Comedian Margaret Cho called those offended by her sketches as a North Korean general on the Golden Globes “racist”, in an interview with Emil Guillermo for his blog for AALDEF, the Asian American Legal Defense & Education Fund.
The response came after a question from Guillermo asking if she understood the backlash her sketch generated.
“No, I’m not a racist person so I don’t know,” responded Cho. “It’s only people that are racist who were acting negatively, unfortunately. What is really racist is that I’m the only Asian person involved in the entire event. And what’s really racist is there’s no people of color in any of the acting nominations for the Oscars.”
Few from the Asian American community would disagree that we need more representation in Hollywood. She’s definitely on the same page with her critics there.
Where the disagreement comes is the style in which Cho made her satiric comment about North Korea–the caricature of a North Korean general with a heavy accent and stoic face.
To that Cho responded “And therefore people of color can’t make commentary on people of color, therefore Asian people cannot talk about other Asian people? This is basically saying white people can only talk about white people. That’s what they’re saying. They’re racist.”
Guillermo also talked to Cho about how the sketch came about, her involvement with Eddie Huang at the early stages of the upcoming comedy, Fresh Off the Boat, and her thoughts 20 years later about what went wrong with her network comedy, All American Girl.
You can read about that in AALDEF.
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