Talk-show host Steve Harvey is apologizing for mocking Asian men.
In a tweet posted Tuesday, he addresses his insensitive and offensive comments:
Harvey came under fire after a “The Steve Harvey Show” clip was circulated online last week. During the clip, which focused on absurdly specific advice books, Harvey shows the cover of a 2002 book called “How To Date A White Woman: A Practical Guide For Asian Men”, and begins mocking it.
“That’s one page! ‘Excuse me, do you like Asian men?'” he says. “No, thank you.”
Shots of the audience show bemused grins and laughter, but no one laughs at the racist punchlines as much as Harvey himself. The talk-show host repeatedly pauses to laugh at his own jokes, at one instance doubling over in laughter at the thought that Asian men could even be considered attractive.
“‘You like Asian men?’ ‘I don’t even like Chinese food. It don’t stay with you no time,'” he mocks. “‘I don’t eat what I can’t pronounce.'”
He says, if there were a similar book called “How to Date a Black Woman: A Practical Guide [for] Asian Men”, Harvey jokes that it would be “one page, too.”
His words did not go unnoticed by celebrity chef Eddie Huang, whose biographical novel “Fresh Off the Boat” is the basis for the ABC sitcom of the same name.
In an essay Huang wrote for the New York Times, he blasts Harvey for his “hypocritical” words, describing Harvey’s “jokes” as perpetuating stereotypes that become “a self-fulfilling prophecy that produced an actual abhorrence to Asian men in the real world … That’s why this Steve Harvey episode is so upsetting.”
“He speaks openly about issues facing the black community, he is a man of God, and he has a huge platform to speak from,” writes Huang of Harvey. “Unfortunately, he’s also the type of guy who orders Krug champagne for himself and Cook’s for every one else. For his own personal profit, he’s willing to perpetuate the emasculation of Asian men regardless of how hypocritical it is.”
Adds Huang: “[Harvey] isn’t the only one doing this in 2017, but as I told myself on New Year’s, I’m not drinking anymore of this Cook’s they’re trying to pour, and neither should you.”
