{"id":74,"date":"2007-07-11T18:21:36","date_gmt":"2007-07-11T23:21:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.fortunecookiechronicles.com\/2007\/07\/11\/so-when-is-a-font-racist-aka-can-we-re-appropriate-a-font\/"},"modified":"2007-07-11T18:22:13","modified_gmt":"2007-07-11T23:22:13","slug":"so-when-is-a-font-racist-aka-can-we-re-appropriate-a-font","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.fortunecookiechronicles.com\/blog\/2007\/07\/11\/so-when-is-a-font-racist-aka-can-we-re-appropriate-a-font\/","title":{"rendered":"So, when is a font racist?"},"content":{"rendered":"

So today, I got a burst of traffic from a link from AngryAsianMan<\/a>, a popular and well-regarded blog<\/a> on Asian American issues. From that traffic, I got the following feedback comment on the chingchongy font that “THE FORTUNE COOKIE CHRONICLES” is written in along the top of the blog, which I found intriguing.<\/p>\n

Angry Asian Man has criticized others for using the pseudo”Chinesey” letters like your Fortune
\nCookie Chronicles heading. How about the actual Chinese characters with the English translation in parentheses underneath?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

So here is the question. When is the use of the font racist? I haven’t seen the Angry Asian Man criticism of the usage, and may go on later to dig it out it. But meanwhile I have a good guess as to the type of the font he might be criticizing, and I think we are talking about two different contexts. The font would be disturbing if I were using it earnestly to represent China or “Chineseness” — but the fact is, that my book is actually about Chinese-Americaness (and the American perception of Chineseness) . So in a way the font is very appropriate since it represents the exotification of the “Orient.” We are appropriating it, not in a serious way, but in a way of self-aware mockery. Also different perhaps is the fact that I am Chinese, and read and write Chinese. I would make the argument that the “n” word can be racist in certain contexts, but that it has also been appropriated to be used in cases where it’s not racist.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

So today, I got a burst of traffic from a link from AngryAsianMan, a popular and well-regarded blog on Asian American issues. From that traffic, I got the following feedback comment on the chingchongy font that “THE FORTUNE COOKIE CHRONICLES” is written in along the top of the blog, which I found intriguing. Angry Asian […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,4,21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-74","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-musings","category-musings","category-quirky"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2pydS-1c","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.fortunecookiechronicles.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.fortunecookiechronicles.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.fortunecookiechronicles.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.fortunecookiechronicles.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.fortunecookiechronicles.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=74"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.fortunecookiechronicles.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.fortunecookiechronicles.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=74"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.fortunecookiechronicles.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=74"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.fortunecookiechronicles.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=74"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}