Edgar Foo Yung

To the Editors of The Crimson:

In this year's Hasty Pudding Show, "A Little Knife Music," one of the actors is cast in the role of a Chinese character named Edgar Foo Yung. The character portrayed is so pitifully predictable, it is everything one would expect of a racist caricature. Complete with the requisite trailing pigtail, pidgin English, and tiny stature, he bows and clasps his hands together, preeminently laughable in all his jerky, awkward mannerisms. He is presented as a slimy little man who evilly lusts after the blond heroine.

A few years ago, when the Lampoon featured a black man polishing John Harvard's boots on one of its covers, black students, and white as well, were outraged and promptly took action, demonstrating that this sort of ugly racial caricature would not be condoned by the Harvard community as an acceptable form of humor.

Chinese students should follow suit. Chinese are not "fair game" for racial jokes just because other racial groups have protested; racist humor is unacceptable on all fronts. The objection that all this is in good fun is as vapid here as it was in the case of the Lampoon. Where racism is present, nothing is ever in "good fun." A theatrical production should not stoop to such a low level just to elicit a nervous laugh or two. Elizabeth T. Partridge '80