Give WDRB reporter Valerie Chinn lots of credit.
The reporter for the Fox affiliate in Louisville, Kentucky handled a racist remark directed at her by a local fire chief with poise.
According to Opposing Views, Chinn has been investigating spending at the Southeast Bullitt Fire Protection District for a year.
“Why are there so many firehouses that are empty?” Chinn asked Chief Julius Hatfield.
“Do you understand English, darling?” Hatfield asked. “Do you understand English? I just told you I don’t have anything to say to you.”
“I understand English,” Chinn replied. “I don’t appreciate how you are speaking to me.”
You can see the entire confrontation in the clip from WDRB.
You can read about the time the chief used in N word in Opposing Views
RE: Fire chief asks Asian American reporter if she speaks English: Wonder when AAJA mediawatch will post this and sent a reply to the fire chief?
RE: Fire Chief Asks Asian American reporter if she speaks English: The fire chief of the bullitt is a bulkshit. Hes a bastard cheating the public.
RE: Fire chief asks Asian American reporter if she speaks English: Sorry this was not a “racist remark”. Rude and dismissive, perhaps, but hardly racist, And playing the race card detracts from what was otherwise a good story.
I would say the many Asian Americans who have been subjected to such remarks would strongly disagree with you. Its not the race card if you lived through such racially offensive remarks.
RE: Fire Chief asks Asian American reporter if she speaks English: Son, do YOU speak English? Because you apparently didn’t understand what the fire chief did.
RE: Fire chief asks Asian American reporter if she speaks English: it is if everytime you speak “good English”, someone deigns to say, oh, your English is so good. I’m surprised.” especially coming from a European whose first language is not English or a American whose English grades were close to failing.
it’s like Chappelle says when he talks about comments made about a Black Judge, “oh you speak so well!” in case you didn’t understand the words coming out of my mouth.
RE: Fire chief asks Asian American reporter is she speaks English: The Fire Chief should apologize to the reporter. He was rude, arrogant, low, and racist. He also should resign because I can’t imagine how he could serve people equally with a racist’s mind.
RE: Fire chief asks Asian American reporter if she speaks English: And this is coming from the fire chief of a city which repeatedly congratulate itself being progressive. How ironic. Hypocritical “public servant” who serve none better than self interest. Righteous moral saint on the outside. Arogant and ignorant inside.
RE: Fire chief asks Asian American reporter if she speaks English: I was one of the few Asians in the U.S. Navy’s nuke program in the early 1990s as an officer candidate, and raised the same question(s) against the similar comments by two officers who had never spoke to me about the identical and prejudice statement on English based on skin color. I had support from my own lower chain of command but got squash by higher commend for a cover-up. I ended up being sent to a civilian psychiatric ward near the base, then locked in a Naval base hospital for a few more weeks until I started a hunger strike to force the Navy to give me a discharge date. The biggest discriminator is the government as they are immune and have enough resource to squash any complaints for these type of minor discriminative acts. Look at how the government treats the Jewish, and minority like the Arabs, Hispanic and the African American here. These stereo-type offenses happens everyday, everywhere.
RE: Fire chief asks Asian American reporter if she speaks English: The sad thing is the red neck himself does not speak decent English, but slangy street rubbish.
RE: Fire chief asks Asian American reporter if she speaks English: This fire chief has been doing the way as the officers do in China; he then should speak Chinese to the reporter, go to take a Chinese class and move your ass to China, we do need you white trash in the U.S.
RE: Fire Chief asks Asian American reporter is she speaks English: The fire chief :silliness,garbage,slangy,rubbish,trash,junk::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::go home!!!!
RE: Fire chief asks Asian American reporter if she speaks English: I came here because AsAm News listed this as the #3 most viewed story of the year. Pretty sad, because (A) it has nothing to do with Asian American issues (if this is a big case of anti-Asian discrimination, then Asians are incredibly untouched by racism!) and (B) because 11 of the 12 commenters who posted above don’t seem capable of understanding that. I almost want to ask “Don’t you guys speak English?”…but know that the irony won’t be appreciated or even comprehended. Dreamer, above, points out that the fire chief isn’t asking Chinn if she speaks English because he assumes from her Asian face that she won’t understand. Rather, he makes that comment because she keeps hounding him with the same questions that he’s either answered or told her he won’t answer. For stating what should be very clear to anyone who watches the six minute clip, Dreamer gets an aggregate 19 thumbs down marks. In fact, he’s the only one in the red in terms of thumbs up vs. thumbs down. Sad. It’s kind of like the way that there’s this simplified idea that anyone who uses the “n-word” even when quoting someone, must be a racist…but if you don’t use the n-word, you’re not a racist. Seems there are Asians and Asian Americans who see someone saying “Can’t you speak English?” and automatically assume the person is a racist redneck. Watch the clip. If you do so objectively, you should find that Dreamer was even being overly kind to the report by saying it was “otherwise a good story.” I’m not even convinced of that. I see one person, apart from Chinn and WDRB, criticizing the fire chief, and at least two people praising him and saying that there wouldn’t be a fire department if not for him. I hear the chief telling Chinn that the can’t interview him because the meeting is private and Chinn retorting that board meetings are supposed to be public and the fire chief responding that SOME board meetings need to be public, but this isn’t one of those. Chinn then backpedals because she hasn’t done her homework and doesn’t realize this and she seems to make up for it by going on the offensive. You see her following the chief super close with a microphone in hand even though there’s no one else around and she doesn’t have to get in so close. You see her accusing him of throwing her microphone, when it hasn’t flown to the other side of the room, it’s just been knocked off a table (like the fire chief said: I knocked it away). I’m inclined to think the story of massive embezzlement isn’t really there and Chinn was trying to find something by intimidating the fire chief. What did they get on him? That all their tax filings haven’t been released yet? That the fire chief’s wife was paid a whopping $14,000 for the whole year for doing secretarial work? Is that a scoop? If the story is that the fire chief has been ripping off the tax payers, show us his yacht and mansion, not this week-ass petty stuff framed by a false cry of racism. It’s all in the clip. Remember WDRB had all the footage and did the editing and provided the commentary and this was the best they can do. Non-story if you ask me. And the 11 of you sad commenters above who didn’t get that or agreed that the fire chief was racist, you may speak English, but you sure don’t UNDERSTAND English.