Broadcasting Racism: UCLA Student Rants on YouTube

The Associated Press reported that UCLA student Alexandra Wallace recently made the decision to withdraw.

Her decision came after she was repeatedly harassed and reportedly received several death threats. Authorities have been unable to verify the threats at this point.

If her name is not familiar to you, go to YouTube and type in “UCLA Girl’s Asian Rant.” The original video is no longer posted, but, in the fashion of all things viral on the Internet, there are several copies floating around. I’ve never believed that hatred should be responded to with more of the same. That being said, with the exception of possibly the death threats, is it so surprising that Wallace is now the target of harassment?

The UCLA’s student enrollment statistics for Fall 2010 lists that, out of 26,162 undergraduate students, 9,712 are listed as Asian or Pacific Islander.

My calculator says that means that Wallace managed to offend around 37 percent of the undergraduate students at her school. Oh, with the exception of a few of Wallace’s friends who “[she doesn’t] mean any of this toward.”
“Any of this” refers to what can only be described as an ignorant, racist rant.

Did I mention that several reports, including one from UCLA’s school paper, The Daily Bruin, confirm that she is a political science major?

According to Wallace, “The problem is these hordes of Asian people that UCLA accepts into our school every single year.”

Wait, what?
According to Wallace, all Asians (except for her friends, of course) and only Asians talk on the phone in the library.

She continues by mockingly imitating what she thinks Asians sound like on the phone: “Ching chong ling long ting tong.” Wallace starts and ends the derogatory mimicry by making a face which is reminiscent of … porn.
No, I’m not making this up. Unfortunately.

She also says, toward the end of the three-minute video, that it seems like Asians are “going through their whole families just checking on everybody from the tsunami-thing.”

Please tell me, Ms. Political-Science-Major, that you did not just call all Asians Japanese. Last time I checked, that’s offensive. Especially when you conflate the Chinese and Japanese, as the countries still have strained relations.

Let me refresh your memory, political science, and perhaps rephrase it in a way that you may understand: there was this thing, before like, WWII, like, called, like, the Second Sino-Japanese War, and there was, like, the Rape of Nanking. Like, yeah.

But just in case a student does get bad news, Wallace suggests that they go outside, so they won’t “freak out.”

The most obnoxious part of Wallace’s racist tirade is her opinion that Asians need to learn “American manners,” implying that she follows them. She also describes herself as the “nice, polite, American girl that [her] momma raised her to be.”

I wasn’t aware that nice, polite, American manners involved racism, ignorance and an indifference to the plight of others.
UCLA did not discipline Wallace for her video. The Associated Press reported that UCLA decided that the video was “an exercise of free speech, not hate speech, and it didn’t violate the student code of conduct.”

However, the UCLA Principles of Community states: “We do not tolerate acts of discrimination, harassment, profiling or other conduct causing harm to individuals on the basis of expression of race, color, ethnicity, gender, age, disability, religious beliefs, political preference, sexual orientation, gender identity, citizenship or national origin among other personal characteristics.

Such conduct violates UCLA’s Principles of Community and may result in imposition of sanctions according to campus policies governing the conduct of students, staff and faculty.”
What I find most amazing about this entire debacle is that it appears that Wallace didn’t understand until recently the possible ramifications of her video.

In an apology letter released to the Daily Bruin, Wallace writes, “In an attempt to produce a humorous YouTube video I have offended the UCLA community and the entire Asian culture … I made a mistake.”
Why was it only after, as she describes it, the “harassment of [her] family, the publishing of [her] personal information, death threats and being ostracized from an entire community” that she figured that out?

Why didn’t she think before she clicked the “post” button, “Hmm, maybe this isn’t a good idea?”
However thoughtless and vapid Wallace may be, she’s now gone (thankfully).

And, according to her apology letter, she’ll remain that way: silent and out of the public eye.
Unfortunately, her video, and others like it, espousing racism, are still being created, remain posted and are widely circulating.

Alysia Sawchyn can be reached at asawchyn@spartans.ut.edu.