Eric Byler Guest Post: Insomnia 2: Ugly Exchange at Pizza Joint

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Now that the alcohol is wearing off, my thoughts return to an incident at the end of the evening. Once the lights went up at Chloe — the club that hosted the after party for the Americanese Opening Night premiere — many of us migrated down the street to a pizza joint renowned for gigantic yummy slices.

Because of the festival, the place was inundated with Asian Americans, perhaps more so than usual, even though Washington D.C. is a multi-cutural city if there ever was one. A Caucasian man entered the pizza joint and saw all the Asian faces. According to a hapa woman, who told me after the fact, he said, “What is this, Asia?” The hapa woman went up to him and said, “No, it’s America.” I learned about this only a few minutes later. The hapa woman and her boyfriend (also hapa) had driven down from NYC to see the film. They also attended Wesleyan, so we were chatting a lot both at the after party and at the pizza joint. When she told me what the man had said, she also pointed to him. He and his buddy, also Caucasian, were paying for their oversized slices of pizza.

I KID YOU NOT! I AM NOT LYING! I AM NOT JOKING!

The guy turned around and looked at the hapa woman and quoted Senator George Allen. “Welcome to America,” he said, with a grin. I quickly retored, “Fuck you.” His buddy looked at me. And I said, “And fuck you too.” They looked at each other and then scurried out of the joint.

Sen. Allen’s “Macaca” attack has inspired many who are opposed to racism. I did not realize until that moment that he has also inspired his base.

More on Sen. George Allen’s use of the M-word, the N-word, and “welcome to America”