TikTok Comedian pranks Chinese restaurant

By Jana Monji, AsAmNews Art & Culture Writer

I’m new to TikTok and, for the most part, find it a bit annoying except for a few dance and photo videos. This came up in my feed and I thought: Wonder why the comments are turned off? I looked at 24 of his videos and this was the only one which had the comments turned off.

In theory, this person does have a heart. He feels for people on the autism spectrum because he has a GoFundMe campaign for Autism Speaks, Inc. Someone has suggested that I might be on the spectrum, but I understand that’s the current way people respond to people with higher degrees. On his GoFundMe campaign, Sal Zo lists himself as being in West Hempstead, NY.

West Hempstead, New York is a city with a population of about 19,864. Whites make up 69.25 percent of the population. Black or African Americans make up 11.34 percent. Asian Americans make up 6.28 percent of the population with Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islanders making up 0.37 percent.

Sal Zo also lists himself as being in Franklin Square, NY. Franklin Square is 69.71 percent White with 11.86 percent Asian American. Black and African Americans are 2.72 percent.  Franklin Square is 1.4 miles away from West Hempstead.

My question is, as always, is targeting Asian American restaurants okay because this person sees racism as binary, only Black and White? Why didn’t he decide to call Black restaurants and have them speak to each other? Would he make fun of African American Vernacular English (AAVE)? Or Latino restaurants and possible accent(s) or speaking Spanish? Zo notes that he was born in Italy (“Sicilian Born”) and is in love with the 90s. While making fun of the Chinese Americans was perfectly acceptable in the 1890s, it wasn’t in the 1990s and even less so now.

At a time when many restaurants are struggling to survive, do they really need to have their time wasted by a wanna-be comedian?

See more things like this on TikTok or other social media and have an opinion on it? Contact me. I’m on Twitter, Instagram, TikTok and Facebook.

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