Steve Harvey Apologizes

Under the modern guidelines of everything being racist, everybody is a racist. The universal domain shrinks mightily when you get down to a dude who does a bit on national television about how white and black women want nothing to do with Asian men. It’s unclear who watches Steve Harvey in the afternoon, but let’s presume people who can’t imagine that kindly looking black dudes can be racists. 

Everybody would’ve let Harvey’s level seven Asian stereotypes slide because people are scared to call minorities racist. Also, Asian-Americans take it in the rear more so than any other minority group because they come from a cultural background of shutting the fuck up and staying focused on the prize. Facebook jobs. TV host and noted New York restaurant guy Eddie Huang rankled the waters with an editorial in the New York Times mentioning how maybe saying nobody wants to fuck Asian men is hurtful to Asian men and their supposedly tiny dicks.

Huangs case for the historical malicious stereotypes of Asian men was well-reasoned, measured, and on point. So the opposite of most every single other celebrity outcry of racism in this nation. It forced Steve Harvey into a rote and hollow apology. On Twitter naturally, where it means something:

I offer my humblest apology for offending anyone, particularly those in the Asian community, last week. It was not my intention and the humor was not meant with any malice or disrespect whatsoever.

It’s time for America to come up with a technical definition of racism. If malice aforethought is a requisite, then outside of formal Klan and Fruits of Islam meetings there is almost no racism in this nation. If being flippant, inconsiderate, or trying to elicit a cheap chuckle is the standard, then there are tons, from all quarters and colors of skin. Parsing and arbitrarily separating punishable racist expression from acceptable racism and stereotypes is what rankles the rational.

Did Harvey break the rules or not? Nobody seemed to give a shit until the Times editorial. Double standards are like a Chinese penis. I don’t know how yet.