Whole Foods stirs up hornets nest by partnering with Yellow Fever restaurant

ASAM NEWS

MANY PEOPLE are shaking their heads in bewilderment after Whole Foods announced it was opening a restaurant at its Long Beach, California location called Yellow Fever, reports Raw Story.

Many Asian/Americans associate yellow fever with the sexualized and passive stereotype of Asian women. White men with a passion for Asian women are often said to have “yellow fever.”

“Yellow fever” is also the name of a tropical disease spread by mosquitoes.

The grocery chain opened the restaurant in partnership with Korean/American chef Kelly Kim who founded the California eatery, reported the Daily News.

"I think it’s been silly, and I think it’s a bit funny that it’s all of a sudden a big deal,” co-founder Kim said to the Daily News.

“Yellow Fever celebrates all things Asian: the food, the culture and the people and our menu reflects that featuring cuisine from Korea, Japan, China, Vietnam, Thailand and Hawaii,” said Kim,

Reaction on Twitter has mostly been negative.

Whole Foods, which was recently purchased by Amazon, has so far not commented on the controversy.

Stereotypes about Asians just won't die

TWO ASIAN STEREOTYPES are alive and still in the minds of many non-Asians. They popped up again this week in the hubbub surrounding Donald Trump's racist remarks when referring to immigrants from Haiti, El Salvador and Africa.
In defense of Trump, a conservative commentator on CNN referred to the model minority trope when she said Trump “would welcome immigrants from Asia so he is open to accepting people from other countries.” said Carrie heffield said, referencing information from a White House official.

Liberal commentator Keith Boykin, who was on the same panel, called her on her use of the model minority image, “This is not good because it’s playing into the stereotype of the model minority,”

The comparisons of recent immigrants from South Asia, China and Korea working in tech and as engineers is not a fair comparison to immigrants who came as refugees or working in lower-paying jobs.

The model minority stereotype also hurts Asian/Americans because it ignores the wide diversity within that community, some who sruggle academically or live in extreme poverty.

The other instance of the Asian woman came about when NbC began researching other instances of racism in the White House. NBC investigators found out that when Trump was being briefed by a former senior analyst, who is Korean/American, about the situation on Pakistan, he interrupted the intelligence briefing by asking where she was from.

That's right that stupid question Asians and Asian/Americans have heard in our lives. This is how NBC reported the incident:

A career intelligence analyst who is an expert in hostage policy stood before President Donald Trump in the Oval Office last fall to brief him on the impending release of a family long held in Pakistan under uncertain circumstances.

It was her first time meeting the president, and when she was done briefing, he had a question for her.

”Where are you from?” the president asked, according to two officials with direct knowledge of the exchange.

New York, she replied.

Trump was unsatisfied and asked again, the officials said. Referring to the president’s hometown, she offered that she, too, was from Manhattan. But that’s not what the president was after.

He wanted to know where “your people” are from, according to the officials, who spoke off the record due to the nature of the internal discussions.

After the analyst revealed that her parents are Korean, Trump turned to an adviser in the room and seemed to suggest her ethnicity should determine her career path, asking why the “pretty Korean lady” isn’t negotiating with North Korea on his administration’s behalf, the officials said.

Was he even listening to the critical information in the briefing? Trump apparently had fallen under the spell of "yellow fever," a fetish for Asian women, something that is shared by alt-right men, according to a New York Times article.

"As a commenter wrote on an alt-right forum, 'exclusively' dating Asian women is practically a 'white-nationalist rite of passage,' reads the article.

Damn those stereotypes! They refuse to die!

(CORRECTED on Jan. 13, 8:30 a.m. PST, to correct subject of intelligence briefing.)

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If you like the Asian-girl fantasy, you are in for a surprise

NO SOONER did I mention Nancy Kwan and this vlog popped up. As a quick follow-up to my earlier writings about sexual stereotypes, James Shigeta, the aforementioned actress Nancy Kwan, etc., Let me introduce you to vlogger Anna Akana, she gives Yellow Fever a new meaning from a contemporary point of view and explains better than I can, the attraction Asian women possess for a lot of guys.

Katy Perry

Anybody who has spent serious time with an Asian woman know that they are anything but quiet and submissive. Most of the Asian women I know are strong individuals, smart, defiantly outspoken and definitely do not fit the stereotype. Some are sexy, some are not. Most fall somewhere in-between. 
Katy Perry's performance during the American Music Awards, dressed as a geisha, did nothing to dispell the stereotype. Her angry response show's she just didn't get it. She's probably never had the "ching-chong" insult hurled her way either.

It's heartening to see that a new generation of Asians - like Akana and a host of other bloggers, vloggers and social and educational activists - is continuing the fight against old prejudices and confronting the same issues that I had while growing up as in America. But at the same time, despite all the examples  counteracting the demeaning image in almost our all our institutions, it's kind of sad after all these years, to see the staying power of this particular stereotype and how it still dominates the view of Asian women.