Racist Hot 97 Skit Mocking Tsunami Victims

I seem to be a couple of days late noticing this, but when listening to last week’s episode of the WBAI hacker radio show Off The Hook on my mp3 player earlier today I heard a segment on an extremely parody song produced by an NYC area radio station. Now, New York may not quite be my home city, but it is my home radio market, and I was pretty shocked that a prominent commercial radio station thought that they could get away with such outright racism on the public airwaves, especially in a city like New York with such a large Asian population.

This post on hiphopmusic.com has some general info, and also linked to this mp3 of the song, preceded by a conversation between one of the co-hosts of the show (who is apparently Asian) trying to explain that she had declined to join in this skit because she had found it offensive, and then being yelled at by the host for “not doing the job the way it needs to be done cuz you have a different agenda,” and “You always want to act like you’re separate. If you want to be separate, be separate. Why not go all the way then?”

For the last week Hot 97 has been running a hideously unfunny and offensive skit named “Tsunami Song,” that ridicules the victims of the Tsunami as “ch*nks” whose children will now be sold into child slavery. It’s being played on the station’s morning show, hosted by Miss Jones.

NOTE: If you use the word “tsunami” in your email it will probably get filtered now, and not read. So try to leave that word out..

HOT 97
395 Hudson St. 7th Fl.
New York, NY 10014

(212) 229-9797

hot97@hot97.com

Or even better, Hot 97’s parent company Emmis broadcasting:

ir@emmis.com
jsmulyan@emmis.com
rcummings@emmis.com
jsteele@emmis.com
khealey@emmis.com

Here are the lyrics to the Tsunami Song

“There was a time, when the sun was shining bright
So I went down to the beach to catch me a tan.
Then the next thing I knew, a wave 20 feet high
Came and washed your whole country away.
And all at once, you can hear the screaming chinks.
And no one was saved from the wave.
There were Africans drowning, little Chinamen swept away.
You can hear God laughing, ‘Swim you bitches swim.’

[Chorus]
“So now you’re screwed. It’s the tsunami,
You better run and kiss your ass away. Go find your mommy.
I just saw her float by, a tree went through her head.
And now your children will be sold. Child slavery.”

I should also mention that, aside from being morally repugnant, this is some of the worst singing I have ever heard outside of karaoke.

Asian Media Watch also has a report on this, located here, which includes quite a bit more information, including ways to contact the radio station. They also discuss filing a complaint with the FCC, but I personally feel that this is the wrong approach. A number of advertisers have canceled the contracts with Hot 97, and they’ve probably also lost a fair number of listeners. I would rather see Emmis Communications punished by the market than by the government.

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