Does this quote really add anything to the story? I mean, sure, the guy may have said it, but does it have anything to do with anything?
“The neighbors are Asians — they don’t complain about anything,” Mr. Marinescu said. “And even when the kids play outside, it’s quiet.”
yeah- way random.
well, i am sitting in my office in the front of the house, and i can hear M yelling all the way out in my backyard from here. i mean, the windows are open, but STILL.
then again, she’s only *half* asian.
Ha! yeah, they’re probably quiet because the ‘playing’ is actually doing some math calculations.
and just because Asian kids aren’t running around like banshees screaming their heads off, that makes them good neighbors whose parents won’t complain about design choices.
but just wait until the Asian neighbors start cooking their stinky Asian food that smells up the whole neighborhood….
Ah, those Asians – so stoic.
Clearly, the editor fell asleep on this one.
1. I think the meaning behind his quote is that the neighbors don’t complain because Asians don’t complain about anything, right?
2. “During construction, he said, two young Korean architects stopped by….”. Again, why the need to point out their ethnicity?
Well, you know how those Romanians are… always stereotyping Asians.
(WTF????)
Wow. That’s bad editing. I work in journalism, and honestly, I think you should send a quick note about this to their Public Editor, Clark Hoyt. His email is public AT nytimes.com. His job is to advocate to the newsroom on behalf of the readers, so he gets paid to listen to your opinion. Did the reporter think that being racist is avant-garde or something? He’s a nutty, racist old man, so he must be a good designer/architect! All the best are!
Also – Hello! I don’t know if I’ve ever commented before, but I’ve read your blog forever. I am just really lazy. But, a big fan!
An attempt at emphasizing the diversity of the neighborhood perhaps?
And the Korean architects who stopped by might actually have been from Korea (i.e. national identity vs ethnicity).
If he didn’t say that, how would you know what neighborhoods to move to?
Wow, total racism alert. My ex-aunt says stuff like that all the time, only worse. There’s always an implied “because” in there: they’re quiet BECAUSE they’re Asian, she’s unsanitary BECAUSE she’s Vietnamese, he’s aloof BECAUSE he’s Korean, etc etc.
My aunt means it meanly. My grandmother does similar but non-hostily: the nice BLACK family down the street, her WOMAN doctor, her JEWISH friend. I call her on it, but she defends that she’s just identifying, and I do think she’s rather fascinated by America’s diversity now, compared to the fear she held back in her 70s.
It’s the whole “positive racism” thing. A lot of white people think it’s okay to positively stereotype Asians because they’re saying “nice’ things, like the husband is good at math, they keep their yard really clean, they’re quiet, etc.
A very worldly, educated friend of mine was once surprised that Kevin said he didn’t always identify with white people and in some ways, felt more closely aligned (at least here in the south) to the black experience of being different from the general population. She was shocked! How could it be possible that an Asian person in an area where they are an extreme minority every felt “different” when walking into a room of white people or felt out of place in a rural southern town where no one expected, for example, him to be a native english speaker?! I think it does get to the heart of the whole “model minority” thing.
I agree it was bad editing, but as for the guy the article profiled–he’s 71 years old and lived for most of his life in Communist Romania. If I was a friend of his, or his granddaughter or something, I would call him on that quote, but if he was just someone I was talking to on the street, I’d probably let it slide with the understanding that he was born and raised in a different time and a different culture.
Mike Royko, who was one of my favorite journalists, said once that we should be careful not to use an axe to peel a grape.