ST. LOUIS (KMOX) - A TV news anchor in St. Louis shared the audio of a complaint she received in which a woman says the Korean American anchor was "being very Asian" during the station's New Year's Day broadcast.
Michelle Li of KSDK shared the voicemail in a video on Jan. 1 and it now has more than 3 million views.
"Hi, this evening your Asian anchor mentioned something about being Asian, and Asian people eat dumplings on New Year's Day," the woman says in the voicemail. "And I kind of take offense to that because what if one of your white anchors said, 'Well white people eat this on New Year's Day'. I don't think it was very appropriate that she said that, and she was being very Asian. I don't know. She can keep her Korean to herself. Alright, sorry. It was annoying. Because, if a white person would say that, they would get fired. So, say something about what white people eat. Alright, thank you."
Li did a segment that morning about different foods people eat on New Year's Day and ended it by saying, "I eat dumpling soup, that's what a lot of Korean people do."
After hearing the voicemail, she changed her Twitter bio to say "VERY ASIAN" and posted a blog saying negative feedback is nothing new in her 20-year journalism career.
"We are all just people trying to exist," Li stated in her post. If I had the chance to actually speak to this woman, I would love to have a heartfelt conversation with her -- maybe we could do it over a bowl of dumplings. In St. Louis, there are a lot of great options."
The viral video even got "VeryAsian trending on Twitter over the weekend. It was shared by authors, social media influencers, journalists, actors, former atheltes and politicians.
Here's the New Year's Day segment that the complaint was about:
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