Who taught: how would you do? (TV show)

One of the social issues that America has these days is bullying, especially in schools. I am sure my readers know what bullying means. But, just in case….. Bully, as a verb, means “to treat in an overbearing or intimidating manner.” Hence, bullying, as a noun, is “the act of treating someone in an intimidating manner.” There is a very special expression in Korean for the same act. It is 왕따 (Wang Dda). This expression is actually a combination of Chinese character, 王, and Korean verb, 따돌리다. 王 means King in English. And 따돌리다 means “leaving someone out or exclude.” To sum it up, “Wang Dda” means “total exclusion for everything.” Can you feel it, my American friends? 🙂

5 years ago, when I was in Korea, this was a huge social issue and I heard a lot about this from news almost every day. Hope that it got better over the last 5 years. A few days ago, I was watching an ABC TV show, “HOW WOULD YOU DO?” In the show, they were trying to find out how many people would help out when they see bullying that is happening in a public place like a restaurant. More specifically, there were three teenagers and also two other teenagers sitting next to each other. One of the two was a white boy with red hair and freckles. The three boys started to bully him by calling him “Ginger!” As I heard it, I was confused, asking Jessy, “What the heck is ginger in this context? I do not get it. Why is it a problem?” She said, “I do not know. Looks like ginger is used to describe some specific type of people and has a negative connotation?? Let’s look it up!” So, we looked it up on Urban Dictionary. There it was! It is an expression that people use to mean a person with pale skin, freckles and red hair.

And as I was searching, I also found out that this expression was used in another TV show, South Park. I am not sure this helped to resolve the issue or not. I doubt it actually helped. They should have not done this episode.

So, aren’t you interested in what happened with the boy? There was one lady who was sitting close to the boys. She said, “You guys stop it. Look around! Everyone here in this restaurant is different from each other and you cannot judge people based on what they look.” Wow! how amazing it is! Amen!

Here is my suggestion! Let’s not use this word at all from now on so that eventually the expression is not valid any more! After all, ginger is not a word for human being! It is for a plant!