Poster Parody Gone Wrong

A few weeks ago at Tufts University, In-Goo Kwak, a freshman student immigrated from South Korea, put up posters around his dormitory hall parodying campaign poster of Alice Pang, another freshman student of Asian descent running for Tufts Community Union Senate.

Kwak’s poster mocked Pang’s slogan “Small person, big ideas” and changed it to “Squinty eyes, big vision”. Instead of “Hurrah!”, Kwak’s said “Kimchi!”. Lastly, “Vote on Thursday” was changed to “Prease vote me! I work reary hard!”.

In-Goo Kwak put the posters up under the suggestion of his roomates, and has since apologized to Pang about the incident. But Kwak still fervently argues that this is his freedom of speech against the constant political correctness on campus. He was displeased that he was contacted by Asian American Center on campus rather than students personally.

While I agree that  a lot Asian Americans sometimes come off as being too politically correct, this parody poster is just bad taste. I understand that this is free speech, and he thought this was funny. But he is also ignorant of the fact that when this kind of language is put on paper and released to the public, many people could draw from it painful memories of racism and stereotypes they have encountered in their lives. He is unaware of the context that this language has been placed on, and like many other examples of satire or parody we’ve seen previously, this type of “parody” just doesn’t work. I can only imagine him laughing with his roomates, while tossing around their arsenal of stereotypical sayings as they are making this poster. Sometimes, the worst kind of racism is perpetrated by others of the same race. I don’t know In-Goo Kwak personally, but I do know that if he doesn’t start educating himself about racial sensitivity, he will just be an embarrassment like this girl.