Ed Foo Yung

To the Editors of The Crimson:

On stage at the Hasty Pudding Theatricals is a character called Ed Foo Yung. The script describes him as "one of them Chinamen...with the scrawny little mustaches." He is "slimy" and "disgusting." As he enters, Ed is hunched over, pigtailed and inhuman. He mumbles in pidgin English, and leers at the blond Mae. Too weak to defend himself, he is thrown around the stage by his pigtail and must die for proclaiming his desires for "the pretty white lady."

This type of racial humiliation should not be condoned in our society. It isolates and divides human beings in a sensitive time when people are attempting to alleviate racial tensions. The Hasty Pudding Theatricals rationalizes the use of such humor on the grounds that racial stereotyping is harmless and no different than poking fun at "spinsters, prostitutes, or fat people." Throughout history, human beings have consistently killed, enslaved, and oppressed each other because of racial differences. Our identities are marked above all by race. To callously ridicule racial cultures and classify it as typical humor demonstrates a lack of understanding to the cause of racial problems in our society.

It is also untrue that a ludicrous characterization of Ed Foo Yung makes him innocuous. Gross depictions of Asians as evil and subhuman have contributed to the condoning of Japanese internment during WWII, attrocities of the massacre at MyLai, and recent creation of the Gook Klux Klan in the United States.

On March 7th, the Harvard/Radcliffe Asian American Association asked the Hasty Pudding Theatricals to alter the character of Ed Foo Yung. After several discussions, the cast and staff of the production acknowledged the destructiveness of their distorted ethnic depictions. They are nevertheless reluctant to change the image of Ed Foo Yung. A mere recognition of the problem without subsequent termination of the practice is a sterile intellectual exercise; it does not repair the inherent social damages of the play.

The Harvard/Radcliffe Asian American Association protests the continued parading of racial stereotypes in the play. We hope the general student body will seriously consider the causes and implications behind laughter directed at Ed Foo Yung and join us in our attempt to eliminate such unnecessary racial humor. The Harvard/Radcliffe Asian American Association