By Louis Chan
AsAmNews National Correspondent
Racist sentiments die hard, and now a veteran award winning journalist is out of a job because of it.
Unfortunately a moment of pure joy and ecstasy has been dampened by by an unfortunate and inexcusable tweet from a journalist Terry Frei of the Denver Post.
It was quite a moment. Takuma Sato became the first Asian driver ever to win the Indy 500.
Sato celebrated by jugging, of all things, a quart of milk.
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It was a moment of pure joy. Any human being with any semblance of humanity would have cracked a smile at the sight of an accomplished athlete celebrating with milk .
Unfortunately, everyone didn’t include Denver Post sports writer Terry Frei, an award winning journalist and author who tweeted Sato’s victory made him feel “very uncomfortable.”
Former Post staffer Gil Asakawa, now an active blogger, tweeted a sentiment shared by many.
Wow, Denver Post sports writer tweeted he’s uncomfortable w/ a Japanese driver winning the Indy 500. I worked for the Post. I’m embarrassed. https://t.co/sDmVwBSsDA
— Gil Asakawa (@GilAsakawa) May 28, 2017
Frei moved quickly to try to rectify his mistake. He deleted it and sent out this simple apology instead.
I apologize.
— Terry Frei (@TFrei) May 29, 2017
The Post to its credit sent out its own statement.
The Denver Post’s statement on Terry Frei: pic.twitter.com/0YAmYawW7q
— The Denver Post (@denverpost) May 29, 2017
Our partner in crime, Philip of YOMYOMF, also responded quickly with his own thoughts.
“I do have to give Frei credit for packing so much racism into one tweet–from the reference to Memorial Day and the implication that it should have been an “American” who won and the subtle reminder that Japanese were our enemy to the regurgitation of the “Asians as bad drivers” stereotype to the “nothing specifically personal” line justifying the racist sentiment. Wow, that’s pretty impressive for 140 characters. Yup, no anonymous backwards hick is he.”
And Mr. Frei, nothing specifically personal, but you’re a racist piece of sh*t.
Frei later sent out a more extensive apology trying to explain his mistake.
OK, I took out the name of a book. pic.twitter.com/b953FbqMEh
— Terry Frei (@TFrei) May 29, 2017
For a wordsmith, Frei’s choice of words are curious. He apologized to “those people.” By those people, he meant the people who he is “politically and philosophically” aligned with who he referenced earlier. How about apologizing to the country of Japan? How about apologizing to the Japanese American community, many who probably read Frei’s work. How about apologizing to his readers, period.
Frei’s apology was too late to save his job.
The Post late this morning released a statement saying Frei was no long employed with the Denver Post.
We apologize for the disrespectful and unacceptable tweet that was sent by one of our reporters. Terry Frei is no longer an employee of The Denver Post. It’s our policy not to comment further on personnel issues.
The tweet doesn’t represent what we believe nor what we stand for. We hope you will accept our profound apologies.
What are your thoughts? Do you find Frei’s apologies sincere? Do you feel sorry for Frei?
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RE: Journalist Sends out Racist Tweet After Takuma Sato wins Indy 500: His lengthy apology is worse than his original tweet because he admits it wasn’t just a dumb thing to say, he clarifies his reason behind it was his racist prejudice towards the Japanese because a war against them that happened 80 years ago was the reason he felt the way he did at that moment like that justified it. He admits he shouldn’t have written his thoughts but sadly, he had them in the first place.
RE: Journalist sends out racist tweet after Takuma Sato Wins Indy 500: I suppose his apology was about as sincere as he could make it since being completely honesty would only have revealed his racist attitude even more.
We all know that if Takuma Sato had been a German, English, or even Russian national Frei would never have uttered a word of complaint. His laundry list of war crimes committed by Japan were also committed by Germans, by Russians, and even by the Allies in WWII. What Frei expressed was pure anti-Asian racism plain and simple. He hates us yellow people because he is a racist and probably a closet White supremacist. He doesn’t hate Europeans because in his mind Europeans are all good except for a few bad apples. But in his mind Asians are all bad except for a few good ones. A lot of White people in America think this way, let’s not kid ourselves. They will never let go of the “Yellow Peril” propaganda from the 20th century. This is why Malcolm X is our friend and the struggle for equality by the African American community is a collective struggle. Many White people don’t like us, don’t want us here, and hate the idea of sharing this country with non-whites!
RE: Update: Journalist Loses Jobs for Racist Tweet about Takuma Sato win in Indy 500: A country built on guilt and ignorance that eternally regurgitates its own mess.
Its a hard battle.
We could all be one color and there would still be paranoid hatred promoted by the government as thats what America runs on.
Land of the free..what a joke.
Hopefully things will come into focus now with trump being too dumb to play the game.