Just Saying | Women’s Day? Not when racist stereotyping of Asians never ends

So, International Women’s Day has come and gone, but it’s good to know that some things never change. Like the stereotyping of Asian women, for all the annual lip service about equality and empowerment.

It seems we can never climb out of this bottomless pit.

Now that we’ve all had our giggles over that viral video of the American academic based in South Korea whose live TV interview with the BBC last week was gatecrashed by his two little children, let’s talk about the part that wasn’t so funny.

Watch: Children interrupt BBC interview

Hapless BBC dad breaks silence on gatecrashing kids and disastrous interview that charmed the world

Everyone assumed that the Asian woman who crawled into the room on her hands and knees to retrieve the adorable intruders, staying low to avoid being captured on camera but failing hilariously, was the nanny. Why not, right? White man in his home office doing important work, naughty kids straying into the restricted zone, non-Caucasian woman darting in and out like some petrified hermit crab. What else could she be but the hired help. You must have seen all the comments online along the lines of “that nanny must be in so much trouble”.

It turns out the Korean woman is a yoga teacher and the mother of those kids. “Pretty uncomfortable” was all they would say when asked how they felt about the wife being mistaken for a domestic helper.

Sorry to be the party pooper and let the nitrous oxide out of everyone’s hippity-hoppity happy balloons, but Asian women around the world married to Caucasian men will know what I’m talking about, even if they’re too embarrassed to admit it publicly.

Then, this week, we had another demonstration of racist, deeply offensive stereotyping of Asian women, this time more cringeworthy and closer to home.

Watch: “English teacher” talks about how easy it is to pick up Chinese women