Station Apologizes to CBS' Julie Chen
Comments from a former news director caused her to develop a complex about her Asian heritage, she said.
"Officials at WDTN have apologized to talk and reality show host Julie Chen a day after she revealed [that] comments from one of the station's former news directors led to her developing a complex about her Asian heritage that ended in plastic surgery," Amelia Robinson wrote Thursday for the Dayton Daily News in Ohio. " 'We are sorry to hear about what happened to CBS' Julie Chen in 1995 when she was a reporter at WDTN-TV,' Joe Abouzeid, WDTN and WBDT president and general manager said in a statement. 'The station was under different management and ownership during that time. At WDTN and WBDT, we don't tolerate racism or discrimination of any kind.'
" 'It is cold out in the field. I wanted to try to get a seat on the anchor desk so I asked my news director "you know holidays, anchors want to take vacation could I fill in. You know, I don't care, I will work Christmas." He said "you will never be on this anchor desk because you are Chinese." And he said "let's face it, Julie, how relatable are you to our community? How big of an Asian community do we really have here in Dayton? Our audience can't relate to you because you are not like them,' Chen, 43, recalled on the talk show.
Ironically, the revelation took place on the same show where Sheryl Underwood, a black comedian, "sat beneath a shiny wig and before a largely White audience . . . mocked nappy Black hair," as Jamilah Lemieux recalled recently for ebony.com. On Wednesday, Underwood told Chen, "You have represented your race and your colleagues," and the studio audience erupted in applause.
"They talk about Chen's procedure as if hooded eyes equal Asian, and eyelid surgery equals becoming white, or American. In reality, this operation, called 'double eyelid surgery' by many — or blepharoplasty, if you want to get technical — is really common amongst Asian Americans. And it's practically a requirement to become a model or actress in certain parts of Asia, like last spring's South Korean beauty contest controversy showed." Photos of the contestants prompted claims that cosmetic procedures left all of them looking the same. "I think the preference for larger, rounder eyes is something that's been internalized in Asia after a long history of European colonialization.
As Underwood's comments illustrate, black women confront it in deciding whether to chemically straighten their hair. Last year meterologist Rhonda Lee was fired from her ABC affiliate in Shreveport, La., after she responded to a racial remark posted by a viewer on the station's Facebook page in reference to her short Afro hairstyle. The station insisted that the issue was Lee's defiance of station rules about responding to viewers, but many saw it as grounded in Lee's hairstyle choice.
Rhonda Lee, a meteorologist at KTBS in Shreveport, La., who was fired last year after responding to criticism of her short Afro on the station's Facebook site, says "it has been tough finding another job" since her case became a cause celebre. Lee's name has been invoked in the reaction to Julie Chen's disclosure that she had plastic surgery on her eyes 18 years ago. Lee told Journal-isms Friday that she is a new mother, having given birth in Shreveport, La., on Thursday to Louis Charles Johnson.
At a panel at the National Association of Hispanic Journalists convention last month in Anaheim, Calif., an audience member said she was told, "Don't roll your Rs too much," even if that was the way the word is pronounced in Spanish.
At a similar session for broadcasters two years ago called "Latina Journalists Wanted!," some NAHJ attendees complained that they were expected "to look like a white girl from Boston" and lose their Latina distinctiveness. Former CNN host Rick Sanchez, one of the panelists, advised then, "Always adapt a little to your surroundings but not so that you sell your soul."
As for Native Americans, "historically Natives have faced immense pressure by mainstream society to change their personal appearance and abandon their cultural identities, starting with the boarding school era when so many children were forced to cut their hair or change their names," Mary Hudetz, president of the Native American Journalists Association, messaged Journal-isms.
"To some degree, these challenges still continue today. It's not uncommon for some professionals to be asked to cut their long hair or cover traditional tattoos in the workplace, or at least sense that there might be an unspoken expectation to do so," Hudetz continued. "This by no means has been my experience, but has been a reality for some.
"Officials at WDTN have apologized to talk and reality show host Julie Chen a day after she revealed [that] comments from one of the station's former news directors led to her developing a complex about her Asian heritage that ended in plastic surgery," Amelia Robinson wrote Thursday for the Dayton Daily News in Ohio. " 'We are sorry to hear about what happened to CBS' Julie Chen in 1995 when she was a reporter at WDTN-TV,' Joe Abouzeid, WDTN and WBDT president and general manager said in a statement. 'The station was under different management and ownership during that time. At WDTN and WBDT, we don't tolerate racism or discrimination of any kind.'
" 'It is cold out in the field. I wanted to try to get a seat on the anchor desk so I asked my news director "you know holidays, anchors want to take vacation could I fill in. You know, I don't care, I will work Christmas." He said "you will never be on this anchor desk because you are Chinese." And he said "let's face it, Julie, how relatable are you to our community? How big of an Asian community do we really have here in Dayton? Our audience can't relate to you because you are not like them,' Chen, 43, recalled on the talk show.
Ironically, the revelation took place on the same show where Sheryl Underwood, a black comedian, "sat beneath a shiny wig and before a largely White audience . . . mocked nappy Black hair," as Jamilah Lemieux recalled recently for ebony.com. On Wednesday, Underwood told Chen, "You have represented your race and your colleagues," and the studio audience erupted in applause.
"They talk about Chen's procedure as if hooded eyes equal Asian, and eyelid surgery equals becoming white, or American. In reality, this operation, called 'double eyelid surgery' by many — or blepharoplasty, if you want to get technical — is really common amongst Asian Americans. And it's practically a requirement to become a model or actress in certain parts of Asia, like last spring's South Korean beauty contest controversy showed." Photos of the contestants prompted claims that cosmetic procedures left all of them looking the same. "I think the preference for larger, rounder eyes is something that's been internalized in Asia after a long history of European colonialization.
As Underwood's comments illustrate, black women confront it in deciding whether to chemically straighten their hair. Last year meterologist Rhonda Lee was fired from her ABC affiliate in Shreveport, La., after she responded to a racial remark posted by a viewer on the station's Facebook page in reference to her short Afro hairstyle. The station insisted that the issue was Lee's defiance of station rules about responding to viewers, but many saw it as grounded in Lee's hairstyle choice.
Rhonda Lee, a meteorologist at KTBS in Shreveport, La., who was fired last year after responding to criticism of her short Afro on the station's Facebook site, says "it has been tough finding another job" since her case became a cause celebre. Lee's name has been invoked in the reaction to Julie Chen's disclosure that she had plastic surgery on her eyes 18 years ago. Lee told Journal-isms Friday that she is a new mother, having given birth in Shreveport, La., on Thursday to Louis Charles Johnson.
At a panel at the National Association of Hispanic Journalists convention last month in Anaheim, Calif., an audience member said she was told, "Don't roll your Rs too much," even if that was the way the word is pronounced in Spanish.
At a similar session for broadcasters two years ago called "Latina Journalists Wanted!," some NAHJ attendees complained that they were expected "to look like a white girl from Boston" and lose their Latina distinctiveness. Former CNN host Rick Sanchez, one of the panelists, advised then, "Always adapt a little to your surroundings but not so that you sell your soul."
As for Native Americans, "historically Natives have faced immense pressure by mainstream society to change their personal appearance and abandon their cultural identities, starting with the boarding school era when so many children were forced to cut their hair or change their names," Mary Hudetz, president of the Native American Journalists Association, messaged Journal-isms.
"To some degree, these challenges still continue today. It's not uncommon for some professionals to be asked to cut their long hair or cover traditional tattoos in the workplace, or at least sense that there might be an unspoken expectation to do so," Hudetz continued. "This by no means has been my experience, but has been a reality for some.