniuses running around than anyone suspected, or racist jokes aren’t quite as brave or original as the people who tell them keep insisting. NBC hasn’t commented on the controversy, so we may all be able to make up our own minds about Gillis on Sept. 28, whenSaturday Night Livereturns with more of theavant-garde, boundary-pushing comedythe show is famous for.