Deception

Recently Chicago White Sox announcer Ken Harrelson was broadcasting a game where Chen-Chang Lee, a Taiwanese pitcher, was pitching for the Cleveland Indians.  Hawk declared it to be an example of "typical Asian motion. Deception involved!"

Deception can be translated into different words in Japanese, including ごまかし(gomakashi), まやかし (mayakashi), 欺まん(giman).

The caveat here is that in baseball deception is a term that actually describes a pitching style, where a pitcher “hides” the ball when releasing it so that the ball is harder to pick up for the hitter, thus making it more effective. “Deceptive” has been used to describe several other MLB pitchers, the one I think of right away is Tony Cingrani, who twists his body back away from the hitter before releasing to create an illusion which (apparently) helps his pitching style, as he finished 2013 in top form and is continuing it into 2014. Many Asian pitchers actually do utilize this Cingrani-like motion of swinging their body away from the pitcher, but I haven’t really heard a reputation of Asian pitchers doing that type of motion more than pitchers of other ethnicities. Therefore, I actually don’t have that much of an issue with Hawk’s use of the term as long as it wasn’t fueled by racism. He may have been trying to describe the concept that I outlined here, but it came out as “Asians are deceptive” and generated huge story lines.

I DO have an issue, however, with this “Asians are deceptive” stereotype outside of baseball, and I have heard it before. It does exist out there, not as much as some of the other ones like “Asians are good at math” or “Asians have slanted eyes,” etc., but it does exist, which is a problem. The difference between “Asians have slanted eyes,” which itself is not a great stereotype and I wouldn’t encourage people to perpetuate that (especially Miley Cyrus) is that I can see where the eyes stereotype comes from: there is an element of truth, just empirically, that forms the basis of that stereotype. Asians, objectively, have eyes that seem more to be in an oval shape and stretched out than eyes on people of different nationalities. That can be scientifically proven; one can do a sample of 1000 randomly selected Asian people and compare it to 1000 randomly selected non-Asians and measure the height and weighth of their eyes and come up with a definitive answer.

That is not true of the “Asians are deceptive” stereotype. Not only is the “deceptive” measure not quantifiable, it is purely malicious. There’s nothing redeeming about a “deceptive” label (as opposed to baseball, where “hiding the baseball well” could be a compliment for you being a good pitcher). In society, being called deceptive summons images of concocting schemes, trying to trick others, and fraudulent activities. The legal definition of “fraud” actually incorporates deception. Lots of causes of action in the law have to do with deception, including conspiracy, undue influence, intentional misrepresentation, RICO, etc., etc. And no, you don’t want to be sued.

The “Asians are deception” stereotype is probably the worst stereotype of any religious, ethnic, sexual preference, national origin, gender, or any type other type of group to have. There’s other ones that I can think of involving certain groups that are prone to violence and crime, and those are pretty bad as well. As bad as those stereotypes are, and I wish they didn’t exist, there can be empirical evidence to confirm if those are true or not, and what we can all do to prevent that from happening, do sociological studies to change the status quo. There is nothing scientific or beneficial that can be done from “Asians are deceptive” stereotype, nothing positive that can be gleaned from it, it is just a devastating stereotype that cannot exist.

Fantasize on,

Robert Yan