AsianWeek regular contributor Kenneth Eng has a bit of a problem. He hates black people — and didn’t mind saying so in a column aptly entitled “Why I Hate Blacks.”
Well, I’m glad he didn’t mince words. Eng, who in another one of his “God of the Universe” columns referred to himself as an “Asian supremacist,” is suffering from a terminal case of ignorance — with complications of bigotry added in there for further misery.
AsianWeek pulled Eng column, but it received a lot of coverage on the blogs, including this story in the San Francisco Chronicle.
Eng’s “reasons” for hating black people include:It’s clear this young man doesn’t know any black people, and quite frankly, I don’t know any who would want to know him, given his narrow, embarrassing world view. Actually, the real problem is that no one on the AsianWeek editorial staff thought that there was anything odd/wrong/ridiculous about publishing something that would so obviously offend so many.— “Blacks hate us. Every Asian who has ever come across them knows that they take almost every opportunity to hurl racist remarks at us.”
— “Contrary to media depictions, I would argue that blacks are weak-willed. They are the only race that has been enslaved for 300 years.”
— “Blacks are easy to coerce. This is proven by the fact that so many of them, including the Rev. Al Sharpton, tend to be Christians.”
…”The hate is based on ignorance and is very similar to the rationales that the KKK uses against African Americans,” said Henry Der, director for 22 years of Chinese for Affirmative Action and the former state administrator for Emeryville’s schools.
“What gives me the greatest concern was AsianWeek’s judgment in printing such a piece out of context,” Der said. “It is so trite and hateful, it doesn’t speak well for the publication.”
Lest you think Eng only has ill will toward black folks, get a load of this column of his from January — Why I hate Asians.
Hat tip, Paul.
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And Debra Saunders is there, with a “What About The White People?” column.
Can I disown him?
Wow. I guess it’s better to be right out front about it. That way we all know where we stand (somewhere below where Kenneth Eng thinks he is…).
I guess he’s still working on his “Why I hate Everyone Who Isn’t Me” article, or maybe he doesn’t need to bother with that anymore. It’s too obvious…
“Why I hate Everyone Who Isn’t Me�
He could have called it “Why I Hate Myself.”
“Contrary to media depictions, I would argue that blacks are weak-willed. They are the only race that has been enslaved for 300 years.�
Boy, does someone need to take a European history class. Just because we call them “serfs” doesn’t mean they weren’t slaves, dude. They were bought and sold by their landlords. So I guess that means that Europeans are weak-willed, too.
Not to mention the Slavs. Why does he think they’re called that?
Yep. Or an etymology class:
Betsy wins.
Yep, that Mr. Eng is a real hotbed of mental health, isn’t he.
I’m by no means an expert, but slavery and other forms of unfree labor (like serfdom) existed in Asia as well. China didn’t actually outlaw slavery until 1910, though the practice fluctuated since China’s large population made slavery less attractive. Slavery was practiced in feudal Japan and in Korea as well.
And yet he retains a European name.
To be absolutely clear, serfs were mostly tied to the land that they worked and were bought and sold as part and parcel of the land sale. Slaves are independent of the land and were bought and sold as chattel property. A landowner could not sell a serf without also selling the land. This is why most landowners prefered to have slaves.
Kenneth Eng is pretty much ridiculous in every way possible. Here is an article about some of his non-race-related forms of ridiculousness, such as writing a science fiction novel entitled Dragons: Lexicon Triumivrate (whatever that means).
OK, I’m an atheist, and even for me, that’s a non-sequitur.I, for one, welcome our new overlord, Eng the Merciless. Hail Eng! Ruler of the Universe!
I don’t remember anything about acting like a fucking moron in The Art of War…
I can’t keep this website straight. Let’s see it’s ok to hate Catholics but not blacks. What about black Catholics? Is it ok to hate them a little?
Late troll is late.
Very late. Geez.
Dragons: Lexicon Triumivrate (whatever that means).
“Snake: Dictionary Threesome”
What’s fucking cool is that one of the dragons is packing an Uzi, a Browning Hipo and, looks like, an AK-47! Plus a sword! And dude, body armor! That’s like all sorts of rad as shit. And the other dragon has some sort of cannon arm! And cyberpunk wings! Man, that cloud-pig they’re fighting is in for a world of hurt!
But… What’s the fucking use of being a god damned dragon if you have to pack heat? When you can BREATHE FIRE, small caliber slug throwers are just trite annoyances.
Plus, for an Asian Supremecist who complains that his fellow Asians are all kowtowing to the White Man it seems odd that his book about dragons would show quite, quite European depictions of the mythical beast on the cover rather than the Chinese-style dragons almost universally depicted in Eastern Asian art.
Right, but do you suppose ‘he has a lot of black friends’? Isn’t that the usual line, after the ‘apology’ or whatever you want to call it?
I can’t keep this website straight.
Keep? Did Pam leave for a while?
Let’s see it’s ok to hate Catholics but not blacks.
I take it “it’s ok to hate Catholics but not blacks” is some sort of video production? Perhaps a stage play? That might be interesting to see.
Ok, so if black people hating on white people is “reverse-racism”, what’s this? Inverse-racism? Double-secret-racism? Hemi-demi-semi-racism?
Inquiring minds etc.
“If I saw an Asian being stereotyped…”
Immediately followed by “whatever happened to the days of the samurai?”
Safe to assume Eng knows kung fu?
What’s even more disturbing than his racism is his sub-par writing style. It’s like they pulled a troll off this site and rewarded him with his own opinion column.
Oh.
My.
God.
That is by far and without a doubt the single worst book title ever (ill-)conceived in the entire history of the written word.
Sarcastro:
Not really. His attack on Asians for kowtowing to white people is actually a thinly-veiled, outwardly-directed attack on himself for not being a white person. It makes perfect sense to me that he’d reject Asian styles in favor of European ones.
Sarcastro:
Nope. It’s obviously an agit-prop musical written by the ACLU’s staff composer.
Oryanna is the kind of person who shows up at the last 15 minutes of the movie and demands to know what s/he missed. If you can’t keep up, just move on.
I’m embarrassed for my cultural heritage, but I suppose I shouldn’t let some bozo Nazi wannabe make me feel that way. It just leaves a sour taste in my mouth, coming just after Chinese New Year, which is a great time to proud of your heritage here in SF.
Reminds of this idiotic column in the Univ. of Washington Daily, way back in the early 90’s–there was this dumb jock who wrote tough guy rants under the banner Asiatic Static. Not as bad as this Eng clown, but it still made me slap my cheeks and do my best Home Alone McCauley Culkin face.
All we needed was an Asian Vox Day.
What about black Catholics? Is it ok to hate them a little?
No, sorry. You’re only allowed to hate blue Presbyterians.
Okay, this is just Ann Coulter time. I think this little asshat is just trying to imitate a wingnut success formula. So many on the Right have lost all moral sensibility and seem to have no wish to get it back as long as someone is paying them for whatever they spew forth.
Since Mr. Eng seems to love the Klan so much, I wonder if he’s checked them out? While they would seem to share many of Mr. Eng’s attitudes, I’m guessing that they would not embrace him…
If I may, I have some guesses about the book cover. I suspect he went with the European depiction by contract. Very few writers design their own cover art. I have a second guess. Very few fantasy stories in Asian based settings are any good, so he described the dragons in has book aloong European lines. Third guess: He’s a talentless hack who put no thought whatsoever into his writing and narrowly associates fantasy with Europe.
Now, why are you guys hating on the title? It rocks. Fantasy novels are supposed to have barely illustrative titles. It got Dragons, a word that just oozes awseomeness! Followed by two, count ‘em TWO five dollar words that I am positive have never been written down next to each other before in the history of English.
As for Mr. Eng, I pity him. He sounds depressed.
I have some guesses about the book and they all begin with “self-published”. I love good fantasy, this is not good fantasy.
What is with the hating on blue Presbyterians? Some of my favorite cookie makers are blue Presbyterians, or at least blue-haired, might not be the same thing.
No, no. Blue-haired cookie bakers are reasons to keep on going in a world otherwise gone insane.
This is all about those fucking misogynistic bastard Smurfs. It ain’t no accident that there’s only one female in the whole mushroom village, y’know…
I feel sorry for this guy. To be sure, his articles are loathsome, but he seems to be mentally ill, isolated, and delusional. He probably doesn’t have any black friends because he probably doesn’t have any friends tout court. It’s saddening.
Reading his ‘Why I Hate Asians’, it appears that he doesn’t know anything about Asians at all, and pretend to.
1. Asians - Refers to the native inhabitants of Asia, which consists of many countries, many cultures, and even the colours and features varies, monolid and doublelid for example.
2. In Hong Kong, it is expected of westerners who /live/ there to be able to speak Cantonese without sounding funny, while you can tell that they are westerners, I guess they do pick up a ‘Chinese accent’ while speaking Chinese as well… When I speak English, what should I sound like but English?
3. I do think poseurs are pathetic, but there is nothing wrong with picking up aspects of another culture in a country of immigrants, provided that you are neither forgetting your own culture, or insulting the people you are ‘imitating’ by making it a parody without it being a parody of the stereotype, especially if you know nothing about the actual culture(s) of the people you are imitating.
4. Honour, is highly definitive, and it’s unfortunate that neither the samurais of Japan nor the Knights of the west lives up to it, unless honour entails blindly following a guy who pays to keep you (and that power corrupts ensure that they help to uphold corruption) or going on holy crusade where you rape, murder, pillage, and try to takeover a faraway land. If honour, as phrased in the Chinese expression “when encountering someone in your travels who is meeting injustice, pull out your sword to defend them”, then the first example he list, the theatre one, doesn’t meet up to it, and is really interesting. (Note: I find it interesting, that with the Japanese, and ‘The West’ (England), the ideals of honour is paraded by the /establishment/, the nobles are gentlemen, etc. Whereas in Chinese history, it’s pretty much an accepted given by the educated peasants that the government is fucked, hence, the heros don’t serve no master, and in Japan would have been regarded as ‘ronins’. The ‘unjust’ mentions can either be robbers, or a corrupted official.)
4b) In the traditional chinese definition of honour, it is about defending the little guy from injustice, not making trouble, not kicking ass. Hey, there is another expression, ‘within the 36 tactics (of sun tzu), leaving (a bad situation) is the best’. ShoMing was notable not only for his kickass victories, but of the time he evaculated (ran with) an entire city of civilians before it was taken over using the Empty City ruse. One of the holidays where everyone is supposed to go up the mountain is not about a deity who stopped a plague, but telling people to run because it’s coming.
- MG
Poor guy. The Right already has Malkin, and she fills TWO slots. Does he think they’ll let ANOTHER Asian into the club?
Good to know that Pam Spaulding is not the only lesbian black female author speaking their mind on the web.
http://www.venusmagazine.org/cover_story.html
While there are no Asians involved (at least immediately) I am sure the word hate will come up.
This guy is seriously batshit. This MetaFilter thread includes stories from someone who went to school with him and a pile of links to his other writing.
Thank you for the correction damned yankee, I was not aware that Smurfs were Presbyterians. I thought they might be Baptists, what with all that singing and dancing.
I love Henry Der - does anybody else remember him in “The Times of Harvey Milk”? He was wonderful.
You bloody heretics, clearly it’s only okay to hate mauve Reformed Episcopalians.
It ain’t no accident that there’s only one female in the whole mushroom village, y’know…
It surely isn’t–she was created by Gargamel as a sort of blue-temptress to destroy the village.
Seriously. That was the plot. Prior to that, they had zero.
According to rumor, that’s actually toned down from the even-more-misogynistic-yet comic book plot from the 1950s.
Since Mr. Eng seems to love the Klan so much, I wonder if he’s checked them out? While they would seem to share many of Mr. Eng’s attitudes, I’m guessing that they would not embrace him…
Considering conservative authoritarian types seem to love people who claim their attitudes while doing exactly opposite (see Haggard, Ted, Giuliani, Rudy, etc.), we just may have the Asian counterpart of Dave Chappelle’s Black White Supremacist.
Somebody call Aaron McGrudder. I think we have the makings of an Asian Uncle Rukus…
Like Julian Elson, I pity the guy. He pairs an excess of ego and an utter absence of talent. That’s like blending aviation fuel and water in the fuel tanks of an F-14 and then catapulting it from a carrier. Sure, that bird will fly. Sorta. For a sec.
And this is that kid’s sec when he can say, “I’m flying, I’m flying!”
Why is everyone so surprised just because this particular little twerp is Asian? He sounds pretty much like your standard overprivileged brat upon whom his education was wasted. The timing of this so close to Chinese New Year is a bummer, though, and his ideas about traditional Asian ideas about heroism are muddled to say the least.
I’m willing to bet that the column he really, secretly wants to write would be titled “I hate myself and want to die”, but I’m doubting he has the gumption for that.
The real question is why this nitwit has a column. I guess the editors took a look at Coulter, Malkin etc and decided that incoherant, hateful babbling sells. It’s so much easier for people to understand than reasoned argument.
Holy fuck Mr. Eng is batshit crazy…
totally delusional and thinks he’s significantly smarter than he is.
Some choice excerpts from his ForeWord Magazine interview. (Scroll down for it)
I had *no idea* “aforesaid” could be used as a verb…
Say what?
No comment.
This sounds so familiar… I have *no idea* why…
No, your willingness to write $3800 checks to a vanity publisher resulted in the publication of two of your books.
Yeah, I believe that his plushies are important to *the family*, sure…
Translation: “I still don’t know jack about intellectual property.”
did anyone else read a similarity between this douchebag and… is it alright to say his name? V*x Day? I think he googles himself, so best to avoid it.
racist, self important asshat (”God of the Universe” “Voice of God”) who writes really bad fantasy novels? I bet Mr. Eng even as a lousy haircut and has at least once posed for a photograph with a flaming sword.
I reached this conclusion following the “why I hate asians” link, and actually reading the comments, it seems other people noticed the fantasy novel, and the VD comparison.
AC, that is completely hilarious. Completely.
Ha!
the nobles are gentlemen
The other reason it doesn’t resonate in Chinese history is that the aristocracy was abolished about the 10th Century A.D.
we just may have the Asian counterpart of Dave Chappelle’s Black White Supremacist.
I’m reminded of a Chinese great-granduncle of mine who was a British subject because his father(great-greatgrandpa) was rescued and sent to school by the General “Chinese” Gordon, AKA “Gordon of Khartoum” and thus became a a subject of her Majesty the Queen.
According to family legend, when the Japanese were rounding up American and other Allied civilians in Shanghai for internment in 1943, he was all excited because he got a detention notice as well, so it proved that he was more than a ‘mere Chinese’.
To Shasta MacNasty:
I don’t think this guy is anything like Uncle Rukus from the Boondocks, rather, he’s like a member of the Nazi party who actually brought into that aryan crap and wasn’t just there for the connections and the sadism…
1. Uncle Rukus really hated black people, and himself…and he worships the ground white people walk on, and wish he could be white….I wonder how much his attitude was helped by his primary employer?
2. This guy, on the other hand, doesn’t hate ‘The Asian People’, only those who deviates from his idea of what ‘The Asian People’ should be, thus, making him like those confused Nazi party members with really fucked up but funny view about ‘white’ history (seriously, don’t white people have countries too?)
I find the idea of ‘racial purity’, going back to the good old days where everything is just one race, is silly. After all, the lives we live, are full of the contributions from every culture. Arabic numbers (and their merchant math which predated the Greeks), Roman calenders, Chinese paper (we also had a primitive form of printing press, but that don’t influence present day no more), Western wheat, middle eastern art of perfume, Belgium’s ‘frenched’ fries, French hot dogs, Sari Lankan tea, Native American corn…and then the whole we originated from Africa thing. I could go on but that would take all day for all that I know, and sorry to Africa for not listing anything, but my main area of interest is bits of Chinese history (China had a long history so I pick and chose the periods or stuff I’m interested in for the in depth), certain European stuff, American stuff, and recently, the Middle East.
To The Dark Avenger:
Interesting, I didn’t know that, or wasn’t /aware/ of it because I just didn’t think about it. I know that there are rich people and powerful officials but I didn’t know how to compare it with the west. It was Empress Wu Zetian who abolished it eh?
Regarding your great granduncle, that’s pretty sad. Also why I believe that cross-racial(cultural) adoption is not something to be done lightly. If you raise the child like the parent’s cultures, then the child will just have some kind of self hatred deep down…if you raise the child with the child’s culture by just sending the child off, then the child feels alone in the family. I think with /Angelina Jolie/, it worked well because Angelina Jolie is a citizen of the world, she took in some parts of the culture of the children she adopted as well, she traveled through and lived for a while in those parts too.
The issues of cross cultural families is something I have thought about for myself as well. Shall I adopt, I would likely chose a Chinese child in a Canadian orphanage since I’m Chinese and living in Canada. Shall my spouse be non-Chinese, and…female, then it will certainly be…/interesting/, even if my spouse is Chinese there will still be the issue of Mandarin/Cantonese/Shanghainese, HK culture vs Mainland province culture / Taiwan….blah, blah, blah.
- MG
The guy sounds borderline psychotic to me.
A Chink in the Armor is by a Chinese-Canadian film student and is funny as hell. It was a professor of Chinese studies in this short film who mentioned the fact about the abolition of the aristocracy, although he didn’t say under which ruler in the 10th Cent. he was talking about.
As for great-granduncle, don’t feel sorry for him. He used to visit his sick wife in the hospital dressed to go out for the evening afterwards. He was the son of his fathers’ wife #4(great-greatgrandpa wasn’t British in that respect) and after #1 died, was the best man at his fathers’ church marriage to his mom.
even if my spouse is Chinese there will still be the issue of Mandarin/Cantonese/Shanghainese
If she’s Cantonese, a pair of earplugs would be a wise investment.
(For those white devils to be in on the joke, there is a stereotype that Cantonese are notorious for talking up a storm, arguing at the drop of a hat, as well as making dinner conversation about subjects more appropriate for a medical seminar than when one is enjoying a plate of ten gold chow mein.)
Mom was 2nd-generation Shanghainese, grandpa thought it was cute to teach me the Shanghai word for penis when I was learning to talk.
Oh, and since we’ve gotten this far without it, let me be the first:
Gung Hay Fat Choy!
Actually, the real problem is that no one on the AsianWeek editorial staff thought that there was anything odd/wrong/ridiculous about publishing something that would so obviously offend so many.
I think you’re overlooking the possiblity that that is exactly why they published it.
Swiped from metafilter, this is some guy talking about his time at NYU film school.
“”
He was in a friend’s life drawing class, for example, and at one point the teacher asked everyone what they first looked for when drawing a figure. Everyone gave sane answers - “I look for an action line” or “I look for an interesting feature” - but then Ken said, “first, I imagine the subject as a lycanthrope.” And then, lo and behold, everyone cranes their necks to look at Ken’s work, and indeed, he’s drawn a shitty bevy of lycanthropes for his assignments.
“”
It goes on to mention his vendetta against Marvel comics due to the fact that he didn’t get hired after his unpaid internship, and they went and hired some WOMAN who actually got along with people. The Nerve!
Swiped from a Foreward magazine interview with Mr. Eng
///
Describe one recurring dream you have?
Escaping this prison of a planet and physically entering the 0th Dimension as an anthropomorphic shark.
What would you save from your home if it were burning?
My animal plushies, which are very important to the family. Especially Smoochy, our semi-dog semi-bunny doll, and Froggy, the big green frog. Definitely, I would save Dennagon, my dragon plushie.
///
yep, dude’s a furry.
An anthropomorphic shark? Why not a galeomorphic human?
Word.
The question is not why has American higher education spawned another blowhard with hypetrophied ego, zero talent, and disgusting sensibilities (e.g., Adam Yoshida*, Vox Day, Aleksey Vayner), but why did the magazine publish his article.
The concept of “edgy” journalism approaches a nadir. Did they think he was like Sarah Silverman?
*Canadian higher education in this case.
Hey-hey-hey!
/I’m/ Cantonese!
…and it’s strange, I used to get headaches at Mandarin school, because the dialect is so /sharp/, it’s like glass, cling-cling-cling, no harmonics, (or maybe it’s my teachers, I liked this guy from mainland, but according to my classmates his Mandarin is really bad). My mother, who is also Cantonese, pointed out that the Mandarins don’t like our dialect because it’s too heavy, like a series of thugging sound…
I was under the impression that all Chinese, like to talk during meals. Well, the very loud Chinese eateries I’ve been to have been Cantonese so far, but in Taiwan soaps, they seem to like to talk during meals as well. …and I think having conversations during meals that last forever is great better than no body looking at each other, just the TV…My parents did have the bad habit of bringing up historical tragedies like bam during breakfast.
- MG
How do people like him and our good friend John Petroski (from a few weeks back) get these jobs? Honestly. Beyond the sexism and the racism they are both BAD writers. Were there no good Op-Ed writers available the day these two were hired?
Indy - “Escaping this prison of a planet and physically entering the 0th Dimension as an anthropomorphic shark.”
At first glance one it tempted to assume that this was an attempt to be amusing on his part, but alas, such is not the case.
MG and The Dark Avenger - Cantonese restaurants definately win the loudness award, double points if they’re Hong Kong-specific.
Mercurial Georgia, I think you misunderstood my point. I don’t object to conversations during meals, there are certain topics that needn’t be discussed during meal time, and I’m not talking religion or politics here.
Or to put it another way: If the talk involves bodily orifices not in active use during meal time, or discussions of what the Japanese did to so and so during the War,(two examples of topics Grandpa Monk would bring up during mealtime) it can wait until later.
It used to drive Prof Avenger(great-grand uncle above was on Mother Avengers’ side of the family) crazy, YMMV about such discussions.
I had a Mandarin Chinese teacher for part of a course on Asian culture. He told us about how Mandarins will work during the winter outside when it’s so cold that they’ll get blisters from the cold on their skin and let them pop and keep going like the Energizer Bunny.
Grandpa, OTOT, said that Mandarins were big strong guys who won’t argue like Cantonese but will beat the crap out of you if they get pissed off.
BTW, do you eat sook or jook?
Can we just dump this guy in the basket of “clueless 20-year-old who will have this follow him around for the rest of his life” and forget about him? Not the first silly idiot who said something he’s going to be very very embarrassed about when he finally grows up, not the last…
It used to be when you did stupid things as a kid, only your parents and immediate neighbors knew about it. Now with the internet, your early stupidity lives on FOREVER.
The interesting bit is why AsiaWeek decided to publish this. Which means either their circulation has slid so far down the only way they think they can get back into a market (the dumb racist market) is to Coulterize everything–or they’ve always been this sort of a fish-wrapper handed out in parking lots and it’s just now that everyone knows it.