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Viral professor's BBC live interview sparks debate about racism
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International relations professor Robert Kelly's children can be seen in a BBC video while he was being interviewed live. (BBC/File)
What began as a lighthearted video has sparked an internet-wide discussion about gender and racism.
It started when a video of international relations professor Robert Kelly's interview about South Korea on BBC began circulating online. While the grainy video was unremarkable at first, in the middle of the interview, Kelly’s two young children entered the room before a South Korean woman came rushing through the door and tried to guide the children back outside.
As people shared the video, a trend quickly emerged. Commenters and news outlets alike assumed that the woman, Jung-a Kim, was a nanny.
While it is common for families in South Korea to hire nannies, some people feel the assumption that Kim was the nanny rather than the children’s mother and Kelly’s wife was racist and sexist.
Read also: An ex-employee is calling out a luxury house for racism
Some argued that they were just concerned for Kim and her assumed “job,” arguing that panic was clearly etched on her face as she pulled the children out of the room. But others challenge the claim, saying she was only acting the way a mother would and was panicked as she naturally did not want the children interrupting her husband’s interview.
Kim is not the first Asian woman to face such bias.
A journalist of Indian descent told BBC that while going to work at a regional newspaper, a receptionist mistook her for a custodian and asked her if she was “here to clean the kitchen?”
"I was surprised when chatting about street harassment with my friends who are white -- they had quite different experiences," said Kumiko Toda, an academic of Japanese descent. "I wonder whether my ethnicity and the perception of East Asian women as being submissive has something to do with the frequency and the nature of the harassment I experience." (sul/kes)
