Open the DP today to find an article about Jews, Arabs, and Muslims coming together through music. Like so many other initiatives on and around Penn campus, it’s sweet, a little sappy, and very PC. That’s the way we do it at Penn, and that’s the way we do it — for the most part — in the US at large.
But in Brazil, where the nation is celebrating 100 years of Japanese immigration, samba celebrity Angela Bismarchi is doing things a little differently. She’s going to bridge the gap between Brazil and Japan not through art, sport, or faith, but through… plastic surgery.
That’s right. As Fox News reports, Bismarchi is “having nylon wires implanted in her eyes to give them an oriental slant.” What better way to celebrate the Japanese than by superficially mutilating one’s face to look like them? (Video after the jump.)
Naturally, my first reaction to this was nausea. My second was righteous indignation: this is racism! My third was confusion. Is it? If I walked down the street pulling at the corners of my eyes with my fingers saying “I’m Japanese!” that would be racist. But if I had my eyes surgically altered — forever — and went around saying “I’m Japanese,” would it still be racist? I don’t know. Certainly it would be insensitive and a little ignorant. The difference between Asians and Caucasians isn’t as simple as slanted vs. rounded eyes. Our entire facial structures are different.
More importantly, the idea of manipulating one’s own face in order to achieve the characteristics of another race implies that other races somehow branch off, or are mutations, of our own. We can’t become Asians by squinting our eyes any more than Asians can become white by pushing their eyes in.
In the end, Ms. Bismarchi’s story is a bizarre one, and a reminder of the huge gray area between blatant racism and vacuous political correctness. If her surgery is culturally ignorant, it’s also done in good faith. Just don’t expect Penn kids to go under the knife in the name of racial unity anytime soon.
Tags: Racism
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January 31st, 2008 at 3:39 pm
The quote you give says that the woman is getting the surgery in order to acheive “an oridental slant.” The linked article’s title says she is doing it “to make [her] eyes look more Japanese.” That isn’t the same as saying, “I’m Japanese.” Nowhere outside of your article did anyone say that anything other than her eyes would become more Japanese (unless they do in the Portuguese that I can’t understand).
February 8th, 2008 at 2:10 am
[...] unknown wrote an interesting post today onHere’s a quick excerptOpen the DP today to find an article about Jews, Arabs, and Muslims coming together through music. Like so many other initiatives on and around Penn campus, it’s sweet, a little sappy, and very PC. That’s the way we do it at Penn, … [...]
July 9th, 2008 at 1:29 am
Getting a plastic surgery and changing your entire facial features into somewhat like the feature of other races doesn’t necessarily mean racism. It may be taboo to most people, but if the act is in good faith, then maybe we can leave the act as it is..