Amid generally positive reviews of his jabs at Hollywood and #OscarsSoWhite, the host of Sunday’s Oscar ceremony, Chris Rock, is being taken to task for some of his material involving Asian-Americans.

Introducing the accountants from PricewaterhouseCoopers, which tabulates the vote results, Mr. Rock instead brought onstage two boys and a girl of Asian heritage, whom he named Ming Zu, Bao Ling and David Moskowitz. As they clutched briefcases, they visually illustrated the stereotype that Asians are diligent workers who excel at math.

“If anybody’s upset about that joke, just tweet about it on your phone that was also made by these kids,” Mr. Rock added, a punch line interpreted as a reference to child labor in Asia.

But that seeming awareness of how fine the line was between satire and slur, only added insult to injury, Lowen Liu wrote on the Slate site. “Even if the second beat tries to turn things around, it still allows the teller to make an Asian joke and then excuse himself from the telling. He pulls the rug out from under the audience only to hide underneath it.” (Sacha Baron Cohen, in character as Ali G, later also made a swipe — involving Minions and “little yellow people” — that many found offensive.)