Last week, an interview by the BBC with a scholarly expert on Korea was interrupted by the scholar's young family. By now, the viral video of the interrupted interview has spawned many memes, spoofs (like this one by a New Zealand duo), and even tribute artwork.
As well as much hilarity (I laughed, a lot), the video and its family generated plenty of discussion. There was a large thread of conversation about working from home. Many of my colleagues expressed empathy regarding the vagaries of grooming the domestic sphere for media interviews. Such preparation necessitates no family presence for the 'expert' face.
What fascinated me most — and by 'fascinated' I mean appalled and infuriated — was the assumption in certain commentaries that the woman in the video was the nanny. Or, even when that was resoundingly countered, that there would be trouble for her when the interview was over.
Because she is Asian, and her husband is white. And we all know what that means, right? Whether she's the nanny or the wife, it didn't seem to matter — she was positioned by many as an automatically oppressed person.
Asian American Studies scholar Timothy Yu's Facebook post about the video spawned a great set of comments that focused on this issue of stereotyping Asian women and presumptions about their relationships. On Yu's post, author Paisley Rekdal observed, 'It's such a stereotype of Asian women ... they must be nannies, or if they are in relationships with white men, it is because somehow they are being held hostage to them.'
As an Australian watching this UK interview, then following the volatile discussions in the United States and on Facebook and Twitter, I realised anew how enduring, widely propagated, and easily transferable these stereotypes about Asian women are. I know they are applied to me in my everyday life, and also professionally as an academic.
Anyone who thinks they can escape these macro- and micro-aggressions needs to look more closely at the dynamics of racism and bigotry. Those who perpetuate these dynamics don't care if you have a PhD, are born here, or become Australian of the Year. Basic rule of racism: don't see the person, see the race.
For Asian women in Australia, this can mean a very particular kind of creepy fetishisation and erasure of the self. There are too many times, for example, when One Nation's political candidates (always the older white men) declare their lack