“So we’ve established that the roles the “yellowface” characters were playing weren’t those of Asian people. ”
No, you didn’t establish this. They were playing Sinosized versions of themselves, which is to Yellowface themselves.

“A black person can call a white person a “honky” or “cracker”, it is comedic rather than offensive. ”
No, we (white people) don’t find it comedic and do find it offensive. Oh, sorry, as a white person I don’t speak for all white people and every white experience. So *I* do find it offensive.

“I am not a culture warrior upset about this. I accept that this is the way the world works.”
*You* do not get to speak for every Asian (or half-Asian) or every Asian experience. Just because *you* are not offended does not mean it is automatically not offensive. You do not get the right to dismiss someone else’s feelings just because you don’t share them. What you have exemplified here is a textbook definition of oppression.

“I am try to critically examine the claim that one cannot portray people of other races on film.”
No, you aren’t.

“The common cultural consensus seems to be that one can, as long as it is directed towards privileged people.” No, they cannot.

“Can we say that Asian-Americans today speak from the same place of oppression as black Americans or Latinos do?”
No, they do not.

“Is it a relative thing?”
No, it is not.

“Could a black person do yellowface?”
No.

“Could a Native American?”
No.

“The knots of power and race get very tangled here and make this a complex issue.”
No, race is not a complex issue.

“If this episode had been tweaked to include Asian actors instead of white ones, I doubt that we’d be hearing flame wars about it.”
Duh.

“I think that’s a problem.”
Calling out racism is not the problem. Racism is the problem.

“We should be angry about performances that exacerbate racial stereotypes.”
I’m not sure who the “we” is here, but writers in the AAPI community and others who actually care about this issues no matter their race *do* get angry about this problem as well. We can be angry about more than one thing or more than one aspect of a thing at the same time. As I said earlier, you just obviously have spent no time educating yourself about this topic.

“but by focusing solely on Ted’s Fu Manchu mustache we run the risk of failing to observe racism in its many, many forms.”
Believe me, no one is failing to observe racism in it’s many forms, especially activists like Suey Park who you so flippantly dismiss in this article.

The whole serie is full of stereotypes, about so many different kind of people. Actually, the writers bash white people so much more than they bash asians or blacks. So what’s next? “Blond and stupid bitches” making a buzz because of Barney’s attitude towards them in the show? Or “architecture teachers” signing a petition because of Ted acting a lame dude?

This is typically what any foreigner starting to make chinese friends needs to know : many of them simply can’t laugh about themselves, and you can’t say anything without having them taking it first degree and making a huge scene about it. Hope time will make ‘em change someday.

[sarcasm] First of all, let me first say that as a person of color (half-Asian), I cannot be racist. It’s a fact. [/sarcasm]

If you are prejudiced FOR or AGAINST anyone because of their race, it’s racist.

If the prejudice you have for or against that person is because you are convinced they are an idiot, regardless of their skin color, then it’s not racist.