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Thread: While it's true #ShaneGillis should be fired for using anti-Asian slurs, it's impossible to hold #SNL accountable for its complicity in anti-Asian racism w/o also addressing the troubling potential for how they'll use new cast member #BowenYang. 1/
Based on SNL's past, it's worth asking: why cast Yang now? Is it because SNL wants more Kim Jong-un sketches? Or because they need an EA man to portray presidential candidate Andrew Yang? In either scenario, is the goal to uplift Asians or mock them as strange or dangerous? 2/
It's easy to celebrate Yang's hiring & condemn Gillis' remarks, but it's important to see how these two decisions are just the "quiet" & "loud" versions of the same anti-Asian racism coin. We don't have to guess at what kind of sketches Yang will be in—we've already seen it. 3/
If the only time white-dominated media thinks it's necessary to cast a monoracial East Asian as a full-time cast member is when they want to use them to reinforce negative stereotypes about Asians, then a white cast member using slurs is only a symptom of a larger problem. 4/
Overall, the idea that #SNL hired Bowen Yang to undo SNL’s harmful past is completely contradicted by their simultaneous hiring of an explicitly anti-Asian racist. It's clear that SNL remains invested in anti-Asian narratives regardless of whether they fire Gillis or not. 5/5
