Bill O'Reilly Chinatown Segment 'Racist' and 'Unconscionable,' Community Says

CHINATOWN, NY — A Bill O'Reilly TV segment that aired on Fox News Tuesday evening angered residents and elected officials throughout Chinatown on Wednesday with its racist, patronizing tone against members of the community.

The segment sent Jesse Watters of "Watters' World" out on the streets of Chinatown to ask people their "political opinion" about the presidential election, which apparently meant posing some of the most uninformed questions known to man.

Watters mocks an elderly woman who doesn't speak to him, perhaps because she doesn't know English. He asks a man if he's ever heard of karate, which is Japanese, not Chinese. He plays with nunchucks and gets a massage. He generalizes his interviewees as "such a polite people, they won't walk away." He asks questions that generalize a whole country of over 1.3 billion people, like "How do they dance in China?"

After the segment aired, even O'Reilly seemed to know it would enrage viewers.

"It was gentle fun," O'Reilly insisted. "I know we're gonna get letters, inevitably, but it was gentle fun."

Most of Chinatown had a different view.

"It's shocking that a major U.S. network would air something like that," Jeffrey Chen, program director of the Greater Chinatown Community Association, told Patch.

"We don't have an official statement about the show because most of the people we serve haven't even heard of Bill O'Reilly," Chen added.

Hours after the segment aired, Watters tweeted what a Fox spokesperson called an "apology" to the backlash. Here are his tweets:

Wellington Chen, the executive director of the Chinatown Partnership, said many people in the community took great offense. "At the minimum, this shows a huge lack of sensitivity, a lack of understanding," Chen told Patch. "The Chinese have got a saying, that putting somebody down doesn't make you taller. As an Asian-American, I will say that we need to learn to treat each others as brothers and sisters, learn to accept that we have a common goal of making America greater."

Then Chen addressed the presidential election, referring to Donald Trump's plan to build a wall between the United States and Mexico to deal with immigration problems.

"I will say that having been the first nation to build a great wall, the Great Wall of China, we know it didn't work," he added. "It absolutely did not work. How long ago did we build that wall? Quite some time ago. Now why the hell do you think it would be a good idea to build another wall?"

Council Member Margaret Chin, whose district includes Chinatown, sent a cutting statement to Patch Wednesday that said the disrespect Watters showed to his interviewees was "emblematic of the persistent racism that still exists against Chinese Americans" in this country.

"Bill O’Reilly sent his correspondent into our neighborhood without knowing or acknowledging the culture, the language or even the difference between Japanese Americans and Chinese Americans," Chin said in the statement. "As the daughter of an elderly Chinese American who still lives in Chinatown, the moment when his correspondent mocked a senior citizen who seemingly did not know English stood out as a particularly mean-spirited act of disrespect."

"It is a legacy of hate that has been given new life and a national platform by the candidacy of Donald Trump and his allies at Fox News," Chin said.

The Asian American Journalists Association issued a statement Wednesday demanding Fox News apologize for the TV segment.

"It's 2016," Paul Cheung, the group's president, said. "We should be far beyond tired, racist stereotypes and targeting an ethnic group for humiliation and objectification on the basis of their race. Sadly, Fox News proves it has a long way to go in reporting on communities of color in a respectful and fair manner."

"It is unconscionable that a news organization would sanction a segment that laughs at a community of people, including Watters ridiculing elderly Asian Americans who were limited English proficient," said Mee Moua, president of Asian Americans Advancing Justice, in a statement.

"Under the guise of asking residents of Manhattan’s Chinatown their thoughts on Donald Trump, O'Reilly Factor correspondent Jesse Watters brought the kind of disrespect to my constituents that has been all too common this election cycle: stereotyping, mockery and a thinly veiled disdain for immigrants," New York State Sen. Daniel Squadron said in a statement Wednesday.

"Unfortunately, one of the real costs of Trump’s divisiveness is the climate of racism and disrespect it’s made commonplace in our national discourse. That’s unacceptable in Chinatown, unacceptable in New York, and must be unacceptable on Fox News."

"And to Jesse Watters: welcome to my district — hope you don't come back."

Photo credit: Chensiyuan/Wikimedia Commons/CC by 3.0