#CancelColbert: a well-intentioned, but misdirected Twitter controversy

America has racism deeply embedded in its past, and it’s hard to deny that minorities are still hugely disadvantaged in modern American life. Even if we are more equal under the law, our language, education and aesthetic sense continue to be the products of dead white men. Furthermore, prejudices of old about minority groups still permeate our society in a number of direct and indirect ways.With this atmosphere, comedy relating to minority issues can often be tricky. Many television shows end up contributing to the misrepresentation of minorities, sometimes under the guise of benefiting minorities. If you want evidence, watch any modern sitcom: characters who belong to minority groups are invariably characterized by stereotypes about their ethnicity, religion, gender or sexuality. Take “The Big Bang Theory’s” single Indian character, whose portrayal as a technologically apt but socially awkward scientist only gets laughs by reinforcing a stereotype about Indians.All of this brings us to the latest Twitter controversy: a movement to cancel comedian Stephen Colbert’s satirical talk show, “The Colbert Report,” after the show’s account tweeted a line from the show that was deemed by many to be offensive to Asians.The movement, driven by the trending hashtag #CancelColbert, was in response to a Thursday night tweet: “I am willing to show #Asian community I care by introducing the Ching-Chong Ding-Dong Foundation for Sensitivity to Orientals or Whatever.”The tweet was intended to parody the careless efforts of Washington Redskins owner Dan Snyder, who is trying to appease Native Americans by starting a foundation for their benefit without actually changing his team’s offensive name. But Suey Park, the activist behind the #CancelColbert hashtag, finds the satire to be as offensive as its target.“This isn’t about white liberals wanting to change the name, or their devotion to destroying settler-colonialism: It’s about their feeling entitled to make jokes about ‘The Other’ in the name of ‘progress,’” Park wrote in her recent TIME Magazine editorial. “This does nothing to alleviate the burden of people of color; it simply perpetuates a part of the entertainment industry in which our marginalization remains profitable.”Park’s is an immediately striking point of view to consider. Satire is satire, but if it ends up detracting from the pursuit of equality more than it promotes it, that should be a problem.“The outrage surrounding our criticism is about white liberals feeling entitled to engage in hate speech under the guise of ‘satire,’” Park wrote. “The logic of those who argue ‘Get Over It’ is set up to privilege reckless behavior by placing the blame on the audience.”But there is a flaw in Park’s conceit — what if Colbert’s satire is genuinely doing more good than harm, as opposed to the other way around? Her argument’s principle is that derogatory terms referring to Asians, like “orientals” and onomatopoetic sounds such as “Ching” and “Chong,” are detrimental to Asians’ fair representation in the media. But these slurs are outdated to the point where they have lost almost all of their old power and frequency of usage. Nobody calls Asian people “orientals” anymore, and “Ching Chong” certainly isn’t the name of a mascot for a football team. Using these words can be productive.Whereas shows like “The Big Bang Theory” depend on cheap stereotypes for laughs, Colbert’s joke is not funny because of the stereotypes; it’s funny because of the obvious satirical absurdity of those stereotypes. It’s a subtle distinction, but it enforces the idea that Colbert’s satire is beneficial to society as a whole. It highlights the absurdity of the Washington Redskins’ efforts, and thereby gives more of a voice to Native Americans, easily the most voiceless ethnic group in our country.If you strip it down, Colbert’s joke is the comic equivalent of making a comparison between pre-Civil Rights America and a modern unresolved social issue. Comparing the use of gay slurs to use of the n-word in the early 20th century is very different from using a slur to describe African Americans; this situation is no different.The real problem here — the problem that Suey Park seems to really take issue with — is that we still live in the shadow of racism, against Asians and many other groups. But embracing that past as an example in order to progress as a society is beneficial; to forget that we used Asian slurs would actually be worse for Asian rights. So don’t cancel The Colbert Report; learn from it.