A 19-year-old college student, Rebekah Lee was dining at Ton-Ton Ramen in Atlanta, Georgia, and had her photo taken with her food. The photo, at a glimpse, shows Lee looking at the camera. But it didn’t take long for a darker truth to be revealed.
On November 13th, Lee shared a photo on Twitter and wrote “hold up.. lets zoom in here”. A mother in the background was captured, seemingly teaching her child a racist gesture.
The “slanted eye” is known to be a disrespectful gesture to mock people of Asian culture in a racially stereotypical perspective.
Many users on Twitter raged that a mother of a young girl was not scolding her child for conducting a racist gesture towards Asians but in fact was teaching her to do the “Asian Eye” in the public.
Lee’s tweet went viral on Twitter receiving more than 500,000 likes and was re-tweeted about 74,000 times on Twitter.
Although the exact intention and context of their action remains unknown, many worried that racism is still taught at home.
Lee says she did not notice the family until she later checked back at the photo. “But I can’t say seeing that gesture didn’t hurt,” she said during an interview with Today Food.
by Woo Hoon-sik [Korea Daily]
