‘Foreign or Domestic’ Radio Contest Has a Racist Tone

One of the segments on “L.A. Law” in the last year or so involved a bar that sponsored a “dwarf-tossing” contest. Burly contestants would pick up dwarfs and see how far they could heave the little fellows.

In the ensuing court case, one side argued that the game should be stopped because it dehumanized dwarfs and made them the objects of ridicule. The bar’s lawyer argued that it was all done in good clean fun and that the dwarfs didn’t mind, so why should anyone else.

All done in good clean fun.

That’s also the rationale of Anaheim radio station KEZY-FM in defending its call-in contest known as “Foreign or Domestic,” in which listeners try to guess in advance whether a convenience store clerk telephoned at random was born in the U.S.A.

I have to admit that I laughed when I heard the premise, but my funny bone is not always connected to my brain. Besides, I wasn’t the butt of the joke.

Guys like Ben Huh are. He’s a Korean native and has been managing a 7-Eleven in Huntington Beach for the last four years.

KEZY said the contest was “just a fun thing,” so I decided to find out how funny it was to a potential participant. Let’s just see what kind of a sense of humor ol’ Ben has.

He hadn’t heard about the contest, so I let him read a newspaper story about it. He didn’t smile. Neither did he finish reading the entire article. He put the newspaper down on the counter and said he understood what it was about.

“Why do they choose this as funny?” he asked. Huh’s speech still is heavily influenced by his native tongue. If KEZY called him, it would be pretty obvious that he was “foreign.”

He told me a little about his life. Now 45, he came to America 20 years ago because he wanted to learn the computer business. “At first I felt like a frog in a well,” he said. “I couldn’t see outside of the well at all.” But he learned more about the country and by the time he met his future wife and they married 11 years ago, he had decided to stay in America.

“I like America,” he says. “You can see the world better from here. I also like the way America grew from its beginning.”

He and his wife, Jin, who works for a mortgage lending company, have two children, 5 and 7. They took them out trick-or-treating on Halloween.

“The kids are American citizens. They were born here. I strongly mention to them that they are Americans. Not that I don’t like the Father Country, but I want to make them realize where they started from.”

I brought up the radio contest again. What bothers you about it, I asked.

“A little bit of everything. Whoever comes here, whether it is Middle Eastern or Asian, we like to live like Americans. Why do we have to be separated? We pay taxes, we work as hard as Americans, why do we still have to be recognized separately? We are not very rewarded.”

He said he worked for a custom jewelry manufacturer in Van Nuys but quit when he realized he wasn’t progressing into management. He got the 7-Eleven job in Orange County in the hopes it would provide on-the-job training so he someday can run his own business.

He said he’s aware of the competitive fears some Americans have with immigrants who start businesses. He cited the problems in New York where blacks and Koreans have fought. The situation has calmed down, “but anything could set it off again,” he said. That’s why seemingly harmless contests such as KEZY’s worry him, he said, because it tends to pit one group in society against another.

“Why can this be a laughing matter? There should be a reason why it would be a laughing matter. Why are aliens working in convenience stores a laughing matter? How many handicapped people are working in convenience stores? Or how many Anglo-Saxons? How many Jews? The station says it is not a racist thing. But they could have asked what city the clerk lives in. That would not be racist. But they ask what country they are from. So that means it is racist.

“If it is one person’s opinion of me, I don’t mind. But if it is broadcast all over the place on the radio, I mind, absolutely.”

I asked if he’d run into much antagonism over his ethnicity. “This (the radio contest) was just one person’s idea. I try to think that way. I’ve met a lot of good Americans. If I talk to my American friends, they would say this is a silly game. I hope they will. That’s how I see my friends. That’s how I think they feel about me.”

I tried to picture the phone ringing while Huh was working, either ringing up a customer’s tab or filling out order forms with the delivery man. I pictured one of his kids with him behind the counter when the phone call came from KEZY asking in so many words whether he was “foreign or domestic.”

This time, it didn’t sound like such a funny premise.

Dana Parsons’ column appears Wednesday, Friday and Sunday. Readers may reach Parsons by writing to him at The Times Orange County Edition, 1375 Sunflower Ave., Costa Mesa, Calif. 92626, or calling (714) 966-7821.