Speaker 1: You're listening to Comedy Central.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's right, people, We've got our own month, And
Speaker 2: in honor of AAPI month, I'm gonna teach you about
Speaker 2: the most underrepresented demographic of all time.
Speaker 3: Asian Americans in sports.
Speaker 2: And I don't just mean the heavy hitters like Jeremy Lynn,
Speaker 2: Michelle Kwan, Tiger Woods.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well claiming him.
Speaker 2: You got a problem with that, take it up with
Speaker 2: the un Instead, I want to focus on the underdogs
Speaker 2: who blaze the trail for all the other Asian American
Speaker 2: athletes to come, People like Wally Yonamine, the Japanese American
Speaker 2: who played not one, but two professional sports, and unlike
Speaker 2: Michael Jordan, he didn't suck at one of them. Also,
Speaker 2: he never became a crying meme why are you said?
Speaker 2: You're Michael Jordan first? In nineteen forty seven, Yonamine became
Speaker 2: a running back for the San Francisco forty nine ers,
Speaker 2: but in the wake of World War Two, he faced
Speaker 2: a ton of discrimination.
Speaker 3: Even while he was playing.
Speaker 2: When he would get tackled, the opposing team would punch
Speaker 2: and kick him. Do you realize how insane that is?
Speaker 2: I mean, it's football. Everyone's going home with brain damage already,
Speaker 2: you don't need to force it. After a risk injury
Speaker 2: in nineteen fifty one, Yonamine decided to switch to baseball.
Speaker 2: He moved to Japan to play for the Yomi Yuri Giants,
Speaker 2: where he was an eleven time All Star and became
Speaker 2: the first American player ever to be inducted into the
Speaker 2: Japanese Baseball Hall of Fame. Crazy thing is Yonamine faced
Speaker 2: racism in Japan two, but this time because he was
Speaker 2: an American. At games, the fans would chant Yankee go home,
Speaker 2: which is normally something you expected here only at Red
Speaker 2: Sox games or honestly, any places in.
Speaker 3: Boston that sells alcohol.
Speaker 2: But enough about baseball, let's talk about something people actually watch,
Speaker 2: the Olympics. In nineteen forty eight, Victoria Manalo Dres became
Speaker 2: the first AAPI Olympic champion, but be Filipino, she also
Speaker 2: faced a lot of discrimination. In fact, when she was
Speaker 2: younger and she used the public pool, the town asshole
Speaker 2: would drain the water after she swam in it, which
Speaker 2: isn't just racist, it's idiotic. You're gonna double your water
Speaker 2: bill just because you're afraid of catching being Asian. You
Speaker 2: came and get that from a pool, you have to
Speaker 2: share the same straw, dumbasses, but against the yards Manalo
Speaker 2: won her gold medal in the women's three meter springboard
Speaker 2: and she was chirred on by diver Sammy Lee, the
Speaker 2: first Asian American man to win an Olympic gold medal.
Speaker 2: That's right, the first two API gold medals at the
Speaker 2: same games. It was like Asian Christmas, which is just Christmas,
Speaker 2: but not every Asian who brought the color barrier had
Speaker 2: a happy ending. In nineteen forty eight, Larry Kwong became
Speaker 2: the first non white player in the NHL when he
Speaker 2: joined the New York Rangers. But they only put him
Speaker 2: on ice for a minute and he never played in
Speaker 2: another game again, which sucks. But breaking the color barrier
Speaker 2: is like losing your virginity. Even if he only did
Speaker 2: for a second, it still counts. Another great first happened
Speaker 2: in nineteen twenty seven when Walter R. Chiu became the
Speaker 2: first person of East Asian descent to play in the NFL.
Speaker 2: Because his last name was Archiu, he earned the nickname Sneeze. Sadly,
Speaker 2: this was before athlete sponsorships were a thing, so he couldn't.
Speaker 3: Even get that sweet, sweet Kleenex money.
Speaker 2: Eventually, he retired from the NFL to compete in a
Speaker 2: safer sport, wrestling, proving that Asians can roll around without
Speaker 2: balls and someone's face just like everyone else. But let's
Speaker 2: move on to my personal favorite sport basketball. The first
Speaker 2: non white player of any race in NBA history was
Speaker 2: Japanese American Wataroom Issaka in.
Speaker 3: Nineteen forty seven.
Speaker 2: He was the first draft pick of the New York Knicks,
Speaker 2: and they even promoted his skills to sell tickets. But Shaker,
Speaker 2: he faced a lot of anti Japanese sentiment and only
Speaker 2: ended up playing three games. It was so bad he
Speaker 2: decided to go back to school to gainst engineering degree,
Speaker 2: which I respect. He was basically like, Oh, you don't
Speaker 2: like me being Asian, Well I'm gonna be extra Asian now, bitches.
Speaker 3: But sports isn't just about the athletes.
Speaker 2: There's so many other people who've made history without destroying
Speaker 2: their joints, people like Kim Arng, who became the general
Speaker 2: manager of the Miami Marlins, making her the first female
Speaker 2: GM in any major American men's league.
Speaker 3: She walked away up.
Speaker 2: The ladder facing racism and sexism. It's the surf and
Speaker 2: turf of discrimination. So now you know there's been so
Speaker 2: many unsung Asian sports heroes in history. Don't bother thanking me,
Speaker 2: my meager teacher salary is thanks enough, and yes, this
Speaker 2: is all gonna be on a final.
Speaker 3: All right, all right, settled down, everyone.
Speaker 2: Because today we're learning about something that's blowing up all
Speaker 2: over the world. No, not climate change, Okay, I don't
Speaker 2: teach boring stuff in this classroom.
Speaker 3: I'm talking about k pop.
Speaker 2: It's why your cousins only speaks Korean more fluently than English.
Speaker 2: And believe it or not, k pop used to be
Speaker 2: something that only Koreans knew about. The rest of the
Speaker 2: world wasn't always into it, like how there was a
Speaker 2: time when white people didn't know about yoga.
Speaker 3: The first group to really break through internationally was the
Speaker 3: Kim Cus.
Speaker 2: Soukja, Aja and Minja started singing as children during the
Speaker 2: Korean War for American gis. They sang, they danced, and
Speaker 2: they played twenty instruments. I can't even name twenty instruments saxophone.
Speaker 2: In nineteen fifty nine, they got a contract to perform
Speaker 2: in Vegas at Sullivan was taping a show there, and
Speaker 2: they managed to book a performance on the show, there
Speaker 2: was such a hit they got asked back twenty more times.
Speaker 2: Do you know how great you have to be to
Speaker 2: get asked back to anything twenty times? I don't even
Speaker 2: get invited to join LinkedIn that much. Unfortunately, the growth
Speaker 2: of K pop hit a bump in the road soon
Speaker 2: after when South Korea fell under the dictatorship of President
Speaker 2: Park Junghi, who started banning music. They even created a
Speaker 2: blacklist of songs that radio stations couldn't play. Everyone's end
Speaker 2: of your Spotify summary just said your most played song
Speaker 2: was the national anthem. But Korean artists kept making music
Speaker 2: that challenged the status quo, like Folks singer Handei Sou,
Speaker 2: whose albums were banned for anti government messaging, a rock
Speaker 2: guitarist Sin Chung Yong, who the story goes to fight
Speaker 2: the dictator's request to write a song in his honor,
Speaker 2: and let's face it, wanting a song to be written
Speaker 2: about you is.
Speaker 3: Classic dictator behavior.
Speaker 2: Right after military parades and having a weird haircut, everyone
Speaker 2: tells you looks great. By the eighties, the dictatorship had loosened,
Speaker 2: and by loosened, I mean the dictator was assassinated, but whatever.
Speaker 2: It made listen to a radio fun again. Outside music
Speaker 2: was allowed back in the country, and two of the
Speaker 2: most influential genres became.
Speaker 3: Hip hop and R and B.
Speaker 2: Black artists from Michael Jackson to run DNC reshape the
Speaker 2: musical landscape of South Korea. It inspired performers like Dudes,
Speaker 2: DJDC and Sir TG and Boys, who are the earliest
Speaker 2: examples of K pop as we know it today. They
Speaker 2: even made it into the movie soundtrack for Three Ninjas
Speaker 2: kicked back.
Speaker 3: He didn't think we'd be watching a movie in class today,
Speaker 3: did you.
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 3: Well, I didn't think. I still have a hangover, But
Speaker 3: sometimes life surprises. This was a big moment for Korean
Speaker 3: pop music, even if.
Speaker 2: The song was being played over scenes said in Japan.
Speaker 3: But give him a break, Okay.
Speaker 2: They're the Three Ninjas, not the three cultural sensitivity experts.
Speaker 2: The next big step towards today's K pop was in
Speaker 2: the nineteen nineties, when major music studios started putting performers
Speaker 2: together in boy and girl bands. That's right, Korea was
Speaker 2: doing that long before Simon Cowell's nips ever started poking
Speaker 2: through his T shirts.
Speaker 3: That's a no for me, dog, no surprise. This new
Speaker 3: wave of K pop blew up around the world.
Speaker 2: It featured complex melodies unlike any other pop music, and
Speaker 2: always had next level dance choreography. To this day, those
Speaker 2: remain the signature elements of K pop. That and being Asian.
Speaker 3: Very important requirement.
Speaker 2: This new generation of K pop stars became so successful
Speaker 2: the government started to take notice and soon lost a
Speaker 2: program to promote krem music around the globe.
Speaker 3: They saw kpop as a.
Speaker 2: Way to boost Korea's cultural strength and economy without having
Speaker 2: to do a squid game. But one of the big
Speaker 2: gus K pop sensations was a surprise no government could predict.
Speaker 2: I'm sorry, I know it took you ten years to
Speaker 2: get this out of your head, but we gotta talk
Speaker 2: about it. Gunham Style was the first video to break
Speaker 2: a billion views on YouTube.
Speaker 3: It was so popular.
Speaker 2: UN Secretary General Banki Moon praised the song, saying the
Speaker 2: arts was the path to cultural understanding. He said that
Speaker 2: about Condemn Style, that's like if they played baby Shot
Speaker 2: during a war and all the soldiers started laying down
Speaker 2: their weapons and hugging each other. Since then, the rest
Speaker 2: of the world is more into K pop than ever before.
Speaker 2: From girl groups like Girls generation and black pink to
Speaker 2: artists like cl But let's get to the group you've
Speaker 2: been waiting for. The reason you are enrolled in this
Speaker 2: class in the first place. Et by the S, three
Speaker 2: letters so important the rest of the alphabet doesn't even
Speaker 2: exist anymore. They've dominated the charts, They've generated billions in revenue.
Speaker 2: They made it okay to eat butter again. They even
Speaker 2: increased tourism to South Korea. I mean, I'm glad my
Speaker 2: fans on that voted because then they'd have to travel
Speaker 2: to Australia, which, trust me, you don't want to do that.
Speaker 2: BTS is, without a doubt, the biggest group in the world.
Speaker 3: You can tell by their fans.
Speaker 2: The BTS Army is the second largest military after the US,
Speaker 2: and they've drone zero weddings. BTS might be on hiatus,
Speaker 2: but there's so much new k pop we can enjoy
Speaker 2: what they're gone. And now you know how it got
Speaker 2: to where it is today. Oh but gunam style, now
Speaker 2: it's in my head.
Speaker 3: God, get it out, get it.
Speaker 2: Hello, class, Thanks for coming, although you really had no choice,
Speaker 2: since if you don't come to school in America, your
Speaker 2: parents get arrested. Today we're gonna learn about some of
Speaker 2: the great Asian veterans in US history, because Asians have
Speaker 2: served in the US military for almost as long as
Speaker 2: America has fought in wars, which is basically the whole time.
Speaker 3: America loves war so much it wants.
Speaker 2: To have its babies and then send those babies to
Speaker 2: go fight in the next worl anyway. First up is
Speaker 2: Augustine Feliciano, who fought in the War of eighteen twelve,
Speaker 2: which happened then the tegious guy doesn't actually say so,
Speaker 2: nice going morons. Feliciano was the first Filipino to serve
Speaker 2: in the US Navy. But before he sailed with the navy,
Speaker 2: he sailed with pirates. That's right, American history has Asian
Speaker 2: veterans and Asian pirates. I'm blowing your freaking mind today.
Speaker 2: What's next, Asian werewolves.
Speaker 3: No, that's beneath us.
Speaker 2: Let's fast forward to America's Civil War, the first one,
Speaker 2: not the one currently happening every day in your Twitter feed.
Speaker 2: The Civil Wars where Chinese American soldiers began to make
Speaker 2: their mark. Of the roughly two hundred Chinese Americans living
Speaker 2: in the Eastern US at the time, fifty eight of
Speaker 2: them served in the war. That's fifty eight two hundred.
Speaker 2: Can you calculate the percentage from that number?
Speaker 3: It's easy.
Speaker 2: You just crossed out the Zeros, you move to the
Speaker 2: des one point over, You flip the whole thing multiplied
Speaker 2: by one hundred, and you pluy your phony user calculator
Speaker 2: map is easy, especially for me, a teacher. One of
Speaker 2: the most distinguished Chinese Civil War vets was Joseph Pearce.
Speaker 2: He rose in the ranks to corporal, the highest rank
Speaker 2: of any Chinese American in the Union Army, which I
Speaker 2: can also relate to because I am the highest ranking
Speaker 2: Asian at the Daily Show, though sadly I do not
Speaker 2: have as many confirmed kills. And yeah, there were white
Speaker 2: soldiers in the eighteen hundreds who are taking orders from
Speaker 2: an Asian guy because those guys were hashtag allies and
Speaker 2: they didn't even need to brag about it on Instagram.
Speaker 3: All right, Julia, we get it.
Speaker 2: You tell your dark Cantonese. But not every veteran got
Speaker 2: what they deserve. Edward de Khota was a Chinese immigrant
Speaker 2: adopted by an American ship captain, who foughnded the Civil
Speaker 2: War and then served for another twenty six years. But
Speaker 2: get this, America still refused to make him a citizen.
Speaker 3: Do you believe that.
Speaker 2: I mean, this guy risked his life in the military
Speaker 2: for almost thirty years.
Speaker 3: Never do anything close to that.
Speaker 2: They automatically get citizenship just by getting pooped out of
Speaker 2: their mom's butt.
Speaker 3: That's right. I threw in some sex ad for free.
Speaker 3: You're welcome.
Speaker 2: Let's move on to World War One and one of
Speaker 2: his greatest Asian American heroes allow sin Ki. He was
Speaker 2: a runner, which means he ran messagers to the front line,
Speaker 2: all while dodging gunfire and flamethrowers. That's right, this guy
Speaker 2: risked his life to send messages. I hope this makes
Speaker 2: you grateful for texting. In fact, I wish this was
Speaker 2: still how we had to send messages. You probably think
Speaker 2: twice if you have to run across a battlefield to
Speaker 2: give someone a picture of your dick.
Speaker 3: Now, let's turn to World War Two.
Speaker 2: We saw Asian American heroes like Daniel Niue, who fought
Speaker 2: the four hundred and forty second Regiment, a unit made
Speaker 2: up completely of soldiers of Japanese descent and one of
Speaker 2: the most decorated regiments in military history.
Speaker 3: During a combat mission in France.
Speaker 2: In Newe escaped death when a bullet to his chest
Speaker 2: was blocked by two silver dollars. Tried doing that with bitcoin,
Speaker 2: you crypto bitches, Daniel nue is why I carried two
Speaker 2: silver dollars in my breast pocket at all times? Wait?
Speaker 3: Where are they? Oh yeah, I got that vending machine coke.
Speaker 2: Okay, nobody shoot me until I can get to the
Speaker 2: Bullian Exchange. Even after his military service, he knew it,
Speaker 2: went on to serve fifty years in Congress, so congratulate
Speaker 2: him on finding the only job worse than combat.
Speaker 3: But maybe the biggest.
Speaker 2: Asian bad ass to come out of World War Two
Speaker 2: was Captain Nieves Fernandez, a Filipino school teacher who became
Speaker 2: a gorilla warfare fighter and led a squadron that killed
Speaker 2: over two hundred Japanese soldiers. You hear that class school
Speaker 2: teachers can become gorilla assassins.
Speaker 3: Do not mess with us, Oh goddamn shop.
Speaker 2: The last veteran we're gonna learn about today is a
Speaker 2: living legend, and not how that term is usually used,
Speaker 2: like if your friend Jaquin's a stupid flip cup tournament.
Speaker 3: I mean an.
Speaker 2: Actual legend Tammy Duckwood. She served as a black helicopter
Speaker 2: pilot in Iraq until two thousand and four, when her
Speaker 2: aircraft was hit by a rocket propelled grenade.
Speaker 3: She lost her legs and partial use of her right arm.
Speaker 2: For her sacrifice, she was arnold with a purple hot
Speaker 2: I don't know why it's purple.
Speaker 3: I guess where we designed it. Was a huge Prince fan.
Speaker 2: But her service didn't end with the military. She went
Speaker 2: on to become the first Thai American woman and disabled
Speaker 2: woman elected to Congress. She also became the first woman
Speaker 2: to bring a baby onto the Senate floor, although it
Speaker 2: definitely wasn't the first diaper. Those dudes are old as shit,
Speaker 2: so class inconclusion, from now on, when you think of
Speaker 2: Asians in American history, don't just think of railroads and
Speaker 2: that guy from Breakfast at Tiffany's who isn't actually Asian.
Speaker 2: Think of Tammy Duckworth, Lao Sinki and Yev's Fernandez who
Speaker 2: kill build half an army, Speaking of which, I gotta
Speaker 2: go tend to this neck wood. Knowing how cheap these
Speaker 2: school districts are probably have lead poisoning class dismissed.
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