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Comedian Eliot Chang tackles race with comedy

The United Asian Coalition (UAC) hosted their annual East Meets West event on Friday, March 31, in an effort to explore and bring together eastern and western cultures through guest speakers, performances, comedy shows, panels and various other fun and engaging ways.

This year the UAC brought Eliot Chang, a stand up comedian who has made various television appearances including Comedy Central and “Chelsea Lately.”

“We are making sure Eliot Chang gets here smoothly. We almost canceled due to snow, but he assured us that there was no need to cancel and that he will be here tonight,” said Auderien Monareh, president of the UAC, prior to the event. “We’ve advertised all over the campus; on the boards, academic halls, and throughout the Memorial Union Building (MUB). We submitted table tents and our ads have been running on OrcaTV displayed throughout campus as well.”

The doors to the Strafford Room of the MUB, where the event was held, opened a little before 8 p.m. Attendees sat and chatted in the dimly lit room while pop music played in the background until Chang was introduced around 8:15 p.m.

Chang made a high-energy appearance, running onto the stage and diving right into raunchy and racy jokes without hesitation. His jokes ranged from a variety of different topics including marriage, sex, gun laws and racism.

As the performance continued, the audience began to loosen up, thus generating more laughter and an audibly louder crowd. Oftentimes, Chang’s jokes poked fun at himself which usually pertained to both his height:  “I might be 5’8” but I f–k like I’m 6’4”,” and his race: “I lived in Harlem for 10 years and my d*** never got bigger.”

Freshman mechanical engineering major Austin Snell said he “found out about Chang a few years ago on YouTube watching stand up comedian versus heckler videos. This wasn’t the best performance I’ve seen of his but it was still pretty solid, he joked about the topics that he usually does.”

After his standup act, Chang took a five-minute intermission before returning to discuss a more serious topic. Chang spoke on Asians in the media and how he believes that the Asian youth doesn’t really have a positive role model in American media.

“Asian women in American media are either displayed as a sex object or a b—h,” Chang said. He went on to argue that you almost never see an Asian couple in the media, and that Asian women are shown to please all men except for Asian men.

Chang then went on to offer his phone number to the audience so they could text him anonymous questions for a Q&A at the very end of his show. Questions varied from dating advice to his personal sex life, which generated almost as much laughter as the standup portion of his show.

While the snow continued to fall outside, and the final questions were answered, Chang took the time to thank the remaining audience who chose to stay past the end of his standup act. He emphasized that he was thankful it wasn’t only the Asian audience members who stayed around for a discussion about Asians in the Media.

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