Kayla Hui Nicole Cardoza Kayla Hui Nicole Cardoza

Honor Mahjong.

Barely a week into 2021, a Dallas-based company called The Mahjong Line was met with outrage on social media for appropriating mahjong, a Chinese tile-based game that dates back to the 1800s (Stanford News).

Happy Wednesday and welcome back to the Anti-Racism Daily. I appreciate your readership. I missed a lot of news during last week's insurrection at the Capitol, but not today's story. I emailed Kayla to see if she'd want to cover it, but turns out she had already sent us a pitch! We've written about cultural appropriation a few times on the newsletter, so keep those stories in mind as you read.

Also, yesterday we discussed abolishing the death penalty. Later that day, two executions scheduled for this week (Cory Johnson and Dustin John Higgs) have been halted by a federal judge.

Our work is made possible by our paid subscribers. You can financially contribute by making a one-time gift on our website or PayPal or subscribe for $7/month on Patreon. Thank you all for your support!

Nicole

TAKE ACTION

  • Be a responsible consumer and shop at stores that do not appropriate mahjong and other cultures. 

  • Learn about mahjong’s history and hand carved tiles here. 

  • Educate yourself on why cultural appropriation is harmful here. 

  • Support local businesses in Chinatowns - where mahjong is sold and played - by donating to either Send Chinatown Love or The Longevity Fund.

GET EDUCATED

By Kayla Hui (she/her)

Barely a week into 2021, a Dallas-based company called The Mahjong Line was met with outrage on social media for appropriating mahjong, a Chinese tile-based game that dates back to the 1800s (Stanford News). 

Cultural appropriation is the act of using objects or elements of a non-dominant culture (when white people use objects, clothing, elements from Black, Indigenous, and other communities of color) in a way that doesn’t respect the original meaning, give credit to the original source, or reinforces harmful stereotypes (Anti-Racism Daily). 

Developed in the Qing Dynasty, the strategy-based game has been played and preserved by Chinese people for centuries. Mahjong consists of 144 tiles made up of three suits that have been carved with Chinese symbols. When Kate LaGere, co-founder of the company wanted to “refresh” the artwork of the traditional tiles because the designs were “all the same” and “did not mirror her style and personality,” she along with her two coworkers, Annie O’Grady and Bianca Watson gentrified the game. Rather than learn the Chinese numbers and symbols, the three white women replaced traditional Chinese glyphs with bubbles, thunderbolts, and bags of flour. By making the game palatable to a white gaze, they made the game harder to understand, and contributed to the erasure of Chinese culture and history.

On their website, they failed to mention and credit the game’s origins to the Qing Dynasty. And instead of giving proper credit to Chinese people, they attempted to justify their actions by differentiating between “American” mahjong and “Chinese” mahjong. In the 1920s, Joseph Babcock popularized mahjong in the states by creating new rules so that Americans could adapt (National Mahjongg League). Although variations of gameplay exist, any variation of mahjong is cultural appropriation because it neglects mahjong’s original rules. By placing the word American in front of mahjong, it creates an illusion that mahjong was created and developed in the United States. 

If changing the Chinese glyphs and calling mahjong American wasn’t gentrified enough, people can choose which mahjong set they want to purchase based on a quiz that asks for the ideal vacation day and theme song, another classic example of minimizing the game and colonizing it to make the game more suitable for white people. 

There are multiple reasons why the cultural appropriation of mahjong is harmful to the Chinese community. First, appropriation fails to acknowledge and give proper credit to the game’s roots. Failing to credit the game’s Chinese origins erases its history and cultural significance. 

Secondly, appropriation “makes things cool for white people, but too ethnic for people of color” (Everyday Feminism). By using the words “refresh,” The Mahjong Line insinuated that mahjong needed rebranding in order for the game to be enjoyable or played. Words like “rebrand” and “refresh” are codes for gentrification and colonization and further erase the game's Chinese heritage. 

The appropriation is further exacerbated when members of the dominant culture – white people – profit off of a culture that is not theirs. This causes harm to businesses of those appropriated communities. In choosing to sell exorbitant and appropriated mahjong sets, Kate, Annie, and Bianca have harmed Chinese businesses that have worked centuries to preserve the game’s craftsmanship. Although handcrafted mahjong is still being made today, the craft is dying due to the cheaper pricing of manufactured sets. By selling mahjong in the first place and upcharging these sets to $425, The Mahjong Line is contributing to cultural extinction. 

For BIPOC communities, barriers like racism and xenophobia hamper their ability to earn income from their cultural items. For example, BIPOC may face language barriers or lack the institutional power to earn an income (Everyday Feminism). Because of white supremacy, white people exploit culture and turn culturally specific tools into profit.

Back in the 1920s and 30s, mahjong became culturally important in Chinatowns. It allowed Chinese people to form and build a community at a time when they were excluded because Americans saw them as “perpetual foreigners” (Stanford News). 

When I saw mahjong - a game that has been a significant part of my identity, culture, and upbringing - gentrified, it rendered feelings of anger and frustration. Every year, my father’s side of the family hosts a family reunion, and there, I get to observe and play with my goomas (aunts in Chinese) and cow cows (uncles in Chinese). It is because of Chinese mahjong artisans that has allowed not only my family, but other Asian communities to play and enjoy mahjong today. 

Deniers of appropriation will say that anyone can play or learn mahjong. The problem is not that the game cannot be enjoyed by everybody. The problem is that it cannot be sold, produced, and branded by just anyone, especially by groups of people from cultures where mahjong did not originate from. 

Although the company issued an apology on their Instagram account on January 5, their attempt to apologize fell short. Rather than own up to their actions and apologize, their “we launched this company with pure intentions” was only an attempt to justify their actions. They also continued to use “American” in describing mahjong and failed to acknowledge or describe in any detail, steps to “rectify” the situation. 

Toward the end of the company’s statement, the owners wrote, “we are always open to constructive criticism and are continuing to conduct conversations with those who can provide further insight to the game’s traditions and roots in both Chinese and American cultures.” Despite this comment, they have disabled their comments and mentions on Instagram, silencing the communities they harmed. 

Kate, Annie, and Bianca were not alone in aiding in the appropriation. They had help from a branding company called Oh Brand Design and Plavidal Photography. Plavidol Photography has issued a formal apology on their Instagram and Oh Brand Design released a statement on their website and announced their terminated relationship with The Mahjong Line.

The appropriation perpetrated by The Mahjong Line adds to the long history of cultural appropriation that has been perpetuated in this country. We see this appropriation manifest itself in the form of sexualized “Indian and Asian” halloween costumes, non-Black people wearing braids or other protective hairstyles, white women wearing Indian saris, qipaos, and other traditional dresses to prom, and more (Centennial Beauty, BuzzFeed News, The Washington Post). 

Mahjong is more than just a tile-game, it is the long standing symbol of Chinese culture and community. It is abundantly clear that through The Mahjong Line’s actions, they have contributed to further colonization and cultural erasure. As we continue into 2021, we must leave cultural gentrification behind and support Chinese mahjong artisans who have worked to preserve a tradition that has been around for generations.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

  • Support Chinese mahjong retailers and artists working to preserve mahjong’s craftsmanship.

  • The Mahjong Line, a Dallas-based company owned by three white women appropriated and gentrified Chinese mahjong. 

  • Using elements, objects, or practices of BIPOC communities in a way that doesn’t respect the original meaning or give credit to the original source is cultural appropriation.

  • Cultural appropriation is harmful to the community whose culture is being appropriated. It fails to give credit to the creator, reinforces negative stereotypes about a group, and allows white people to profit off a culture that is not theirs.

Related Issues

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Nicole Cardoza Nicole Cardoza

Support Asian Americans through COVID-19.

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Happy Monday! Thank you for all your kind requests to support the process of consolidating our content – I'll be going through them and following up this week!

We're back to our weekly series on COVID-19 (usually published on Sundays) and looking at the spike in anti-Asian racism that's growing at the pace of the virus. Thank you to Katie for sharing her story here with us today, and sending love to everyone in this community that's dealing with this violence. Full COVID-19 reporting here >

Many of you have mentioned that Gmail keeps hiding this newsletter in your Promotions tab. Apparently, that's happening to a lot of BLM content (h/t to Jason for sending this along). But it's a 5-second fix on a desktop computer. Here's how to do it.

Contributions to this project are always appreciated. Give one-time on our website, through Venmo @nicoleacardoza, or pledge $5/month on our Patreon to keep this work growing.

Nicole

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TAKE ACTION

1. Ensure your company has implemented anti-discrimination policies that protect Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders using this PDF.

2. In your next few interactions with people who are different from you, bring awareness and acknowledge the prejudice or disregard you might initially have about this person based on their surface categorical group (their race, sexual orientation, or gender)...then move beyond that. What else do you notice about this person’s character?

3. Don't refer to COVID-19 using the racist terminology mentioned in this newsletter.

GET EDUCATED

The onset of COVID-19 in early March set off a dramatic spike in anti-Asian racism. The Stop AAPI Hate Reporting Center, organized by the Asian Pacific Policy and Planning Council, has tracked over 1,900 self-reported acts of anti-Asian incidents from March 13 – June, and hundreds more from California and Texas since (A3PCON). 58% of Asian Americans feel it’s more common to experience racism now than it was before COVID-19, and 31% have been subject to slurs or jokes because of their race or ethnicity (Pew Research). A recent Pew Study reports that since COVID-19 about 40% of U.S. adults believe “it has become more common for people to express racist views toward Asians since the pandemic began”  (Pew Research).

Our president has played a role in this, applying his divisive approach to conversations around COVID-19, choosing to refer to it as “Chinese virus,” or “kung flu,” consistently. Press noted he used “Chinese virus” over 20 times between March 16 and March 30 (NBC News). I found a source where he agreed to stop using the term in late March to “protect our Asian American community in the United States,” but keeps using it, most recently in late July when he finally encouraged citizens to wear a mask (Bloomberg, CNN). These terms have also been perpetuated by the media and the general population.

I know we’re probably all tired of talking about Trump. I sure am. But, as we’ve discussed in previous newsletters, language matters. And there’s a long history of North America and its leaders using false narratives to associate Asian Americans with diseases to "justify" racial discrimination and violence. In the late 19th century, many Chinese and Japanese people immigrated to the U.S. and Canada for the gold rush, along with immigrants from the UK and Europe. Their labor was indispensable for the growth of infrastructure alongside the West Coast, but they were also paid terribly compared to their white American counterparts (The Conversation). 

As Chinese communities began to grow, white communities turned against them, fearing they would take their jobs and disrupt their quality of life. They ostracized them by blaming Chinese people for diseases – like syphilis, leprosy, and smallpox –  growing in the region. This was entirely untrue; poverty, not race, is more accurately correlated with the spread of diseases. Despite that, Canada created a Royal Commission on Chinese Immigration and concluded that  "Chinese quarters are the filthiest and most disgusting places in Victoria, overcrowded hotbeds of disease and vice, disseminating fever and polluting the air all around,” even though they knew themselves it wasn’t accurate (The Conversation).  This spurred violence and hateful rhetoric, but political changes, too: the U.S. passed the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882, and Canada followed with their own Chinese Immigration Act in 1885. These were the first law for both countries that excluded an entire ethnic group (AAPF).

“Viruses know no borders and they don’t care about your ethnicity or the colour of your skin or how much money you have in the bank.”

Dr. Mike Ryan, Executive Director of the World Health Organization, for Newsweek

We chatted with Katie Dean, an educator currently working in the tech space, for her perspective of the anti-Asian racism and our country’s history of violence against Asian Americans.


By Katie Dean


How has COVID-19 impacted you?
I was the first person I know to start self-isolating in early March. I was reading international publications, and I saw what was happening in other parts of the world. Out of respect for the suffering and loss Italy, Iran, and China endured, I decided the most responsible thing I could do was stay inside. In my life, I’ve chosen meaningful work over monetary success. I give up my seat on the bus for elderly people. I’m also funny, sharp-witted, and fanatically clean.

Why am I listing all of this? Because right now, who I actually am, doesn’t matter. When I walk out into the world, I am judged by my face. And currently the face of an Asian person, to some, is synonymous with COVID-19, the virus that has taken loved ones, the virus that’s brought the global economy to a crashing halt, the virus that has exacerbated every conceivable racial and socioeconomic disparity. And this hurts, on a profound level.

The last thing I’m eliciting is pity. This is what all BIPOC people endure. This is the same experience people resembling someone of Middle Eastern descent have endured since 9/11. This is what Black people have endured systemically since 1619. This paragraph is just for illustration.

And how has this racism shown up in your life before COVID-19?
On multiple occasions, while I was in high school, a lifelong white friend would look at me, really seeing ME for the first time, and after years of friendship, in a moment of reckoning say, “I finally see you as white.” At the time, my fourteen-year-old self felt a sense of pride and acceptance in those moments, a sense of belonging. As I’ve advanced in my understanding of race, and how my race has shaped my experiences, I look back and am horrified by what these statements in fact meant.

When my white friends said, “I finally see you as white,” what they meant is “I finally see you as human,” and what that translates to is that “white and only white people are able to be fully human, fully themselves, fully individual”. This construct also implies that all non-white people are all somehow “less than” until it’s decided by white people that they are acceptable. Well, BIPOC and other marginalized groups have no interest in our humanity being measured against the white measuring stick.

Where do you believe we need to go from here?
Dehumanizing others, throughout the entire course of human history, is what’s allowed the worst atrocities to take place. The psychology of seeing whole groups of people as less than human, is what allows and justifies egregious mistreatment, apathy towards suffering, and irreverence to the genocide of these other groups. This is currently happening on all fronts, against all BIPOC as well as the LGBTQ+ communities.

Breaking down systemic racism will be the greatest battle we face, spanning many lifetimes. But addressing who we assign and don’t assign individuality to, the basic respect of recognizing the unique human in others, is critical work we can all start immediately to dismantle racist behaviors within ourselves.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

  • The onset of COVID-19 in early March set off a dramatic spike in anti-Asian racism.

  • The U.S. and Canada have a history of accusing Asian Americans of disease as one of many ways to discriminate and incite violence against them.

  • Our country's practice of "othering" has caused significant harm to Asian Americans, which is exacerbated by the current racial discrimination during COVID-19.

RELATED ISSUES

PLEDGE YOUR SUPPORT

Thank you for all your financial contributions! If you haven't already, consider making a monthly donation to this work. These funds will help me operationalize this work for greatest impact.

Subscribe on Patreon | Give one-time on PayPal | Venmo @nicoleacardoza

Read More