Shrugging at “Coco Chow”

How do you even write about Trump’s anti-Asian racism at this point? 

Rod Lamkey/ZUMA

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.

Maybe it makes sense that “DEATH WISH” was the part that garnered headlines. After all, a record of inciting real-life violence renders such a message concerning.

But even as someone who’s on the payroll to keep abreast of the relentless garbage, I didn’t catch the Coco Chow bit until well after a solid day later. It came as the second beat of Donald Trump’s message lashing out at Mitch McConnell, when the former president and forever frontrunner of the GOP called the Senate minority leader’s partner, Elaine Chao, a “China-loving wife, Coco Chow.” Neither Chao nor McConnell have responded to the overtly racist slur directed at the Taiwanese-born former transportation secretary. I found it while mindlessly stumbling across what Rick Scott thought about the whole thing. (Not much, by the way.) Most write-ups obscured it to the final lines of the news cycle. 

Coco Chow is tired and unimaginative, something you expected from the outcast uncle at Thanksgiving. But the collective shrug has grated at me. Sure, we all wagged fingers at “Chinese virus and Kung Fu Flu,” racist rhetoric that deeply inflamed anti-Asian violence during the height of the pandemic. But a meh response to garbage like Coco Chow—duly relegated to the second beat of an unhinged post published on a floundering social media platform—is another entry into the generally underwhelming attention paid to Trump’s more casual bouts of racism: his utterances of “China,” a pronunciation so exaggerated and bizarre, yet always seemed to go under the radar; asking the “pretty Korean lady” where she’s from; his public mockery of Asian accents

How do you even write about Trump’s racism at this point? Does doing so benefit him? I’m not sure. But McConnell and the rest of the GOP seem intent, in fact perfectly well-suited, on extending the very American tradition of ignoring anti-Asian racism. 

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate