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10.17.2017

Charlyne Yi Recounts Racist Remarks from Writer and Director David Cross

By Jenn Fang. Cross-Posted from Reappropriate.



Charlyne Yi -- the award-winning actor, comedian, writer, and musician best known for her role as a series regular on House, her voice acting work on Steven Universe, and her starring role in Paper Heart which she also wrote -- took to Twitter earlier this week to describe her first encounter with writer, director and actor David Cross.

In a series of four tweets, Yi -- who is mixed race Filipinx and Korean American -- describes how when she first met Cross, Cross made fun of Yi for her appearance. When she didn't respond, Cross reportedly said: "What's a matter? You don't speak English?? Ching-Chong-Ching-Chong." Cross went on to mockingly challenge Yi to a karate match.

At the time of the encounter, Cross was over forty years old, and already an established comedian, writer and TV and film actor with several stand-up comedy specials already under his belt. Yi was a veritable newcomer to the comedy and acting scene, and was only about twenty years old.









Cross, who is known for his left-wing political satire, describes himself as a "socialist Democrat" who has previously criticized comedian Larry the Cable Guy for being racist and anti-gay. It seems, however, that Cross himself isn't immune to being racist: mocking an Asian American woman with "ching-chong-ching-chong" is textbook anti-Asian racism.

Moreover, the privileged entitlement that Cross employed as an industry staple to get away with this racist mockery of a newcomer is clear. Whether with regard to workplace racism or sexual harassment or racism, the ways that people with power leverage their professional positions to intimidate, bully, and silence victims from speaking out against abuse remain the same. For women of colour, the line between racial and sexual harassment are further blurred: many professional women of colour in STEM, for example, recount how the sexual harassment and gender discrimination they fact in the workplace is often highly racialized, and vice versa.

This week’s national conversation around #metoo is not just about highlighting sexual assault; it is about demonstrating the many ways that harassers and abusers are institutionally protected from facing consequences for the abuse they enact. According to Yi, Cross subjected her to racist abuse at their first encounter, and this was so mundane an exchange for him that he had completely forgotten about it by the time of their second encounter. Notably, at that second conversation, Cross treated Yi with the sort of basic respect one expects when being introduced to a peer: perhaps because, by then, Yi was more professionally established? Did he perceive less of a power imbalance between them that he could exploit?

In 2015, the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) received nearly 30,000 complaints related to workplace harassment and discrimination. The EEOC further noted that this likely a massive underestimate of the prevalence of workplace discrimination -- which includes racial, sexual and other forms of harassment; the vast majority of harassment incidents likely do not result in a formal report to the EEOC. Nonetheless, the EEOC also noted that in 2015, 43% of all complaints filed to the Commission by federal employees that year were related to workplace discrimination and harassment.

Of the nearly 30,000 complaints the EEOC received in 2015 related to workplace discrimination, 45% were related to charges of discrimination based on race and 34% were related to charges of discrimination based on sex; again, some complaints alleged both. The EEOC further notes that prevalence of race- or ethnicity-based discrimination in the workplace is seriously understudied, but that some studies estimate that between 40-60% of employees of colour experience some form of race- or ethnicity-based harassment at work.

There is no excuse for the continued culture of workplace harassment that people of colour must endure on a daily basis. What should be more frustrating about Yi’s story isn’t just that it happened, but also that people like David Cross typically face zero consequences for exercising his privilege and power to victimize an up-and-coming industry newcomer.

As Asian Americans, we talk a lot about wanting to diversify Hollywood and other industries. But, getting actors of colour to the casting couch is not enough; we must also stridently oppose the culture of entitlement, abuse, and exploitation endemic to most industries wherein people of colour and femmes are traditionally underrepresented that challenges our ability to navigate and succeed in those spaces.

David Cross was a cavalierly racist asshole ten years ago, and literally nothing happened to him. That is not okay.

Update: David Cross has responded on Twitter with basically whatever the polar opposite of #IBelieveYou is. This is neither how an apology nor how contrition works.


Here is his tweet responding directly to Yi, where he also misspells her name to boot:


Yi has yet to respond to the-… I don’t really know what to call it, but “apology” is definitely not the right word.

Please do better, Mr. Cross. Do better.