On last night’s episode of Saturday Night Live, cast member Bowen Yang called attention to some of the very real issues facing the nation’s Asian American and Pacific Islander communities—like how there’s only one Panera in all of North Brooklyn and how so many people are simply going about their days in total ignorance of the fact that the original English-language dub of Sailor Moon totally de-gayed the show’s handful of lesbian characters. It’s fucked up!
Yang spends most of the sketch, which aired as part of SNL’s weekly Weekend Update segment, satirizing the way that white people—in this case, fellow cast member Colin Jost—expect AAPI individuals to be able to “solve” the rise in anti-Asian violence over the past year for them. “I don’t even want to be doing this Update piece!” he tells Jost. “I wanted to do my character, Gay Passover Bunny, but it’s too smart for the show.” He also gets in a few jabs at Instagram infographic activism before ending on a more earnest note. “I’m just a comedian. I don’t have the answers, but I’m not just looking for them online. I’m looking around me,” he says. “Fuel up. Do more.”
