An Un-Calibrated Centrifuge

I read The Nanny Diaries ~5 years ago. I skimmed through the movie earlier today though. I know the movie differs from the book, but I didn't realize how much until I started reading Nanny Returns. I didn't recognize any of Nanny's friends or her grandmother. It felt like I couldn't understand anything.

I might have muddle through except there were a few details that turned me off from the story. 1. The comparison of a character's speech patterns to "an Asian language" 2. Grandmother in a kimono 3. vague hand wavy mention of a racist joke that the white MC then disproves of.

3. happens first in the book and was the most annoying to me. Often times white authors will do this. They will have side characters do/say little racist things so their main character can be offended over them. I really don't know what makes white authors do this, but they really like it. Is it supposed to show their readers how progressive they are? Because I'd rather they just not address race at all. Especially since there are zero other mentions of race in the first 20 pages of the book and I'm pretty sure all of these characters are meant to be white/will be read as white by a majority of readers.

There's a scene like this in Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell where two white characters have a ridiculous discussion about racism. Every time a scene like this happens (I wish I could think of more examples) it just feels like the author wants brownie points, even though saying racism is bad is like, barely Racism 101. And it just feels so weird reading about racism in a book that is filled with only white people when the scene is totally unnecessary to the plot. Just don't mention a racist joke at all. The scene doesn't suffer at all if that bit is removed.