From CNN:
The crash of the South Korean carrier had already hit racial notes – with jokes mocking Asian driving or piloting skills and questions whether the crash had to do with the Korean culture…Racial jokes around the fatal air crash "are not benign," said Claire Jean Kim, an associate professor of political science and Asian American Studies at the University of California, Irvine. "Those kinds of jokes reflect a deeper view of Asian Americans as culturally different and inferior," she said. "That's not a joke, that has material effects. It leads to a general sense, even those who are born here in the U.S., they simply don't belong." Kim says denying that something is racist is a sign of the times. "People are minimizing it as a joke," she said. "In this particular period, many people claim that racism is a thing of the past, we live in a colorblind society, we should brush these things off."

For the full story, please visit http://edition.cnn.com/2013/07/17/us/asiana-name-blunder-race/index.html.