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Reaction to a rap song explaining how to target and rob Chinese people hit a stonewall of resistance in the United States, even though in the Rocky Mountain state of Colorado, which usually was not regarded as a main Chinese community.
"It is a serious and disgusting issue to prey on innocent families who work hard running their businesses and restaurants," Annie Guo, 30, the president of Asian Avenue, Colorado's premiere Asian-American business magazine, told Xinhua Sunday.
Last Wednesday, Asian protesters confronted rapper YG at a Silver Spring, Maryland, concert over the lyrics to his 2014 music video, "Meet the Flockers," and a petition to ban the song sent to the White House attracted more than 71,000 signatures till this Monday.
YG's music video showed burglars wearing bandanas breaking into a home with a picture of an Asian-American family of four on the table.
"This line makes me sick: 'First, you find a house and scope it out...find a Chinese neighbourhood, cause they don't believe in bank accounts,'" Guo said.
More protests over the song were expected to accompany YG's current "F--K Donald Trump," East Coast tour that included a show in Boston on this Wednesday.
Guo, whose decade-old magazine also hosts annual events that draw tens of thousands to Denver for the annual Dragon Boat Festival and the Miss Asian-American Colorado contest, like many Asian new millennials, had a hard time digesting such prejudice.
"Chinese people aren't raised with skin-colored prejudice, and really don't understand American racism," said John Yee, 95, a retired history professor living in Denver.
Yee, who taught Chinese history at the University of Colorado, agreed with Guo that this brand of racial profiling was no different than what African-American groups like Black Lives Matter complained about being subjected to every day.
"A black rapper tells others to attack and target Chinese Americans. It would be easy to assume that all black people hate Asian people," Guo said.
Guo, a well-educated, tireless advocate for Asian-Americans, earned a BA in Journalism from top-ranked University of Missouri, and completed a MBA in Health Administration at the University of Colorado in 2012.
"But we know these are isolated incidents and the views of specific individuals," she said, "In every community we can find those with discriminatory views, but hopefully as a whole, we will rise above, and one day live in a more accepting world."
Guo wasn't born yet in 1982, when Vincent Chin, 27, a Chinese-American, was brutally beaten to death in Detroit by two white American autoworkers with a baseball bat.
The June 1982 murder galvanized Asian-Americans across the country, not just because it was a hate crime, but also because the two perpetrators, who worked at Chrysler plant, received lenient sentences.
"They received three years of probation...it was appalling," Yee, who sent money to assist in the Chin family defense at that time, recalled the case when discussed with Xinhua about YG's song.
"They hit him in the head with a baseball bat so many times it killed him...and the judge let them walk. It was unbelievable," Yee said.
Chin's murder and the subsequent slap on the wrist his killers' received was considered a rallying point for the "Asian-American Movement" of the 1960s to 1980s, which triggered by a series of prejudiced acts against Americans of Asian descent, and the organized reaction that ensued.
"Chinese have always encountered prejudice in America, but after the Chin murder, things got a little better," Yee said.
Between 30 and 50 Chinese Americans protest outside a YG rap concert Wednesday at The Fillmore. Photo: NBC News
Yee also pointed out that bias against Chinese in the United States went back to the mid-1800s when extensive Chinese labor was used to build America's trans-continental railroad.
"Many of those laborers stayed in Colorado," according to Yee, who said the Chinese laborers worked in the coalmines, or moved to downtown Denver where they lived and started small businesses.
"In 1880 an angry mob attacked Denver's Chinatown and destroyed the place. They burned and gutted Chinese businesses, looted Chinese homes, and killed and injured many Chinese," Yee said.
According to the Rocky Mountain News, Chinatown was "gutted as completely as though a cyclone had come in one door and passed out the rear. There was nothing left...whole."
"One young Chinese man was kicked in the head until he died, and another was left hanging from a tree for several days before his body was cut down," Yee said. "The police did nothing."
"That's why the YG song is such a step backwards and such a low point," says Quan Zhang, who received an engineering degree in 2012 and currently works at a semi-conductor software company in California.
Zhang, 33, like many of his generation, tried not to judge controversial lyrics often related to rap music, but recognized its popular appeal and widely acceptance across the United States.
"The younger kids think rap is cool, but this goes way beyond normal lines," said Zhang.
（APD）
