Getting Called a C****
Reflections on Off-Target Oppression as a Biracial Korean/White Man
One thing I’ve learned through my research, and through being called a “c****”, is that it sometimes my self-identify is not central to the kind of oppression I
experience. It sometimes doesn’t matter that I don’t consider myself to be Chinese given that I’m sometimes going to be treated like someone who is perceived to be Chinese.
Oppression will not stop just because we stop considering ourselves to be a member of an oppressed group. Just as long as we are still identified as being a member of an oppressed group, we will still be oppressed in some way due to our perceived group membership.
Here, I wish to clarify that I am not stating that self-identity is irrelevant to the oppression we face. Rather, I think the interaction of how we are seen and how we see ourselves really determines the kind of oppression that we experience. It is a relevantly different experience being called a c**** as someone who does not consider himself to be Chinese than to be called the same slur as someone who does consider themselves to be Chinese.
The goal of my research has always been to develop a model to explain
off-target oppression, to draw conclusions about how these cases give us a richer understanding of oppression, and to use this understanding to better combat
oppression. Given this, I believe it is critical to now ask you, the reader, to tell me about your experiences with off-target oppression. What are your experiences of being misidentified or misclassified? What do you think my model gets right, and what do you think it gets wrong? Please feel free to send me an email with your answers to these questions or if you you want a final version of my research
paper once it is completed.
How does Off-Target Oppression Occur?
Acknowledgements and References
Introduction
A massive thank you to my supervisor, Professor Audrey Yap, for all of the amazing help you have given me with this project. This project was sponsored by a Jamie Cassels Undergraduate Research Award..
Figure 1, “Nuremberg Race Law poster”, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Archives, Number: 1996.113.1
Figure 2: Family Photo of Vincent Chin, Detroit Free Press, accessed online at: https://www.freep.com/story/news/2017/06/24/murder-vincent-chin-35-years-ago-remembered-asian-americans/420354001.
Hanum Yoon-Henderson // hanumyh@gmail.com // University of Victoria // Depar tment of Philosophy
Conclusion
06.03.2019
What has gone wrong when someone calls me, someone who is not Chinese, a c****? We might say that what has gone wrong is the usage of a racist slur.
However, something stranger seems to be going on here. The usage of the slur in this context seems different than transphobic slurs that target trans people or
Islamaphobic slurs that target Muslims. The slur used towards me seems off-target because seemingly it references Chinese people, and I am not Chinese.
The primary goal of my research is to understand how oppression can end up being off-target. To find the answer of exactly what has gone wrong when
someone calls me a c****, and in other cases of off-target oppression. Through this, I hope introduce the notion of “off-target oppression”.
Figure 2: Photo of Vincent Chin.
On June 23, 1982, Vincent Chin, a Chinese-American man, was murdered by two white men in Highland Park, a
suburb of Detroit. The men attacked him because they thought he was Japanese, believing that Japanese people were responsible for the decline in the Detroit automobile industry.
Chin’s murder demonstrates how cases of misinformation can have radical impacts on our lives.
What is Off-Target Oppression?
I have already offered one example of off-target oppression, when someone calls me a c****. Listed below is a broad set of other examples of off-target
oppression. While reading this section, I encourage you, the reader, to think about what is going on in these cases.
o The use of misogynistic slurs towards trans men.
o The violence some Sikh people have faced because they were believed to be Muslim.
o The Nazi persecution of ”Jews” who did not consider themselves to be Jewish (see: Fig 1).
o The Murder of Vincent Chin, a Chinese-American man who was killed by two white Americans partially because they believed he was Japanese (see: Fig 2).
What unifies this broad set of cases? My rough analysis has a three parts.
1) The perpetrators of these oppressive acts believed, at the time of the act, that the victim was a member of a particular social group.
2) The perpetrators of these acts believed that membership in that social group licenses certain oppressive actions.
3) The victims of these oppressive actions were not actually members of the social group.
This is has been pretty abstract thus far, so let’s apply this analysis to my own experience of being called a c****. First, the perpetrators of these acts have formed the belief that I am Chinese. Second, the perpetrators of these acts
believe that it is okay to call Chinese people “c****” . Third, I am not Chinese, nor do I consider myself to be Chinese. Now that we know what I roughly mean by “off-target oppression”, let’s trying to understand how it happens.
This section is dedicated to trying to figure out the mechanics of off-target oppression. What is happening when someone calls me a c****?
Misinformation
One answer as to why someone has called me a c**** is that they have come to the belief that I am Chinese through misinformation. They have observed certain physical features I have and watched how I behave. With this information, they classify me as Chinese. If I were to tell this person that I do not have Chinese ancestry, they would not think that it is appropriate to call me a ”c****”. This highlights one way off-target oppression occurs, misinformation. While
misinformation is a clean explanation of off-target oppression, it is clear that some cases of off-target oppression do not happen in this way.
Bad Classification Schemes
Let’s now suppose that the perpetrator has full knowledge of my ancestry and
still call me a c****. They might say something like “all of you Asians are the same to me, so you’re just as Chinese as any of them”. Given all of the relevant facts of the situation, they still classify me into a social category that I do not belong to and do not hold myself to be a member of. Even with the correct information, the perpetrator has sorted me into a social groups that is different than how I should be sorted. What has gone wrong here is that the person has a bad
classification scheme. The scheme in which they classify people is different than what it should be. This is the second way in which off-target oppression occurs. What I have discussed above are the two basic ways in which I think someone can experience off-target oppression. I now ask you, the reader of this poster, to think about the other cases of off-target oppression I have listed. Which cases do you think are instances of misinformation, and which do you think are the result of bad classification schemes? What else would you have to know about these situations to answer the prior question?
Figure 1: Nuremberg Race Law Poster, 1935.
This document shows Nazi ancestral racial classification schemes. The black circles represent” Jews”, and the circle without fill represent “Aryans”.
Nazi classification schemes classified people into groups that they did not belong in. This lead to the persecution of “Jews” who did not considered
