When I'm Outraged and When I'm Not

The Huffington Post declared Day Above Ground’s video for “Asian Girlz” to be “ridiculously offensive” and “quite possibly the most racist thing to happen to music since ‘Accidental Racist.’” (article) Apparently a lot of people agreed, because after intense condemnation, the band was forced to do some talking (if not exactly apologize) and make an effort to get the video off the internet. This got me to thinking about outrage--when I’m outraged and when I’m not.

I should be clear that even apart from the offensive content, it seems obvious to me that the song and video are shockingly bad, and apparently Day Above Ground is the name for a bunch of dipshits. As for the lyrical content, it consists of a stream of stereotypical references to Asians and Asian culture mixed in with how much the band members want to do it to Asian “girlz.” I find it distasteful, but I don’t find myself outraged.

Why is that? After thinking about it, I realized my outrage increases the bigger, more brazen, and more harmful the offense. I’m outraged when the U.S. government spies on its citizens and the president goes on television and lies about it, when the killing of an innocent black person by a white cop or vigilante is turned into an occasion for whites to complain about how persecuted they are, when politicians want to legislate who you can fall in love with, who you can marry, and what you can do with that person in bed. These are egregious offenses carried out systemically and openly and to the very real suffering of real people. The release of a music video clearly intended (however ill-conceivedly) to be humorous by a relatively unknown group is a small thing by comparison.

That isn’t to say that a music video can’t be wrong, offensive or even cause real hurt--it can and should be condemned accordingly--but emotionally, it’s not going to get me waving my arms and ranting. I remember a few years ago when I noticed that most of the stand-up comedy on The Comedy Channel used stereotypes to poke fun at a wide variety of ethnicities. I don’t like it, so I’ll change the channel, and maybe blog about it later, but I’ll save blowing my top for something worse, say, the GOP’s next voter suppression effort.

My criteria, however, are clearly not others’. Liberals have a reputation for freaking out over every offense, but during a Democratic presidency, the conservatives are the new liberals with their freaking out. I’ve noticed an interesting phenomenon on Facebook. Every now and then, I will run across a conservative’s laundry list of beefs against Obama (example) posted by someone usually described as having great courage, and then reposted by others, who encourage others to have the guts to Share or Like it. They’re mostly full of junk, often incoherent, and always full of outrage.

Yet most of the accusations in these posts don’t amount to much. Despite trying really hard to list as many offenses as possible, there’s a curious sparseness of things that actually hurt real people. They’re outraged about what they see as disrespect to the military, apologies to foreign nations, and not giving enough props to the Christian god, but show little concern for policies that have actually done real damage. If Obama bows to the king of Saudia Arabia this is an outrage, but killing innocent Pakistanis in drone strikes elicits no mention.

I hope nobody buys Day Above Ground’s stupid song, but I hope even more strongly that we could work up some widespread outrage over a lot of the worse things going on.