A video of a UCLA girl ranting about hordes of Asians everywhere, and talking on their cellphones in the library, has recently made it viral right after it was posted. People have gone as far as making a hate page about her, complete with contact information and a link to expel her, and have completely sullied her internet reputation. That’s extreme.

First of all, all of us have probably participated in some petty generalizations and stereotypes about certain groups of people before. The difference is that she had the gall to post it publicly, instead of keeping it between friends or even just on Facebook. Posting something like this on a public venue is bound to make sensitive people angry. I am not exactly super sensitive or politically correct, so I saw this video as more of an innocuous testament to the unbearable ignorance of the masses out there. You would think that someone going to an acclaimed school would be slightly smarter… I feel slight pity.

The video amused me the way Jersey Shore stupidity amuses me. A couple of things do bother me about the video though. Even more than the fact that she imitated Asians speaking on the phone, or she was insensitive about the tsunami disaster, the fact that this girl called UCLA “our school” and says that they admit hordes of Asian people, as if she has more ownership in UCLA than Asian-Americans, bothers me. Throughout the entire video, she makes it seem like she is more entitled to America than any of her assumed-to-be-slanty-eyed compatriots. She makes clear distinctions between American manners and child-rearing protocol and Asian ways. Her assumptions that Asians were raised inferiorly without manners, imported from the far east, and somehow not entitled to America the same way she is, made me squirm a little due to her ignorance.

Asians generally have different values than what her mommy has taught her. There is greater emphasis on the filial unit and family. Hence, the hordes of “old Asian people” who generally come to dote on their children in college. Asians value reverence of hierarchy, and diligence in work and study. Asian-Americans have worked hard to set their lives in America, and not all of them have been recently sent from Asia. Asian-American children of this generation are high performers and hard workers due to the values that their culture has pushed into them. Asian-Americans have every right any blonde American girl would have under the Constitution. This girl seems to believe that every Asian she sees at UCLA just recently came over to “our school” from Asia last week. Quite misinformed.

People who take immense offense to this video need to chill out. Yes, it can be offensive; a lot of things are. However, taking offense doesn’t change what people think behind what their mouths are saying. There are worse cases out there. Ignorance is an epidemic. We are all affected, some worse than others. This girl just put it out there on Youtube, and confirmed her ignorance with her remarks about the tsunami and her poor imitation of Korean (the “OHHH” part was spot on, and everything else sounds like poor Cantonese). Sadly, there are a lot of people out there who are as dumb as her, and there’s not much we can do about it. The best way is to live well, I think. In the future, when I roll by some dumdum in my new Porsche, they can “ching chong ling long ting tong” me all they want.

Anyways, just my really quick 2 cents.