Opinion | Orange County is for everyone
Gracie Fleischman, Opinions Editor
Christina Ignatius, a Chapman Fowler School of Law alumna, lawyer and law tutor, recently posted a racist rant on Facebook. She describes herself on her Facebook page as the nation’s “most requested” law tutor and boasts that she’s helped students get top scores and has handled million-dollar lawsuits.
But, Ignatius wasn’t smart enough to realize that posting an anti-Asian tirade on social media wasn’t such a great idea. Apparently, the wildly successful film “Crazy Rich Asians,” which uses the lavish lifestyle of the Singaporean upper class as a backdrop for a love story, sparked her Facebook outburst. Her post has since been taken down.
The law tutor claims that Asians have taken over Orange County, by “flooding” in and “taking over our mall at South Coast Plaza,” according to the Orange County Register. In the post, she went on to list harmful and racist stereotypes about Asians, including insulting their driving ability, using phrases like “rice rockets” and “tiger moms”, according to Yahoo Finance and even mocking their accents.
This kind of hate speech should never be tolerated, no matter your status or education level. Ignatius’ embarrassing display proves that white people can always find a way to be racist.
From one white woman to another, I want Ignatius to understand that her whiteness is not indicative of her superiority. It doesn’t matter how far you rise in the professional world, you can still sink to the level of making fun of the very people that you clearly envy.
She describes Asians in Orange County as being wealthy, buying all the expensive labels she wants, driving Mercedes and speedsters that she is obviously jealous of. In reality, she’s just repeating the tried and true “model minority myth”, which many white people use to hide their prejudiced views behind a complimentary veil.
Originating in the 1960s, the myth of a model minority perpetuates the stereotype that Asians are the “best” of all the minorities because of their success in America. No matter their accomplishments, assuming that a large group of people from many different countries and continents are all the same is wrong.
What makes Ignatius’ remarks even more ridiculous is the fact that she is glossing over the benefits of Asians immigrating to Orange County. A January report by the Orange County chapter of Asian-Americans Advancing Justice shows that in 2012 alone, Asian-American, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander businesses generated almost $26 billion in revenue and more than 100,000 jobs in Orange County.
Assuming that all Asians are wealthy is also incorrect. In fact, nearly 20 percent of Thai-Americans, 16 percent of Vietnamese-Americans and 15 percent of Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islanders (NHPI) are at or above the poverty line in Orange County. Some groups, like NHPI, have an unemployment rate of almost 13 percent.
Ignatius refers simply and broadly to “Asians” in her online rant, but who exactly are the peopleto which she is referring to? Out of the 3 million residents of Orange County, nearly 600,000 identify as Asian American and more than 19,000 identify as Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander. Vietnamese-Americans and Korean-Americans are the first- and second-largest ethnic subgroups amoung Asians in Orange County. We also have the third-largest Asian-American and NHPI populations in the nation.
Treating different Asian groups as one makes it difficult to acknowledge all the success they bring to Orange County, while also making it harder to pay attention to those who are struggling with unemployment and poverty.
So Christina Ignatius, be thankful. Without the contributions the Asian community has brought to Orange County, you wouldn’t have a high-end mall like South Coast Plaza to shop in – it wasn’t your mall to begin with.