Fern Shen Hates White Children

In 2017, an Asian journalist committed a blatant blood libel against Baltimore's white children. The New York Times printed it in yet another disturbing echo of Russia one hundred years earlier.

Fern Shen (FURN-shun) is an American-born Chinese woman who founded and runs Baltimore Brew, “an independent daily news website, staffed by veteran journalists committed to providing fresh, fair, insightful and reliable reporting about Baltimore.” She first came to my attention via a

Steve Sailer

piece, “Asian Journalist Cherishes Memory of Being Otherized 50 Years Ago,” which appeared in the Unz Review at the height of the Great Asian Pogrom of 2017.

Perhaps you remember the horror of it.

From Sailer at Unz:

From the New York Times:

How Racism Made Me a Dodgers Fan
By FERN SHEN NOV. 2, 2017

This week, Yu Darvish, the Los Angeles Dodger pitcher who is half Japanese, said he was trying to “stay positive” after a star player for the Houston Astros, Yuli Gurriel, mocked him with a racist slur and slant-eyes gesture during Game 3 of the World Series. …

Too bad a racially outraged Darvish (World Series ERA 21.60) didn’t throw beanballs at the next several Astros in the grand tradition of Juan Marichal and get suspended from the rest of the World Series so Alex Wood (World Series ERA 1.17) would have had to start Game 7 in Darvish’s stead … But no, Darvish had to be a gentleman about it …

I’m not big on baseball, but I became a Dodgers fan this week, and I think a lot of Asians and Asian-Americans joined me. We were disgusted by Gurriel’s ugly behavior and winced in unison as Darvish took a drubbing from the Astros in Game 7. (The Astros won the game and the series.) But our dismay runs deeper: Many Asian people are upset about the slick and spineless handling of the incident by the commissioner of Major League Baseball, Rob Manfred.

Let me take you back to a Catholic-school classroom in central New Jersey in the 1960s where I’m sitting at my desk, my face aflame.

A student has just turned around and made the dreaded gesture again: “Chineeese!” he says, pulling back his eyes, grinning, leering and causing a ripple of laughter the nuns never seem to mind.

As the lone Chinese student in the class — my siblings and I were the only Chinese in the school — I experienced this many times.

This is not to say I didn’t have friends or join in kickball games or share the occasional cookie from my “Beverly Hillbillies” lunch box with a classmate.

But now and then someone would confront me on the playground, pull back their eyes and remind me that I was still, to them, some kind of freak, a foreigner, a joke…

Until recently I’d have said we were well past all that blatant stuff…. So it was a bit of a shock to be confronted recently by some young white children in a supermarket parking lot in Baltimore. They were up in my face, doing the old ching-chang-charlie gibberish. It didn’t upset me so much as startle me; it was like seeing a ghost.

Baltimore, of course, is notorious for its roving gangs of racist white children.

I was in Baltimore at the time, so I went to the Baltimore Brew website and read the article congratulating Fern Shen in the third person for her guest editorial in the New York Times. In the comments below the article, I asked Fern Shen in which supermarket parking lot had the “young white children” spewed their racial hatred at her.

The Hampden Giant, she replied immediately.

Hampden is one of the more than 200 neighborhoods in Baltimore City. It’s the neighborhood known for its concentration of white families.

Hampden is the white area pictured up I-83 northwest of downtown..

It’s also known for its Miracle on West 34th St celebration each Christmas:

A row of homes with Christmas lights and other holiday decor in Hampden, Baltimore. Christian Hinkle/Alamy

So I replied to Fern Shen with another specific question. She immediately deleted my reply, blocked me, and sent a little note saying I had been permanently banned from commenting for violating the website’s Terms of Service. (There really should be a wall somewhere commemorating all the websites I’ve been banned from.)

But censorship is usually in the service of lies and I hate both, so I made up a bunch of flyers and a like-minded collaborator and I started posting them all over Baltimore.

Eventually, I received a phone call.

Craig Nelsen?

Yes.

I’m calling, said a male voice, on behalf of the Baltimore Brew and Fern Shen. We insist…

I’m sorry, I interrupted, but you’ve violated my Terms of Service and I hung up on him.

The Confederate Women's Monument in Baltimore, Maryland, dedicated in 1917, was removed in August 2017, along with other Confederate monuments in the city. Confederate Women's Monument, West University Parkway

One Sunday morning, after finishing up some political activism in the neighborhood, we returned to my van parked about two blocks down from the empty plinth pictured above. We didn’t leave right away and were still sitting in our parking spot when I happened to look up. Wow, is that Fern Shen?

Sure, enough, it was Fern Shen, marching down the sidewalk directly toward us from the direction of the plinth. And, boy, did she look pissed! Her eyes were fixed straight ahead. Her haired bounced angrily with each stride. Behind her, a much younger white male half skipped to keep up with her. They passed not 36 inches in front of us and stomp-skipped on down the street and out of sight.

It was clear what had happened.

Somehow, Fern Shen had already received word of the newly (re)inscribed plinth, had gone to inspect it, and, when we saw her, was raging back to her residence nearby. I say “residence” because, remember, it was Sunday morning. And she wasn’t dressed for church.

To understand the delicious significance of our Fern Shen sighting that morning, it is necessary to know the neighborhood layout.

1. The Hampden Giant—if there were going to be gangs of racist white children running wild in Baltimore, this is where you would find them. 2. The Waverly Giant—this is where you do find gangs of black children running wild. 3. The empty plinth (o) and our parking location (x)

When we saw Fern Shen (3), she was returning from her visit to the plinth (o)—returning home past where we were parked at (x). So, it’s a sure bet she lives somewhere in the yellow-shaded area above. In other words, the Waverly Giant (2) is her local supermarket and where she does her grocery shopping—not the Hampden Giant (1).

From the beginning, I had suspected that Fern Shen’s run-in with the ching-chang-charley children had actually taken place in the Waverly Giant parking lot—a parking lot that does, indeed, have unsupervised groups of children—black children—scads of them—running wild. (The funny thing is, I had just written an article about the especially vibrant vibrancy in that exact parking lot involving unsupervised groups of their mothers running wild: Black Women Brawl over Last Parking Spot in Fire Lane).

Okay, so, Fern Shen is a contemptible liar who libels innocent children, a repulsive human being, and a powerful argument for perhaps taking another look at the Chinese Exclusion Act. But how is this important now?

The importance lies in the “why.” Why did Fern Shen change the race of the children who ching-chang-charleyed her? The answer is found in the only accurate part of the Baltimore Brew’s self-description: “staffed by veteran journalists committed to providing fresh, fair, insightful and reliable reporting about Baltimore.”

Fern Shen is a veteran journalist. She has previously been a reporter for both the Hartford Courant and the Washington Post. That’s why she libeled Baltimore’s innocent white children. She knows exactly who controls the American media and what it feeds on.

Had Fern Shen left the race of the children black, or not mentioned the race at all, the New York Times would have had no reason to print her snivel. In America, it is the white children who must be maligned even though untruthfully and underservedly. Real racist children aren’t newsworthy.

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