That Asian woman is not the nanny
Something that immediately struck me too:
The man in the video is Robert E. Kelly, an associate professor of international relations at Pusan National University in South Korea. The woman in the video is his wife, Jung-a Kim, who is Korean.
People on Twitter and Facebook immediately began to criticize the video because the “nanny” looked scared or afraid for her job. A Time.com article that has since been updated called her the “frenzied nanny.” A British tabloid referred to her as the “horrified nanny.”
Writer Roxane Gay picked up on the assumption. Her followers protested: The woman in the video had to be hired help, because she seemed “panicked,” “terrified” and even “emotionally abused.”
For the record, I've been in the same situation as Prof. Kelly -- trying to keep on my professional game face while the kids wreak havoc in the background. And my husband did a similar "swoop in and get the kids out" maneuver, surely as panicked as Prof. Kelly's wife. No, her panic had nothing to do with the fact she's Asian. Like my husband, she was just trying to get things under control while her spouse was on camera.
http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-bbc-professor-video-asian-wife-nanny-stereotypes-20170310-story.html
= new reply since forum marked as read
I personally never actually thought she was anything but the mother despite seeing the video, but the video just happened to not trigger one of my ingrained biases. My first reaction was ridicule (like most posts will be), but then I really thought about this...
Let's be honest - everybody has biased, bigoted, or racist thoughts. If your first thought is "WTF! NO I DON'T!" and you're scrambling to hit the alert button, then I would advise you to do some introspection instead. The people in this story thought the same thing, only to face plant because of their own biases and racist ideas. They might have been legitimately trying to help, but they failed all the same.
Think back to when you jumped to a conclusion about somebody. It could be anything.
I call this opinion a "horse pill" because it's hard to swallow. I don't want to be a racist, a bigot, or have biases. However, I also subconsciously form opinions about people for superficial reasons. Everybody does. It's a lazy way of thinking that I would like to work on.
I'm not saying it's ok - I'm saying the exact opposite. Only through recognizing that I have these biases can I work on them.
Remember, most racism, bigotry, and bias isn't overt. It's internal. It's the small ways that someone may be treated differently just because they look different. In this case, assumptions were immediately made because "Asian" was associated with "nanny" in peoples' minds. Rather than picturing a screaming, obnoxious racist in KKK garb, think of racism as a thin filter applied over your vision. It's so thin that it's easily ignored.
This is a pervasive problem in our society, and we treat it with kid gloves. We tend to fall into the trap of simplifying racism ("You're either a racist or you're not,"
or condemning racists as "others" who are beyond repair. Being called a racist often leads to instant defensiveness - all dialogue is instantly shut down. Racism should be viewed as a flaw to be internally examined and worked on, not a simplistic label and synonym for "bad, hateful people." Yes, there are some bad, hateful racists, but I'm talking about internal racism.
Please don't jump to conclusions. I'm not condoning or legitimizing racism. Racism is never okay. Racism, bigotry, and bias are an internal struggle, though. The cure for it is introspection, admitting your own biases, and then addressing them.
