Bruce Lee’s Orientalist Fandom

It's actually not a controversial take to say much of Bruce Lee's Western fandom is based on orientalism. Just as it's not controversial to say sports fans can like particular Black athletes while still engaging in racist tropes. Or appreciate a Black athlete due to racist tropes, like their genetics. Or for Lee: mysticism, exoticism, and the magical Asian trope.

You see this with MMA fans praising Bruce Lee while booing Chinese fighters or chanting "USA." Or sports fans who "love" Lee booing Chinese-American athletes who went to Asia to escape racism. Which Lee, also born in the US, had to do. And they didn't appreciate him either until he died—when he could no longer speak for himself—like Ali.

You can have personal friends of Lee's, like Chuck Norris, be racist chuds, or Lee students specializing in training police and other US agents and military. Because you can like BIPOC figures while maintaining racism. Just as white supremacists can like Japan or exoticized versions of BIPOC warrior culture, or date BIPOC.

These aren't aberrations but the pattern. Anecdotal stories about liking one person, having dated someone, or liking the idea of a particular BIPOC race doesn't prove anything. In fact, this is often just how racism looks.

It should not come as a shock when the West only knows how to appreciate something non-Western in a toxic way—because the West is toxic.

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