Asian American stars slam Chris Rock for bashing Asians at Oscars

NBA basketball star Jeremy Lin joined others in slamming Chris Rock for the jokes he made about Asians at the Oscars. While Rock criticised Hollywood through the live awards broadcast for its lack of diversity, he did made jokes about Asians.

In one segment, he brought three Asian children on stage, pretending that they were 'bankers' from PriceWaterhouseCoopers, effectively, combining the two most stereotypes of Asians - that they are good at maths and that child labour is rife in the continent.

"They sent us their most dedicated, accurate and hard-working representatives," Rock said. "Please welcome Ming Zhu, Bao Ling and David Moskowitz."

He continued: "If anybody's upset about that joke, just tweet about it on your phone that was also made by these kids" But Lin, who plays for Charlotte Hornets was not amused by the joke.

"Seriously though, when is this going to change," he tweeted. Lin is the first American of Chinese descent to play in the NBA.

Lin was not the only one unhappy over the joke. Mee Moua, the president and executive director of the Washington-based Asian Americans Advancing Justice said that the show was a setback for diversity.

"... the 'joke' involving Asian children, which played off more than one damaging stereotype of Asians and Asian Americans, exposed one of the failings of how we talk about race in America: race relations are not a black-white binary," she noted.

Constance Wu, Fresh Off the Boat actress tweeted: "To parade little kids on stage with no speaking lines merely to be the butt of a racist joke is reductive and gross. Antithesis of progress."

Hawaii Five-O star Daniel Dae Kim also was upset that the first reference to any ethnicity other than 'Black' at the Oscars was to "pho". He said: "I though #diversity was more than that."

Actor Jeffrey Wright noted that Rock had made a "half-a**ed Asian joke" while he "preached about diversity." He said Rock's Asian and Jewish joke "needed re-calibrating."