Byron's Blog

Byron's new blog: bigWOWO.com

2008-09-25T14:41:00.000-07:00

Hey All,

Just want to let my fans all know that I now have a new blog. You can find me at bigWOWO.com. It was time that I had my own domain name. I may be transferring all this old stuff to the new blog as well. In the meantime, I'll still be checking in on this one, so feel free to drop me a message anytime.

The College Issue

2008-09-22T09:14:00.000-07:00

There was an extraordinary issue of the Times Magazine this past weekend: The College Issue.

Some of my favorite articles were those on Auburn University's Philosophy Department, writers who also teach, and Obama's teaching style.

Teachers from India

2008-09-20T15:50:00.001-07:00

There is an article about teachers from India in the Times today. These teachers from India are being hired by American schools because of the shortage of math and science teachers in the U.S. Needless to say, it's a culture shock.

In India, Ms. Tallur was revered. When she entered her classroom, 70 students would rise, stand by their desks, and greet her in unison. “In India a teacher is next to God,” she explained, noting the contrast in behavior.
Now after a year of teaching at Harding in an international program, Ms. Tallur has become used to less respect. She is no longer surprised by profanity in the hallways and students talking out of turn in the classroom.

There's a good quote over here:

“In India, most of the disciplining happens when children are younger,” she said. “It’s easy to bend the stem of a plant when it is young. Once the stem gets strong, it is much harder.”

There's a funny quote over here:

At Bassick High School, Satya Mohan, a physics teacher, said he was surprised the first time a student put his head down on his desk and said, “I am not in the mood to listen today.”
“I thought to myself, well he is being honest,” Dr. Mohan said.

It's good that this is taking place, both in terms of the intercultural exchange and the much needed instruction in math and science.

By the way, I think India must do well in terms of teaching language too. It's not unusual to see Indian authors on the shortlist for the Man Booker prize. They definitely take their education seriously in India.

The Ultra-Rich

2008-09-20T10:21:00.000-07:00

Someone on one of my listserves sent me this. We never ever get tired of talking about the ultra-rich or ultra-powerful. But in our own defense, some of these people truly are fascinating. It's a funny cycle. I think if I had that much money, I'd put it into promoting my non-profit. But that non-profit mindset is probably why I don't have that much money in the first place.

The Honeymoon is Over

2008-09-19T21:09:00.000-07:00

It looks like the excitement regarding Sarah Palin's nomination for VP is starting to wear off. I was hoping it would, and I'm glad that common sense is starting to settle in. Not only is she not cooperating with the inquiry into her "Troopergate" scandal, but people are also starting to question other parts of her history that might make her unfit for the VP slot, such as her spotty educational record and achievements, and the fact that she repeats herself over and over in all of her campaign speeches.

If the numbers on her fading appeal are an indication of the country's assessment of her, then I'm happy that people are finally waking up. We don't need a VP who is an average American. We don't need a VP who has average or below average academic credentials. We don't need a VP who repeats the same lines over and over again. We need a VP who will be able to lead, innovate, think on her feet, and show Americans what we're capable of. We need a VP who has the ability to become a great President should the need arise. We're not going to get that with Sarah Palin. I hope Americans are starting to see this.

Microsoft's New Ad Campaign

2008-09-17T22:45:00.000-07:00

Microsoft is beginning a new ad campaign to fight back against Apple's Mac Guy/PC Guy ads. It's supposedly a hip, cool, rebuttal to the ads that Apple has been using to hammer PC's for the last couple of years. Apparently they're investing heavily in these ads:

Mr. Gates makes a cameo appearance in the new Microsoft spots, along with celebrities like the actress Eva Longoria, the author Deepak Chopra and the singer Pharrell Williams. (Mr. Seinfeld is gone, at least for now.)
But the stars are everyday PC users, from scientists and fashion designers to shark hunters and teachers, all of whom affirm, in fast-paced, upbeat vignettes, their pride in using the computers that run on Microsoft operating systems and software.

I used to be an "everyday PC user" too...until, of course, I tried a Mac. It's a world of difference. First of all, Macs are better at doing fun stuff like podcasts and video. Second, the bootup time is around 30 seconds rather than two minutes. Third, you don't have to worry as much about viruses (though in all fairness to Microsoft, this is because hackers target Windows more often.). Fourth, the graphics abilities of Leopard are superior to Windows. Fifth, MacOS doesn't crash all the time. Sixth, certain things just make more sense--i.e. log in as a non-admin but require an admin password for software installation.

I honestly would never have tried a Mac if a friend hadn't bought one on a whim. I still use a PC for work and for spreadsheets, but as for my personal use, now that I'm on OS, I don't think I'll ever go back.

Edit 9/18: Funny comment here.

I wonder what computers the Crispin Porter creatives use...any guesses?
—
JP, San Francisco, CA

Generations of Hope

2008-09-16T10:31:00.000-07:00

There's a beautiful, touching story in the New York Times today about a community called "Generations of Hope." The story in short is that Generations of Hope, a nonprofit adoption agency, has created a small community of adoptive parents and children along with surrogate grandparents. There is a permanent community of adoptive families, and there are older people who live there and agree to volunteer with the community.

For the most part, it works. Before she came here 14 years ago, Ms. Bohm, a retired schoolteacher and widow who never had children, said she was “bored and lonely and feeling like maybe I should just hang it up.”
She saw a pamphlet about Generations of Hope in a shopping mall. She now believes her years here have been the happiest, and most important, of her life. “I feel like a cowgirl on wheels around these kids,” she said.

Part of the beauty of the program is that these kids need grandparents, and these grandparents need grandkids. The philosophy to make families permanent is also a good one:

At the heart of the program is the ethos that parenthood and grandparenthood are permanent.
“I know of two ways to raise children: you have them biologically or you adopt them,” said Dr. Eheart, a former researcher at the University of Illinois. “Foster care is an oxymoron.”

There of course is the racial aspect--most of the grandkids are black, and most of the grandparents are white. It's always a difficult pairing because there are issues that an older generation of white folk will not understand when it comes to young minorities. But there's a strong need for mentorship with both age groups, so I think Generations of Hope is doing a great thing.

Frank Chin Video

2008-09-14T18:18:00.000-07:00

Zach posted up the youtube version of the Frank Chin event, which Thymos hosted in July. You can see it here. Zach not only filmed, edited, and converted/burned the video, but he also wrote the music himself. Can you believe that? If you're interested in more of Zach's work, you can check out his homepage here.

NY Times article on Wayne Wang

2008-09-14T12:14:00.001-07:00

There is an article on Wayne Wang in the NY Times today. His upcoming movies look interesting, although I can't say that I've seen all that much of his work. I've been told by many that I should see "Chan is Missing."

Little Italy

2008-09-14T10:27:00.001-07:00

There is an article on Little Italy in the Times today about how there are less than 1,000 Italians left in Little Italy.

“The problem with Italians is we don’t really stick together,” rued Mr. Scivetti, who immigrated from Italy a half-century ago as a teenager. He broke the labor laws on shape-up journeys each dawn from Little Italy to suburban odd jobs. “Like the Latinos now,” he noted.

I agree that the Chinese "stick together," but I also think that it's because there is such a large influx of Chinese immigration. Chinese people live in Chinatown, and they immigrate through Chinatown, but most don't stay there. Most residents of Chinatown are 1st or 1.5 gen'ers. If Italians had a similar number of immigrants today, Little Italy would probably still be Italian.

Dems vs Repubs

2008-09-13T09:01:00.001-07:00

Here's a good article on the difference between Dems and Repubs. I should check out Durkheim.

Quote of the Day

2008-09-13T07:30:00.000-07:00

For those who haven’t noticed, we’re electing a president and vice president, not selecting a winner on “American Idol.
--Bob Herbert, NY Times, 9/12/08

There are two great opinions on Governor Palin in the NY Times today. First, there is Bob Herbert's article "She's Not Ready," and then there is the editorial "Governor Palin's Worldview." Basically, they say the same thing that everyone else should be saying: Palin doesn't have the experience to be vice-president, and McCain is endangering the country by picking her.

Wax on, wax off

2008-09-12T20:33:00.001-07:00

I'm watching the Karate Kid on AMC right now. What a great movie. I've heard that I'm not the only one who likes it--it's one of Chuck Liddell's favorite movies of all time. Part II was kind of goofy, Part III was just plain stupid, but Part I...wow. What is especially amazing about the movie is that even though it's got "Karate" in the tile, there isn't all that much fighting; karate serves as a vehicle for self-actualization rather than a method of violence (this wasn't the case in the sequels). There are many ways to interpret this film. It can be a story of friendship, a story of mentorship, or a story of a boy becoming a man. I'm sure there are many more interpretations. It's amazing that a two hour movie can say so much.

I see it mostly as a generational film, a story where an old guy mentors a young guy, and the two teach each other about life. Daniel-san is a young boy who needs an older mentor to help him navigate through his bully problem, while Mr. Miyagi is a lonely old man who needs Daniel to bring him life. Daniel looks for the teacher, while Miyagi provides the guidance. Miyagi becomes the father figure that Daniel-san so badly needs. "Karate" is the vehicle and the discipline.

I learned something new on this viewing. Right after Miyagi cuts the deal with Johnny's karate teacher and they return home, Daniel-san asks if Miyagi thinks he can beat Johnny. Miyagi tells him that it doesn't matter, that if he fights well, everyone will have his respect and the problem will be over. I never thought about it before, but he's right. If Daniel had lost, it would make a crappy movie, but I highly doubt Johnny and the Cobra Kais would continue bullying a guy who showed up to fight at the tournament. There would simply be too much respect between them. It's a wonderful lesson if you think about it--people can all work together when there's a bond of mutual respect. And respect can come from mutual work and shared experiences.

By the way, I just looked up Ralph Macchio on Wikipedia, and according to his entry, he named his son "Daniel." That movie definitely changed his life!

Edit: Just watched Karate Kid II. Really lame, even though Tamlyn Tomita is in it.

Spies, Alger Hiss, and the Literati

2008-09-12T15:23:00.001-07:00

Martin Tytell died today. According to his NY Times obit, he was the master of typewriters. His knowledge and familiarity with the machines was so great that he was hired by the US military to convert Siamese typewriters into American typewriters during the manufacturing shortages of WW II, he was hired by the lawyers of Alger Hiss to prove that typewriter print was reproducible on different machines , and he was a friend of American writers who hired him to keep their machines working.

Mr. Tytell was proud of the rarity of his expertise, and relished the eccentric nature of his business. “We don’t get normal people here,” he said of his shop. And he was aware that his connection to the typewriter bordered on love.

“I’m 83 years old and I just signed a 10-year lease on this office; I’m an optimist, obviously,” Mr. Tytell told the writer Ian Frazier in a 1997 article in The Atlantic Monthly, commenting on the likelihood that typewriters weren’t going to last in the world much longer. “I hope they do survive — manual typewriters are where my heart is. They’re what keep me alive.”

It's amazing how many doors the typewriter afforded to Mr. Tytell. The moral of the story: if you do one thing, do it well, and become the best in the world.

Jazmin

2008-09-11T10:14:00.000-07:00

Saw these women on AAM. They're very good--to my ears, anyway. I hope they get far.

The only thing I didn't like was that they transformed a love song, a physical love song, into a Jesus song. Actually, it would even be incorrect to even call it a love song. It's technically a "yearning" song, since the lyrics imply that the players in the story are not yet lovers--"you'd be like heaven to touch, I wanna hold you so much." Physical contact or lust between men and women. Isn't that unholy? My opinion is that drastically altering the nature of a song is a form of theft, especially since in this case, it's clearly not the original intent of the songwriter and lyricist. It's legal--they're not performing for a public audience and not making money off their rendition (unless you count the offering plate)--but it still doesn't sit right with me.

When I was in church as a boy, they used to do the same thing. I used to wonder why religious groups transformed the lyrics of secular music into hymns. One preacher dude with a guitar once told me that all secular music was evil because it was Lucifer's means of taking our attention away from God, and that music was intended by our Savior to be His and His alone. That scared the crap out of me. For a long time, I was afraid of turning on the radio lest I get hit with a lightning bolt.

I can see why the churches take music like this--it helps them to expand their cultural reach and tell their story in a musical language that people already understand. At the same time, I "can't take my eyes" off the fact that it seems to me to be a form of theft, and it makes the integrity of the church even shakier than it already is.

Anyway, the point of this post wasn't to talk about the church but rather to point out another talented Asian American group. You can check them out over here.

Mary Dunn, Yoga Instructor, Dies

2008-09-10T17:26:00.000-07:00

Saw this article today. Mary Dunn was a famous and influential instructor on Iyengar Yoga, especially on the West Coast. It's not too often that we celebrate those who form a bridge between people and help us to learn from the wisdom of other cultures.

“We tend to cubbyhole the different parts of human experience,” she said in an interview in The New York Times in 1995. “ ‘Is it physical? Is it mental? Is it emotional?’ But here was a man teaching that all these parts are connected.”

Rest in peace.

Passing on Ethnic Identity

2008-09-08T11:44:00.001-07:00

Saw this article on AAM. I think these are the questions that people of my generation, the same generation as the people in the article, struggle with--how do you pass on ethnic identity to your kids? Children are our future, and parents are usually the ones who raise them, so these questions are among the most relevant to any activism we do.

This quote was very interesting:

As for heritage, Ms. Liu wants to make sure that Chris understands he’s
Asian-American. “One time a boy saw Christopher and said, ‘Look, a Chinese boy,”
recalled Ms. Liu. “Christopher says, ‘Where?’

A question which comes up less often, but which is probably even more important, is this: what is our ethnic identity as Asian Americans? Mainstream values sometimes color Asian American identity with the stereotyped, orientalist portrayals, but what is the culture?

My old approach would usually be to encourage modern people to inject their own personalities into creating the culture. I'd still recommend proactive action, but with some recent readings on initiations, which I'll hopefully expand upon at a later time, I'm starting to see that we need to take both a soft and a hard approach. Children are our future, and parents are usually the ones who raise them, so these questions are among the most relevant to any activism we do. I'll explain more at a later time.

Podcast on BetterAsianMan

2008-09-08T10:51:00.000-07:00

I'm listening right now to the latest Better Asian Man podcast. In the podcast, William interviews "King4aDay" and "The Minority Militant." William and King were continuing a discussion from the 44s, while William and TMM were continuing a discussion from TMM's blog at Minority Militant.

I think it would have been better if William had let the other guys in the studio join the conversation right away. 3 on 1 or 2 on 1 isn't fair, of course, but I think it would've been more lively with at least one other voice. I also think it would've been better if TMM had prepared by bringing his notes, which he acknowledged he didn't have.

That being said, William still delivers. It's a fun podcast, and I think it's good for us to discuss this, regardless of whether or not people agree with PUA. William is taking some huge activist steps in creating his network and inviting people to make voice contact with him.

Anyway, it's a long podcast, and I'm not done yet, but I'd thought I'd just go ahead and post it.

Brave New World of Digital Intimacy

2008-09-07T21:07:00.000-07:00

I don't have much to say about this NY Times article right now, other than it was a pretty insightful look at how online social networking continues to change the social network. I still don't get it. I have friends who log on to Facebook and MySpace every day, and I'm guessing that Twitter is an even more invasive form of online networking. I'm over 30, and as the article mentions, those of us who are over that age often just don't get it.

Politicians who can "relate"

2008-09-07T07:38:00.000-07:00

There's a great article on the reception of Palin's speech here. Judith Warner hits it right on. I think Thomas Friedman and Nicholas Kristof have addressed this issue as well. In America, it pays for a politician to "dumb it down" because people somehow feel that it's easier to relate to dumb people.

One of the worst poisons of the American political climate right now, the thing that time and again in recent years has led us to disaster, is the need people feel for leaders they can “relate” to. This need isn’t limited to women; it brought us after all, two terms of George W. Bush. And it isn’t new; Americans have always needed to feel that their leaders were, on some level, people like them.

But in the past, it was possible to fill that need through empathetic connection. Few Depression-era voters could “relate” to Franklin Roosevelt’s patrician background, notes historian Doris Kearns Goodwin. “It was his ability to connect to them that made them feel they could connect to him,” she told me in a phone interview.

The age of television, Goodwin believes, has made the demand for connection more immediate and intense. But never before George W. Bush did it quite reach the beer-drinking level of familiarity. “Now it’s all about being able to see your life story in the candidate, rather than the candidate, with empathy, being able to relate to you.”

I still can't get over how W pulled it off. When all is said and done, people need a politician who can manage resources and lead people. Who cares if he or she would make a good PTA friend or drinking buddy? Most of us won't have the opportunity to attend soccer practice or drink beer with them anyway. The only way we're going to get rid of this trend is for us to make smart cool. We need to do more to start celebrating smart people in American society.

Asian Americans Find Religion Depressing

2008-09-05T21:43:00.000-07:00

I just saw this while playing around with Google. The beauty of the web--it's an Asian American website, which links to Richard Dawkins's site, which links to the original article.

According to the article:

Previous research has shown that teens who are active in religious services are depressed less often because it provides these adolescents with social support and a sense of belonging.

But new research has found that this does not hold true for all adolescents, particularly for minorities and some females. The study found that white and African-American adolescents generally had fewer symptoms of depressive at high levels of religious participation. But for some Latino and Asian-American adolescents, attending church more often was actually affecting their mood in a negative way.

Asian-American adolescents who reported high levels of participation in their church had the highest number of depressive symptoms among teens of their race.

Further down, it says:

Among adolescents who never attended church, Asian-American adolescents reported 4 percent fewer symptoms of depression in the preceding week than did their African-American peers.

In comparison, Asian-American youth who attended church at least once a week reported 20 to 27 percent more symptoms of depression than their white and African-American peers who attended at the same level.

I don't doubt that this is the case. Though I'm not a fan of David Henry Hwang, I think he described Christianity among Asians best by saying something like, "Confucianism disguised as Christianity." I think most Asian Americans have a fear-based version of Christianity which destroys, rather than lifts up, the lives of participants. While I have good friends who are Christian, Christianity has also destroyed many Asian American lives. Most Asian American atheists I know are much happier than most Asian American Christians.

So rather than Asian American atheists inviting Christ to be one's personal Savior, I personally think we need more Asian American Christians to invite themselves to become free from Christ.

(Disclaimer: If Christianity suits you, just keep on doing what you're doing. But don't believe the myth that it represents salvation for everyone.)

Next Top Model

2008-09-04T09:13:00.000-07:00

I don't know where America's Next Top Model finds their Asian women. First, they had April, the hapa girl who said she didn't consider herself Asian. Then they had Gina, the girl who bragged about how proud she was of her Korean American heritage and then bragged that she didn't date Asian men. In all cases, Tyra set the Asian women straight.

Now we have Sheena, a woman who is from Hawaii, now lives in Harlem, and speaks like this. People from Hawaii don't talk like this. People from Harlem don't talk like this. I understand that maybe she wants to be black, but it doesn't sound cool, it doesn't attractive, and it doesn't sound black.

A reporter from Slate once pointed out that Tyra tries to eradicate contestants' African American cultural idiosyncrasies, especially when it comes to regional African American speaking styles. In the past, Tyra has only done this with African American contestants. The question is whether she'll try to eradicate an African American speaking style with a woman who isn't African American but intentionally tries to speak as if she is.

Republican Convention

2008-09-03T20:49:00.000-07:00

Just finished listening to the Repub Convention speech.

I have to say something about John McCain: his choice of Sara Palin as VP is pure genius on a political level. Palin's no Hillary, but Obama is going to have a hard fight ahead, much harder than the Hillary fight.

1. Biden: Palin effectively nullifies Joe Biden's ability to debate issues. Palin knows very little about international affairs (tonight it looked like she was saying the word "Iran" for the first time in her life), and when they debate, there is very little doubt in my mind that Biden will come off looking like a bully. The Repubs can easily pull the same rope-a-dope trick that Bush used against Gore in 2000--just keep repeating the phrase "fuzzy math," and eventually the smart or knowledgeable person will look like an arrogant and condescending know-it-all. In politics one never knows whether a ploy will work, but the odds are definitely in Palin's favor.

2. Hillary: they won't get most Hillary supporters to swing, but they'll definitely get some of them. Hillary supporters who say that McCain's choice of Palin is "patronizing" would not have voted for him anyway--those tend to be the ones who supported Hillary for her talents rather than the historical precedent--but those who are still angry at the DNC will definitely have an easier choice with the historic nature of bringing in the first female VP.

3. Conservatives: Palin is a staunch anti-choice, anti-environmentalist conservative which is helping him pick up supporters from the Religious Right. Already, "Dr." James Dobson has said that he'd vote for McCain. (I need to take this opportunity to repeat the essential question that Richard Dawkins asked about Dobson's group Focus on the Family--"Focus on whose family?")

4. Bristol Palin: The McCain camp says that they knew about Bristol's pregnancy beforehand, and I believe them. This is perhaps the most ingeniuous part of McCain's plan. Riding on the momentum from Jamie Lynn Spears's pregnancy, McCain is effectively using this supposedly negative distraction as a means of getting on the airwaves and making a mental impact on young people who deal with these issues. The fact that he's embracing Bristol's soon-to-be new family shows that he's sympathetic with young people, thereby appealing to some young liberals, and the 72 year old McCain is reaching out to a demographic that normally wouldn't pay attention to a guy so old. It's brilliant.

McCain would still be a lousy choice for President with 100 more years in Iraq, and Palin would be even worse as an inexperienced VP standing just one 72 year old heartbeat from the presidency. A Palin vs. Putin possibility should scare everyone. But I have to say--on a political level, his choice of Palin as VP was brilliant. We are all going to have to work hard to fight during this campaign.

Political Showboating

2008-09-03T11:07:00.001-07:00

Saw this in the Times.

Now I'm not a fan of John McCain. I think there has to be something seriously wrong with any person who wants to stay in Iraq. He's shown a serious lack of judgment by picking a VP with barely two years of experience running a state with a population less than half that of the Portland metro area, and he's endangering the world by picking a trophy vice who has no experience in dealing with international issues, is an anti-environmentalist, and who brings the same hardline conservative Christian fundamentalist values that most of the nation is sick of.

That being said, he's playing this election like a fiddle. He's showing his maverick side by embracing the family of his VP, regardless of what people think about the pregnant daughter and her boyfriend, and he's effectively using it to reach out to the young and disaffected. It's almost as if he has used the momentum from Jamie Lynn Spears to bolster his campaign. And he's continuing to paint Obama and the Democrats as sexist for choosing Obama over Clinton.

I don't have much positive to say about his politics, but in terms of political maneuvering, it was an amazing move. He's milking the VP choice for all it's worth. Obama is going to have a tough fight ahead of him.

What if your bus comes late?

2008-09-03T09:39:00.000-07:00

From KVAL:

By KATU Web Staff PORTLAND, Ore. - A bank robber used a peculiar getaway vehicle Tuesday morning: a TriMet bus.

After the man robbed the U.S. Bank branch at Southwest 6th Avenue and Southwest Washington Street about 10 a.m., he got on the bus, which headed toward northwest Portland, according to Beth Anne Steele, an FBI spokeswoman.

Police pulled over the bus at the intersection of Northwest 4th Avenue and Northwest Everett Street and took a man off it at gunpoint, she said. It was not clear how they tracked the man - and bus - down.

Investigators were trying to determine if the man is a suspect in other robberies. His name was not immediately released.

When Languages Collide

2008-09-02T23:14:00.000-07:00

Just saw this post on 8 Asians, which says, "9/5 SF: Bay Area Korean Americans (BAKA) is hosting its 5th Annual Wine Tasting Event!"

I don't know if the Korean Americans know it, but "Baka" means "stupid" in Japanese. Did they choose the name not knowing? Or maybe it was done on purpose just to draw attention from the high numbers of Japanese Americans in the Bay area? If they chose the name intentionally, I can't help but think they could've chosen better, especially since most people wouldn't want to waste their time on an organization whose name means "dumb."

Don LaFontaine Dies

2008-09-02T11:11:00.000-07:00

The famous voice that we all know from movie trailers has died today.

Article here.

Activism Podcast / Upcoming Teleconference

2008-08-31T16:51:00.001-07:00

Y'all probably heard (or at least saw) our Olympics podcast that we recorded in Portland. It was a fun podcast because we had the opportunity to take a big event like the Olympics and bring an Asian American perspective to it. It was a great opportunity to take a large athletic celebration with which everyone was familiar and to tie it in with our ideas on race, culture, and society. I particularly liked the podcast because it was humanizing; it took something concrete and straight-forward like the Olympics, and it used the event as a springboard for deeper discussions.

The purpose of our Portland meeting, as many of you know, was activism, and so most of our time was spent conducting workshops and setting a future course for collaboration and group efforts towards Asian American empowerment. In addition to the Olympics podcasts (among others...wait and see!), we also recorded an activist summary at the end of our event. This was our last recording. It was a great podcast because not only had we learned by that time to maximize the power of my brand new MacBook Pro (the built-in mic works better than the $20 mic I use for Skype--go Stevie Jobs!), but by that time, we also had had the opportunity to refine and expand our thinking during our awesome workshops. It was great because we had a number of Portland's best Asian American activists in the room for those workshops, along with the excellent teaching and organizing experiences that nskripchun and Xian brought and the raw intellectual power of THX1138.

For the podcast itself, it was me, Xian, Skrips, and THX1138, along with a bit from Mrs. Skrips and Bao. The podcast is 27 minutes and 20 seconds long. In the podcast, we talk about our experiences with activism: Xian's experience with his school kids, Skrips's work with the Wing Luke Museum, and my work with Thymos. We leave some last thoughts on activism, and then we talk about going forward into the future.

You can listen to the podcast here:
[audio:http://thefighting44s.com/podcasts/Thoughts_on_Activism_WC_44s.mp3]
or download it here.

I wanted to post this because as the conversation mentions around 11 minutes, the internet is a great tool for sharing, meeting, and collaborating, but when it comes time to actually fighting for change or relating to one another, there's no substitute for real time communication. A lot of times when we debate or fight over the internet, we get caught up over language, intentionally or not. It's fun, of course, but as Xian says, it can become a waste of time, especially when we all want change.

So in order to take the next step, I'm proposing that we do a teleconference. It doesn't have to be recorded. Let's just take the next step and put people in voice contact with one another. At the very least, it's a risk-free way of seeing if there might be another angle to approach the problems that we all face. If Jenn Fang can go on a podcast with a group of PUAs and find some sort of commonality, I don't see why the men and women of the 44s can't do the same. We need change, and the worst problem would be for us to be sitting here discussing the same exact issues in the same exact way five years from now. If you're willing to try voice contact as a means of seeing "where we come from" in the words of Lawson Inada, let me know and we'll try to set it up. (We might try "Intermediate member" and above to begin with, but we'll make obvious exceptions for previous or currently active people on the blog, such as THX, SoulSnax, minorTruths, MelaninManson, Jen, etc.) I've got my teleconference number set up, so let me know if you're interested.

Also, let me know what you think of the podcast. I think it's personally my favorite podcast to date.

(Picture from here.)

We Make History Either Way

2008-08-29T09:44:00.000-07:00

Mr. McCain chose Sarah Palin, Governor of Alaska, as his VP today. In doing so, he decided to not only go outside the beltway but to go outside the traditional pool of white men. So either way, history will be made--we'll either have the first African American president, or we'll have the first female vice president.

Depending on your outlook, this move was either bold or crazy:

In a surprise move, Senator John McCain chose Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska as his running mate on Friday, shaking up the political world at a time when his campaign has been trying to attract women, especially disaffected supporters of Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, McCain officials confirmed.

I doubt many Hillary supporters will jump over to the other side since Palin and Hillary are on opposite sides of the political spectrum, but McCain's choice will shake things up in the party which some describe as a party for old white men. He's definitely on the political war path. Either that, or he's desperately seeking some edge against the rising tide of Obama.

By the way, make no mistake about what Palin stands for:

She opposes abortion rights, which could help pacify social conservatives in a party whose members were wary as rumors swirled that Mr. McCain might pick a running mate who supports those rights. But she differs with Mr. McCain on a controversial environmental issue that centers on her home state: she supports drilling for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Reserve. Mr. McCain’s opposition to drilling — even after he changed positions and began advocating for off-shore oil drilling — has upset many Republicans.

She's against a woman's right to choose, and she's not exactly in line with the rest of the country when it comes to solving our environmental crisis. She's also also a lifelong member of the NRA, and from what I've read so far, she's a conservative fundamentalist Christian. I'm curious as to how the pundits and public will react to McCain's choice. As I said above, it's either bold or crazy. We live in interesting times.

Female PUA

2008-08-28T15:47:00.000-07:00

With all the discussion of Asian Male Pickup Artists, I thought it was funny that cnn.com/oprah.com posted an article about female flirting. It's a three step guide for women to make themselves more attractive. What really caught my eye though...was the picture. I won't repost it here, but it's funny to think that someone sifted through stock photos and somehow, for some reason, came up with a photo of an Asian woman flirting with a bunch of non-Asian guys. Coincidence or not? Maybe we need a critical mass of BetterAsianmen!

So Flirtation 101:
Step 1: Identify a specific person with whom you really, truly want to have sex
Step 2: Lust for the other person's subjective experience
Step 3: Get a life

Numbers 2 and 3 are probably the same whether we're discussing men or women, but I'd submit that number 1 probably won't work for most men to whom sites like betterasianman.com cater. The problem with many desperate men--and most PUAs will admit to desperation--is that they become too fixated on specific women and can't let go. It can be dangerous for men and women, but it's particularly destructive when men have this level of desperation. Desperate men need to learn to ease up, to become more comfortable with women, not to become more specific. Too many desperate men are already too specific.

I'm guessing that the writer would probably admit the assymetry in gender behaviors and expectations as well. Men and women are different--equal but different. It just is.

Vitamin D deficiency in minority children

2008-08-26T11:33:00.000-07:00

I saw this sad story in the Times today about breastfeeding and minority children. It talks about Vitamin D deficiency in breastfed children. For those who haven't been through it, if you are breastfeeding, it's important to supplement your infant's diet with Vitamin D, which can be purchased over the counter in liquid form. Babies who don't get enough Vitamin D can have problems with rickets. The article says:

The patients are more likely to be African-American and dark-skinned, and more likely to have been exclusively breast-fed for an extended period of time, without vitamin supplementation. Rates are often higher when there is less sunlight.

In a study conducted by Dr. Gordon of vitamin D levels in 365 mostly African-American and Latino infants and toddlers, 40 percent had low levels and 12 percent were deficient. Although there is a debate about what levels are considered deficient, one toddler in the study was found to have rickets, 13 children showed evidence of bone loss and 3 had bone changes consistent with rickets.

It's sad because this is a problem that can be resolved through greater education in minority neighborhoods. Most people would never know about the need to supplement--I certainly wouldn't have known if our pediatrician had forgotten to tell us--and it's so easily preventable. We need to think about ways to share knowledge and to disseminate it to those in need, especially for those communities which historically haven't had access to such information.

Woman beats fiance

2008-08-25T09:03:00.000-07:00

I feel like blogging about something short and funny. From the Washington Post:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/08/15/AR2008081502641.html

Woman accused of beating fiance at prenup party

The Associated Press
Friday, August 15, 2008; 4:12 PM

POULSBO, Wash. -- A Poulsbo
woman was jailed after being accused of beating up her fiance at their
prenuptial party. Kitsap County sheriff's deputies said the woman's 12-year-old
son told her he saw her fiance kissing one of her women friends early Thursday
morning.

Deputies said the woman, 31, gave her friends the boot, told
her fiance to leave, too, and then started hitting him in the face.

When
he left the house, they say, she tackled him football-style, punched him some
more, threw his watch into the bushes and broke his glasses.

Responding
to a 911 call from her son, deputies arrested the woman for investigation of
fourth-degree assault.

Sheriff's Lt. Kathy Collings said the woman was
released from jail later Thursday.

There's no word on whether the
marriage took place.

© 2008 The Associated Press

That last sentence answers what would've been my next question.

WTF (World Taekwondo Federation) gives Cuban lifetime ban

2008-08-23T23:55:00.000-07:00

I saw this blog which covered the story of Angel Matos, a taekwondo Olympian, who kicked a ref in anger after he was disqualified for taking too long to recover during an injury timeout. The WTF barred him for life. His coach Leudis Gonzales made no apologies for the kick and even claimed that the match was fixed. He too was barred for life. I mean, WTF?

I don't remember the previous Olympics well enough, but it seems to me that this Olympics has seen some pretty atrocious behavior. We first had the Swedish wrestler who protested what he thought was a bad decision by taking off his medal during the awards ceremony. Now we have Angel Matos, who didn't just peacefully protest but instead became violent. In the case of Matos, I think they should stick him in prison. Attacking a ref is not only poor sportsmanship; it's assault. He could have killed someone with that kick. I think they should not only punish Matos and his coach, but they should also punish the team as well by penalizing them in the next Olympics. Maybe this would encourage some better behavior from these sore losers.

(Not to make light of the situation, but I'm wondering how the photographer was possibly quick enough to catch the picture above when Matos had his leg fully extended like that. Photo skills like that are truly Olympian...)

China Projected to be Tops in Gold

2008-08-22T09:51:00.000-07:00

According to the NY Times, China is expected to top the gold medal count by the time the Olympics close on Sunday. According to the article,

The Chinese have reasserted their dominance in traditional strengths, sweeping
the first seven diving events, winning eight of the nine gold medals available
to them in weight
lifting and winning three of the four badminton
titles. Above all, they collected a record-tying nine gold medals in gymnastics:
seven from their men’s team and two from their women’s team, a total that could
be revised downward if it is proved that the women’s team included underage
gymnasts.

They've also broken into new sports:

...they have broken ground by winning Olympic gold medals for the first time in archery, rowing, sailing
and trampoline, a subset of gymnastics. China also won its first Olympic medals
in beach volleyball and field
hockey, with its women’s team taking the silver after losing to the
Netherlands in Friday night’s hockey final. “There are always surprises, but I
think people have stepped up, and they have tracked better than we thought,”
Roush said.

This, of course, is a breakthrough for China in terms of nationalism, but it's a breakthrough as well for Asian Americans in terms of racial issues. The stereotypes of Chinese, and more specifically Asians, is one of athletic incompetence, and this performance helps contradict stereotypes. It would be nice to see some great performances in speed and explosive sports, such as sprinting and basketball, but this is definitely a start. And even though Liu Xiang has been sidelined, his status and respect as one of the world's best hurdlers is unassailable.

Globalism will eventually be a great thing. I've noticed some animosity between mainland Chinese and their American born cousins, but with advances in achievement and culture, I strongly believe that we can bridge that ocean. The most important thing, as reflected in the name of my group Thymos, is recognition. We need to make noise and be heard, whether it's with our voices, our athletic performance, or any other kind of loud and audacious achievement.

Asian Male-ism II: 44s Venus and 44s Mars

2008-08-21T11:56:00.000-07:00

If PUA is just a set of social skills to make yourself better able to relate to others, they would teach you to relate to women as people, not targets.

--Tokyolovestory

...our end goal should be to capture the mainstream coverage and to change the zeitgeist.

--Jaehwan

No one on the 44s, as far as I know, embraces all PUA, but PUA has pushed our discussions in a good direction. It's helping us to see issues that cover not only the PUA/IR related issues, but other issues that are tangentially related to gender as well. It's a good thing that these PUAs have influenced our conversations because we're seeing things that we didn't see before. This blog entry will be about differences in the views of men and women that have become apparent in the course of our PUA conversations, as well as in other past conversations. Through understanding these differences, how they occur, and why they occur, I hope we can understand each other better.

I quoted Tokyolovestory and myself above. Tokyo's quote is from a response on part 1 of Asian Male-ism, while my words come from my Kingston piece. Notice the words we use. Tokyo asks us to "relate," while I use the word "capture." She uses a term in which people feel and understand other people. She decries the use of the concept of women as "targets." Meanwhile, I use the term "capture" which one would be more likely to use with war. In war, one "captures" a "target." I also use the word "change" and "zeitgeist" together, a concept that goes beyond human individuals and aims for large scale movement. In other words, Tokyo uses words and thoughts which one might characterize as typically feminine, while I use words and thoughts which one might characterize as typically masculine.

Such is the difference I see with our recent dialogue on the issue of PUA and sexism. Most men think like men, and most women think like women. Men expect that women think like men, and women expect that men think like women, which is why we sometimes why our words are fall on deaf ears with the opposite gender. Our education is so based on "gender free" politics and the eradication of gender differences that we often don't see how our behaviors usually conform with gender. We assume that men can easily act like women and that women can easily act like men. We don't see the world the same way as those from the other gender. Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus. This is why time and time again on the 44s, we see fights break out along gender lines.

Take my Kingston article for example. When I see an Asian American studies method that harms us, it's a cause for war. My typical male mind sees things that ought to be moved, resources that ought to be reallocated, and garbage that ought to be tossed out. I see structures that prevent Asian Americans from advancing. I don't care to hear excuses about why it's okay to say untrue things about Chinese culture; I care about results. Maxine Hong Kingston's personal feelings and the feelings of the militants who support her become irrelevant because I see the people whose lives have been destroyed by the culture. I see the pain that a pathological culture has created--an out of control female suicide rate and men needing to turn to PUA because the educational system is against them--and my male mind tells me I need to fix that culture.

When Tokyo sees the PUA discussions, she probably wonders where the compassion is. She sees men who can't see women as people. She sees the absence of compassionate relationships, the absence of love, and the perpetuation of a culture where men see women as bodies without regard of their personalities. She sees a loveless town where men rate women by their physical appearance, where men treat relationships as an economic science. She sees an Asian America where the men treat the attraction of women as a game, and where flirting becomes a contest of oneupmanship. Why can't men learn to listen to women rather than judging them on superficial values? After all, isn't that where our best relationships take place? It's an ugly picture.

In this case, everyone is right, but we're right according to our genders. Years ago on the plains of Africa, men participated in the hunt and in war. Whether we were killing for food or killing to keep the bad guys away (and bad was relative), men were task focused. Evolution-wise, it didn't help men to be compassionate with our prey; we simply had to make sure that everyone stood in the right place at the right time and executed our actions with decisiveness and coordination. This is why today in politics, when you see something bad take place, men usually focus on fixing the problem regardless of personal feelings. When Alberto Gonzales messed up by firing attorneys for political reasons, most political men called for his ouster. They didn't care about what he brought to the table, they just saw that he was a problem and needed to be removed. Compassion be damned.

Women, on the other hand, were gatherers and leaders of families. Their responsibilities involved abilities that taught them to discern good from bad, not only with potential suitors who would have the resources to protect them and create stability, but they also had to manage relationships among women in the tribe. They needed to develop the ability to understand small children, humans who were unable to express themselves with words. Therefore, they developed relational skills that men didn't need. This is why leaders like Princess Diana and Mother Teresa are lionized; they had amazing abilities to understand people, abilities that most people don't have. This is why more woman are compassionate. This is why PUA hasn't caught on with women.

Of course this doesn't extend to all individuals--Bill Clinton was known for his listening abilities, and Meg Whitman is known for her executional abilities. But over large populations of men and women, the evolutionary trends still exist. People write books like "Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus," "The Wonder of Boys," and "Women and Leadership" because we tend to be different.

In terms of the charge of PUAs viewing women as targets, it's 100% true. PUAs do view women as targets, and they view women as "conquests"--which is an interesting term, if you think about the topic of discussion and the role of war in male history. PUAs don't try to build relationships, nor do they try to teach sensitivity. Instead, they focus on going in for the kill, a typically male way of fixing a typical Asian American male problem. Like most typically male ways of thinking, the PUA approach is results-based; you either attract a woman or you don't. You either win or you lose.

While I haven't endorsed PUA, I will say that their approach oftentimes mimics the way most men think and the way society expects and encourages men to think. Like it or not, most men are expected to approach women, and not vice versa. Most men need to deal with the possibility and probability of rejection, and most men have to be emotionally prepared to be told no. For men who rarely get out of the house, this rejection can be devastating. The antidote to this devastation is a kind of objectification, a kind of saying, "She's just ONE woman who turned you down, now you just have to ask ONE more." Women become like numbers for two reasons. First, PUAs "enumerate" them in order to protect themselves from rejection. Second, PUAs "enumerate" them because physical appearance is often the first criteria that men use when evaluating women, much the same way women use social standing to evaluate men.

From what I've seen, PUA creates a brotherhood that helps men not only to develop the courage to take action, but also to develop the resiliency to fall and get back up. It also teaches men to go after women who meet the enumerated criteria. It's very much a return to the old, more traditionally male ways of thinking. There is little subtlety involved.

Now some might say that times have changed. Men don't have to kill animals anymore, nor do women spend their time in tribes of women, gathering berries and caring for kids. Sensitive guys are popular these days, as are results-oriented women. That is true. Shouldn't we focus on eliminating gender roles? Shouldn't men be more sensitive?

I would say yes, but at the same time, I think it's unrealistic to expect that the majority of men will be able to fight biology which has come from years of evolution. It's also unrealistic to expect most women to do the asking and to face whatever public and private humiliation that may arise from rejection. Men more often than not select women for looks, while women go for power and social standing. It's just the way it is.

I was speaking with a co-worker, a self-described feminist in my office, who spoke about her son. My co-worker is a single mother who is raising a high school son. Statewide, she's one of the leading salespeople in our industry, a mega multi-million dollar producer, and she is an open supporter of liberal causes. At the same time, she thinks there are differences between the genders. During one conversation, she said that she felt education had flipped to become pro-female. "Boys learn better in motion," she said. "There have been studies that show young boys learn better when they're throwing things around. And yet we ask them to sit still during every part of class, which benefits girls more than boys. This is why there are so many male dropouts these days. We ought to make things more equitable."

I agree with her. Boys and girls are biologically different (irrefutable), and our biology causes us to act and live differently (refutable depending on context). It would be great if boys could learn the same way as girls, but in most cases, they can't.

I won't ask people to adopt my way of thinking, but I will ask people to consider that there is some truth in the idea that men and women are different. I think we can ask the opposite gender to see where we're coming from. We're no longer living in the age of hunting wild beasts or women living among other women in tribes, so things have clearly changed. Yet if the evolutionary record holds any water, it would be hard to expect all women to live the male perspective or vice versa. Most of us are hard wired differently.

Since this is a blog post about Asian male-ism, let me close with a quote about males, and let me address PUA once more. Thinking about the PUAs themselves whom we've met, whom we've heard on William's podcasts, who inhabit the 108's that I endorsed, this quote takes on a special significance:

To try to teach boys to "rise above instant gratification, "become more like girls," "be more sensitive," "not like sports as much," and so on without first teaching them personally fruitful and socially acceptable ways to do all those things is to shoot ourselves in the foot. Boys don't believe adults who don't understand boys."

Michael Gurian, "The Wonder of Boys," ISBN 0-87477-887-5, p. 12

Stay tuned for my next piece, tentatively called "The Recurring Frat Boy."

(Special thanks to Val, Jen, TokyoLoveStory, evil_FUX, Akrypti from 8A, The Stealth MC, and my anonymous coworker for helping me think through some of these issues.)

(Picture from here. The plot description of the movie makes no sense.)

Basketball Activism

2008-08-20T22:53:00.001-07:00

This article came in from my NY Times alert. It's about a middle-aged Chinese American couple who started a basketball program for Chinese American girls and boys in Manhattan. It talks about the challenges they face, which are mostly cultural. RebelAzn talks about Asian Americans and sports on this site, and I agree with him--we need to promote sports, especially given the cultural stigma against sports in many Chinese American/Asian American families. The writer breaks it down by generation and socio-economic standing, which is probably accurate:

One view, particularly common among first-generation, working-class Chinese-Americans, maintains that sports are an unnecessary impediment to academic and professional achievement, according to interviews with Chinese-American athletes, students, educators and community leaders in New York.

An opposite view, typically held by more educated parents or those who have become more assimilated into American culture because they have been in the United States at least one generation, promotes sports as an integral part of a child’s maturation.

I've noticed this to be true as well. The article continues:

Pressure to excel academically can be particularly intense for those, like Ms. Law’s family, who arrived in the United States toward the bottom of the socioeconomic ladder. While some members of other ethnic groups have embraced sports as a way out of poverty, Asian-Americans, for the most part, have not, said Peter Kwong, a professor of Asian-American studies and urban affairs and planning at Hunter College.

“Using physical strength to make a living is not respected; it’s a Confucian ideal,” he said. “You’re wasting your mind. Using your hands is just not a career.”

I agree with this too. Most Chinese American people I know admire Yao Ming, but they don't aspire to be Yao Ming.

On a side note, this Peter Kwong dude is getting quoted all over the Times these days. He was quoted in my last blog post too. We should get him to mention us--"Using your hands is just not a career, but it's great if you're typing entries on the Fighting 44s!"

There are some more interesting passages in the article, including this one:

“Many times we have to convince the parents,” Ms. Law said. She talks to them about not only the importance of fitness but also the educational and social value of sports, how basketball can teach teamwork, focus and commitment and give a child a sense of belonging. “I say, ‘I’m a parent of two children. We’ve been doing this for many years.’ ”

Indeed, according to educators, coaches, students and athletes in Chinatown and elsewhere, this is a common conversation in the Chinese-American community.

“For many Chinese, they don’t see sports as part of youth development,” said Howard K. Chin, president of Chinese American Student Exposure, a nonprofit group that provides sports programs, volunteering opportunities and career counseling to young people in Chinatown. He spoke on a recent evening at Columbus Park amid a crowd of about 100 people who had gathered to watch a Chinese-American basketball tournament.

I pretty much agree with everything stated in the article. As for the park that they mention, if it's the same one I'm thinking of, I used to pass by it quite often, and even though it was in the heart of Chinatown, the Chinese people mostly used it for tai chi; it was mostly non-Asians who used it for basketball.

Asian Americans need more sports in our culture, and when I read about people like the Laws, it's heartwarming. They fund these clubs with their own money, and they put the sweat equity into making sure it works. This is true activism.

Asian Americans Moving into Certain NYC Areas

2008-08-19T16:18:00.000-07:00

I don't know which Asian American site found this article first, AAM or 88's. It's about certain New York neighborhoods where Asian Americans are beginning to move and to become a disproportionate part of the population. The story has several profiles of Asian American 1.5 gens who grew up in Asian areas like Chinatown and are now moving out and gravitating towards the same high-end neighborhoods. (I'm guessing they're 1.5 since the brokerages are targeting the foreign language media--though not all 1.5'ers speak their mother tongue.)

Peter Kwong makes an interesting observation:

Historically, American-born Asians have been encouraged to move out of the ethnic enclaves where they grew up, said Peter Kwong, a professor of Asian-American studies at Hunter College. But they have tended to move to suburban communities on Long Island and in New Jersey, where they can find good schools, enough ethnic markets to cater to their needs and, when the time comes, enough space to accommodate aging parents, he said.

“Until now, buying a home tended to be very family oriented,” he added, “and living in a nice building with a lot of amenities was not as stressed.” So the fact that young Asian-Americans are now buying in condo high-rises that come with fitness centers, spas and swimming pools is a shift, “and in some ways becoming more mainstream.”

Given the discussions that have taken place recently, I couldn't help but think about young PUAs doing the PUA thing in those fitness centers, spas, and swimming pools. "Hey...hey...hey...I live right upstairs! Just ask the doorman to dial 888!"

No, seriously, I think this is a good thing. One of the problems with Asian America is that individuals tend to be very diffuse, which means that we have a community which doesn't have much face-to-face social capital, which means that we're often not much of a community at all. With suburban areas, it often doesn't matter who your neighbors are, since in many suburban neighborhoods, people tend to stay inside their homes. This new urban migration could be a good thing. From these new developments, perhaps the concentration of Asian Americans will give rise to new ideas, new social institutions, and new experiences.

By the way, do we have any 44s who live in any of these areas?

Liu Xiang drops out

2008-08-18T10:53:00.000-07:00

Picture from his official site.

From BBC:

It's hard to overstate how important Liu Xiang has been to this Olympic Games. In some ways, China has built its entire Olympics around Liu Xiang - and the hope that he would defend the Olympic title he won in Athens. You can barely go more than a few metres in Beijing without seeing a poster of Liu - advertising a selection of ice creams, soft drinks, credit cars, sports shoes, and fast cars. Those adverts may now have to be speedily re-done.

Why was Liu Xiang so important? He was the first Asian man ever to win a gold medal in an Olympic track event (in Athens 2004). "His achievement made us feel that we could achieve anything ourselves as well," said one woman. So, Liu Xiang's expected gold medal in Beijing was about Chinese national confidence - it was about China feeling that it could do anything that any other country could do.

I don't know what kind of effect this will have on the collective psyche of the Chinese athletes. I guess it's a good thing that it happened closer to the end of the Olympics rather than the beginning, but I can only imagine how this must be affecting everyone else, especially the other Chinese athletes who have been inspired by Liu Xiang. As the BBC reporter says, the Olympics in some ways was built around Liu. I'm an American citizen, but I admit being sad over this because as a male of Chinese descent, it was great to see Liu smashing those stereotypes about what Asian people can and can't accomplish, especially in running, which is probably as basic a sport as any.

Some people are bashing him on the BBC site, but hey, injuries happen to the best of us. Oh well.

"Dooces" are wild

2008-08-17T21:48:00.000-07:00

Welcome to the first blog post from my brand new MacBook Pro. Man, I should've read my own blog post about Macrumors.com--Apple computers seriously rock! They're faster, better with graphics, better with video, easier to configure, more stable, more secure, and they look a lot cooler. I can't believe I was on the PC bandwagon for so long. I can't believe I didn't start Macrumors.com.

Anyway, there was another interesting article in the New York Times about another blogger going full time. Heather Armstrong runs Dooce.com, where she blogs about being a mother. According to the article, she has 850,000 readers, and according to her site, she has been blogging since February of 2001. J.C. Penney, Crate & Barrel, and Walgreens all pay top dollar to advertise their brands on her site, and she has been so successful that both she and her husband have been able to quit their full-time jobs.

I looked around her site, and though it's well written, irreverent, and personal, I can't believe that there are 850,000 readers. 850k? I think that's half the population of Portland...it's insane! But again, we're probably seeing a niche which is underserved--how often do people get that close and personal about motherhood, a subject in which people have traditionally needed lots of support?

When are we going to make tons of money on AA issues? Anyone? We blog all the time, we have lots of interesting things to say, and we don't yet have 850,000 viewers.

Incidentally, I just did a google search and found another article that mentions Dooce.com.

Heather B. Armstrong of Salt Lake City credits her blog, Dooce.com, with saving her sanity, if not her life. When it began in February 2001, Dooce was a collection of anecdotes about Ms. Armstrong's single life in Los Angeles, with provocative entries like "The Proper Way to Hate a Job" and "Dear Cranky Old Bitch Who Cut in Front of Me at Canter's Deli." After someone sent an unsigned, untraceable e-mail message about Ms. Armstrong's blog to her company's board in 2002, she was promptly dismissed, and "Dooced" entered Urbandictionary.com as a term for "Losing your job for something you wrote in your online blog, journal, Web site, etc."

She blogs often, and so do we. She contributed to the Urban Dictionary, and so did we. So why is she raking in the dough while we all remain hobbyists? As Cuba Gooding Jr. said in Jerry Maguire, "Show me the money!"

Asian Male-ism I: PUA and Female Objectification

2008-08-14T21:43:00.000-07:00

I've been getting flamed recently. It's nothing new, of course, I get flamed all the time, but this time is perhaps a bit different because the issue happens to be one which we likely won't solve entirely over the web, plus it happens to be flaming by people whom I actually like. In this case, my flaming is over what some regard as my endorsement of Pick Up Artists on my first PUA podcast here, my second podcast here, and my endorsement of a site that one poster described as a "sausage fest." I'm getting flamed because of sexism on some of these sites (though I've never posted on any of these sites), and also because I didn't condemn some sexist language (which I didn't notice) used on the 44s. One member said that I was promoting "sexism" to prop up Asian men. Another called out my "ignorance." I've been called other things as well. Though I don't intend to get people angry, I know that it sometimes happens.

For the record, I don't endorse PUA. I consider Pick Up Specialists Kwak and William to be friends, but I've neither supported nor condemned what they do. I think the both of them are great guys, and I welcome the opportunity to keep in touch with them as they grow as activists and people, but I'm not a PUA, nor have I ever sent any business their way, at least not intentionally. However, I do post about these PUAs, and I do post about sites where some PUAs hang out because I believe they are doing something that has elements of potential. They may not be doing everything right, but there is potential, and they've helped some people achieve what many of us take for granted. The idea of teaching Asian men confidence is a good thing, and these PUAs are on the ground doing it, even if there are problems in their approach. With the exception of Kingstonism (and I'm sure most of you have followed that debate), I've rarely flat out condemned anything. I've never condemned Falling For Grace, even though I think we need variety outside of the "regular" AF/WM themes. I've never condemned ModelMinority, although I think some of the guys on that site are crazy. I've never condemned 8 Asians, even though they hate debate, which I love. I even promote the politically smart reappropriate.com, even though I usually hate Jenn's and James's ideas about Asian men. I'm relatively liberal when it comes to OPM (Other Peoples' Movements), and so I always try to see the positive in every endeavor that Asian Americans take upon themselves. Unless I see something blatantly unethical, I usually don't issue any blanket condemnations.

I acknowledge that many PUAs objectify women, and I've voiced my opposition to such objectification. My whole "roundtable" with APB was about how I thought a "high brow" approach would nullify the need for a "low brow" approach. I still believe this is the case, but given our lack of funding, our current lack of a network, and the entrenchment of those academics who promote the status quo, right now it's just a pipe dream. I think it was William who said, "That all sounds high and mighty, but what can we do now? The answer, for some of these men, is to learn how to approach women. It's low brow, tacky, goofy, aimed at an unusually crazy group of men, and ultimately not entirely fulfilling, but it's something. It teaches men to be open with women, even if they're total assholes. At least it's honest. A lot of these guys happen to be complete assholes to begin with; the PUA just makes it come out. Of course, having a movement that would turn assholes into gold would be nice too, but that kind of thinking usually takes place among people who are more established and past the basics of just learning how to approach women. Think about it--if you find a man who is afraid to approach women and has had few conversations with women, how can anyone expect him to be smooth, considerate, or respectful? If a man has no contact with women over his whole life, I'd say that you should expect him to be an asshole.

Now we could bypass PUA with education. Deep education renders tacky PUA obsolete. However, without that network in place combined with the intellectual capital to say something of substance and supported by financial funding, change cannot take place now. Right now, the "high brow" people need to create that network, build on that intellectual capital, and better learn how to finance and make the system work. We can talk to people and educate people in the meantime with those we touch personally. It's a long process. In the meantime, we shouldn't outright condemn people who are trying to work at a lower level because, well, they're at a lower level. Oppose sexism, and oppose their sexism, but don't oppose the idea of men learning to approach women because it doesn't turn men into sexist assholes; it just brings sexist assholes into the open. It also brings nice guys like Kwak and Albert into the open. People don't see this, but there are some positive lives being changed here, including women. How would Kwak's girlfriend ever have met Kwak unless he had been taught to "approach?" PUA ultimately is based on openness even if there is no badly needed moral component. It's not activism, but people are having basic needs met. Think of it as a temporary fix for men who are stunted in emotional growth. It's not our highest or best goal, but it serves some people as a temporary fix, and it does make positive changes, even if it empowers jerks.

For those who dislike the PUA approach, the solution is to continue building education. We do this by educating, sharing (online), and talking (real time--I still don't think there's a substitute for real time communication.). Build the networks. Learn the system. Get practice doing work. Obviously we can accomplish much more, but we need to work at it.

More about this later. Hopefully I can speak a bit about the male issues vs. female issues from a male perspective in the next installment. In the meantime, share your thoughts.

Spanish Basketball Team in Racist Pose

2008-08-13T11:21:00.000-07:00

Thanks to T-Tocs who first posted this in our forum. There's already a huge discussion taking place about the story. The Spanish basketball team was photographed doing the slant eye pose that so many of us know from grade school, and they're not apologizing for it. To make things worse, as minorTruths points out in the forum, there is a Chinese sponsor who is exonerating them by saying it's not offensive.

I've already blogged somewhat about the topic of European racism. I don't know what else can change a culture other than an internal movement. Love or hate the U.S., we're still ahead of much of the rest of the world when it comes to understanding race relations.

MinorTruths referenced an excellent article here, which makes good points about the double standard that Americans face and also makes some good points about how the money spins and who works for whom.

So far, there’s nothing out of the league office. Rest assured, unless there’s an outcry over that photo, the NBA will wish this story away. Maybe the league will even issue a mild rebuke. It won’t be enough. Maybe this doesn’t rise to a suspension, but there should be significant fines and a bold condemnation. There needs to be a message delivered to NBA players everywhere: When you earn your money with us, you are always on the clock. Kidd, Kobe and LeBron understand it. It’s time the rest of the league does, too.

As some suggest he’ll do, Stern can’t dismiss this as the business of a federation team. These are NBA players returning to NBA cities this year. Never mind the host country and millions of fans here, but consider the Asian-American season ticket holders in cosmopolitan cities such as Toronto and Los Angeles. One of the reasons the New Jersey Nets traded for Yi Jianlian was to market him to a large Asian-American base in Metropolitan New York.

If anyone is feeling activist, send a letter to the NBA. Send one to the New York Times. Just keep on sending letters until someone gets the message.

Edit: Contact the NBA here. You can also use the link to contact the Raptors and the Lakers to let them know what you think about their "representatives" Gasol and Calderon.

Heard but not seen

2008-08-12T10:58:00.000-07:00

The Real Singer

I just saw this story on CNN.com-- Olympic Girl Seen But Not Heard.

Apparently, the cute little girl who was "singing" during the Olympic ceremony wasn't really singing. She was lip-synching because the girl with the nice voice wasn't cute enough.

Games organizers confirm that Lin Miaoke, who performed "Ode to the Motherland" as China's flag was paraded Friday into Beijing's National Stadium, was not singing at all.
Lin was lip-syncing to the sound of another girl, 7-year-old Yang Peiyi, who was heard but not seen, apparently because she was deemed not cute enough.

As you can see from my title post, I reversed the wording of the title article. I'm more concerned about the girl who didn't get to be on camera because her image supposedly wasn't up to par. Sure, the stand-in girl probably does have greater beauty according to common accepted standards:

The cute "singer"

But they're both cute. And if it's the original girl's voice, they should give the original girl credit by letting her perform on stage. I can't believe anyone would deny a young child the chance to be in the spotlight, especially when it's her voice coming over the loudspeakers. What kind of lesson does this teach our kids? It's not right.

And in terms of the media, hasn't anyone learned anything from Milli Vanilli?

108 Spirits: New Kid on the Block

2008-08-11T22:58:00.001-07:00

I was poking around the web today, and William's betterasianman.com blog linked to a new site: 108 Spirits. It's focused solely on Asian American men, but of all the other "competitor" sites I've seen, it's very similar to ours. Like reappropriate, it's hard-hitting, well-written, and progressive, and so far, the discussions lack the nauseating wholesomeness that we sometimes see on other sites. It's like a young 44s or young reappropriate for men. In fact, the dialog reminds me a lot of the early days of the 44s with Seoulbrother's Palchisan Realm and the discussions about old Chinese epics like the Three Kingdoms. I think it's great that people are digging deep into our cultural history in order to find wisdom that so many of us either don't know or have forgotten.

The vision/explanation of the name is cool too:

108 Spirits is a reference to the 36 Heavenly Spirits and 72 Earthly Fiends that originated from Chinese mythology and later on influenced various Asian works of literature. Among those is one of the Four Great Classical Novels of Chinese literature: "Shui Hu", aka "Water Margin", "Outlaws of the Marsh" or "All Men Are Brothers", in which the 108 Spirits reincarnated as the 108 Outlaws.

The 108 Outlaws of the Marsh are a band of very talented men who refuse to be governed by established rules & practices and rebel against authorities. Their stories represent and celebrate masculine Asian men of various types: leader, scholar, warrior, businessman, outlaw, musician, doctor, etc. - united by the spirit of the Brotherhood to help each other and those in needs.

That is the goal of this website: the development, representation and celebration of Asian masculinity.

I found these paragraphs particularly interesting after our Frank Chin event where Frank spoke about stories. Frank actually started telling "Water Margin" when we were having dim sum, but then the ha cheung came and I totally spaced. For those who follow my 44s blog, I'm particularly interested in traditional stories because there is some true wisdom there. It's great to see a group of young guys starting inquiries into this area.

So here are some things from their site to check out:

The Asian Male Identity

How did you discover your passion?

Some of the usernames look familiar :) , but it's great seeing good dialogue on the web outside of our own. My approach to activism and knowledge has always been the same--if people have the talent and inclination to do good things, we need to support them, and we need to help them reach their goals. From what I've seen, all the 44s admins and blackbelts support that goal too. So to the 108's, welcome to the blogosphere! Let's do great things together!

Finally...Olympic Coverage for the Less Popular Sports

2008-08-10T00:30:00.000-07:00

I started in judo fifteen years ago during my freshman year of college (I know this reveals my age). Back in the day, I competed often, and when the 96 Olympics came, I was excited to follow the athletes whom my sensei had talked up. Unfortunately those were long before the days when NBC had tons of different channels and feeds, and so I was stuck checking the results in the NY Post. My sensei told me that judo was a huge sport in Europe and Asia, and that the US was one of the few countries where most people had no idea what judo was. We bitched and complained about television coverage, and we wondered why they didn't diversify their offerings to show the less popular sports. We asked how judo could ever be popular if they never showed it.

In 2000, four years later, I was working the night shift at an internet company, and while I was able to get more instantaneous results, I was still unable to watch. I checked out the athlete bios, and I compared the written descriptions of the wins and losses of the star atheletes that I knew. Even though I still couldn't see what was going on, it was still exciting. In 2004, it was the same thing, though I had lost track of who was who.

Now, in 2008, people in the U.S. can finally watch judo. It's all online here. NBC has expanded its coverage to the online world, and so even if their networks don't carry these less popular sports, aficionados can still tune in on the website. According to the NY Times (and according to my own memory), this is the first time they are doing this. It's absolutely amazing. The internet has enabled niche specialists to finally follow their interests.

There's only one problem. Now that I'm old and grey and have been out of judo for so long, I have no idea who the players are! The only name I know is the legendary Ryoko Tani, formerly Ryoko Tamura, who unfortunately failed in her attempt today to become the first woman judoka with three gold medals. According to the Daily Yomiuri, it was a bit of a strange bad call. These happen all the time in judo, so I'm not surprised--as you can see from the article, after one woman won, the judges awarded the match to her opponent, and then they reneged and gave it back to the real winner. Haha...I remember watching one match during my college years where the same thing happened, only they didn't reverse the messed up call. I told the guy, "You won," and he said, "Well, those are the breaks." Great attitude, but such breaks only take place in the world of competitive judo!

(I'm not ragging on judo refs. I've tried being a ref, and it's probably the hardest sport in the world to referee because of the quick decisions that each ref needs to make.)

In the sport of judo today, Romania's Alina Dumitru won the gold for the Women's 48 kg, and South Korea's Minho Choi won the gold for the Men's 60 kg, and you can see it all on the NBC website.

Tales from Korea

2008-08-08T15:08:00.000-07:00

Inspired by Frank Chin's visit to Portland, I've been looking up traditional Asian stories for the past couple weeks. I found an excellent collection of traditional Korean stories here. Check it out--there are four podcasts altogether, all downloadable, and all totally free. The storyteller is a white woman from Seattle, but she's talented, and they sound genuine. The Korean people in these traditional stories are all strong characters with real motivations, free from all the baggage that comes from Asian American culture. Check it out!

(Picture from here.)

Comcast drops ImaginAsian TV

2008-08-07T11:05:00.000-07:00

Following in the path of AZN, it looks like another one bites the dust. I never had access to Imaginasian (and I don't get to watch much TV anyway), but from looking at the website, I'm not really surprised that it went down. It looks like their programming focused either on:

a) Foreign films/dramas

or

b) Original productions that are really, really, really saccharine and wholesome

I think it was a noble effort, and I'm glad businesses like ImaginAsian are taking risks by trying to showcase people of Asian descent. But from my experiences in working with the Asian American community, most Asian Americans will only watch stories of people in other countries who speak different languages for so long, even if the people are really beautiful. Eventually we hunger for an organic media that addressed our issues. And even though the sweet, happy, and wholesome approach seems like the friendlier, let's-all-get-along way of doing things, Asian Americans eventually get tired of that too. Compared with our real life experiences, it's lame.

I think IA Media's President Adam Ware makes a good but maybe half-correct point:

Ware said statistics show that the primary language of an overwhelming majority of Asians in America is not their native language but English.

“Stations like KTSF do a disservice to the Asian American market as they niche Asian communities and then pitch programming in their languages - to me that’s horribly uninspired,” said Ware. “I am a firm believer that there is room for an English Asian pop culture channel.”

I think there is room for an English Asian channel, but I just don't think the wholesome approach works. Pop culture itself may have to wait. Think about hip hop; it's technically pop culture, but there are deeper stories that lie beneath the surface. I think Asian Americans want to put more resources into deeper issues because we're tired of not controlling our own media, and we're tired of fake wholesomeness.

(Picture from USA Today)

Racist Love

2008-08-07T09:27:00.001-07:00

I just wanted to mention that Frank Chin reposted his essay "Racist Love" on his website. 44 Black Belt Skrips posted it here in the forums. I just wanted to put it on the blog section of our site as well since some of you don't visit the forums (and vice versa--some of you probably don't visit the blog). We touched upon this essay recently on another blog post.

Racist Love

©1972 By Frank Chin & Jeffery Paul Chan

In: Seeing Through Shuck
New York: Ballantine Books, 1972

White racism enforces white supremacy. White supremacy is a system of order and a way of perceiving reality. Its purpose is to keep whites on top and set them free. Colored minorities in white reality are stereotypes. Each racial stereotype comes in two models, the acceptable and the unacceptable. The hostile black stud has his acceptable counterpart in the form of Stepin Fetchit. For the savage, kill-crazy Geronimo, there is Tonto and the Hollywood version of Cochise. For the mad dog General Santa Ana there's the Cisco Kid and Pancho. For Fu Manchu and the Yellow Peril, there is Charlie Chan and his Number One Son. The unacceptable model is unacceptable because he cannot be controlled by whites. The acceptable model is acceptable because he is tractable. There is racist hate and racist love.

If the system works, the stereotypes assigned to the various races are accepted by the races themselves as reality, as fact, and racist love reigns. The minority's reaction to racist policy is acceptance and apparent satisfaction. Order is kept, the world turns without a peep from any nonwhite. One measure of the success of white racism is the silence of that race and the amount of white energy necessary to maintain or increase that silence. Likewise, the failure of white racism can be measured by the amount and kind of noise of resistance generated by the race. The truth is that all of the country's attention has been drawn to white racism's failures. Everything that has been done by whites in politics, government, and education in response to the failure of white racism, while supposedly anti-racist, can be seen as efforts to correct the flaws, redesign the instruments, and make racism work. The object is to shut up the noise. Do it fast. Do it cheap. White racism has failed with the blacks, the chicanos, the American Indians. Night riders, soldier boys on horseback, fat sheriffs, and all them goons and clowns of racism did destroy a lot of bodies, mess up some minds, and leave among these minorities a legacy of suffering that continues to this day. But they did not stamp out the consciousness of a people, destroy their cultural integrity and literacy sensibility, and produce races of people that would work to enforce white supremacy without having to be supervised or watchdogged by whites.

In terms of the utter lack of cultural distinction in America, the destruction of an organic sense of identity, the complete psychological and cultural subjugation of a race of people, the people of Chinese and Japanese ancestry stand out as white racism's only success. This is not to say that Asian-Americans are worse off than the other colored minorities. American policy has failed in Vietnam, yet no one would say that the Vietnamese are better off than the people of Puerto Rico, where American policy has succeeded. The secret of that success lies in the construction of the modern stereotype and the development of new policies of white racism.

The general function of any racial stereotype is to establish and preserve order between different elements of society, maintain the continuity and growth of Western civilization, and enforce white supremacy with a minimum of effort, attention, and expense. The ideal racial stereotype is a low maintenance engine of white supremacy whose efficiency increases with age, as it became "authenticated" and "historically verified."

The stereotype operates as a model of behavior. It conditions the mass society's perceptions and expectations. Society is conditioned to accept the given minority only within the bounds of the stereotype. The subject minority is conditioned to reciprocate by becoming the stereotype, live it, talk it, embrace it, measure group and individual worth in its terms, and believe it.

The stereotype operates most efficiently and economically when the vehicle of the stereotype, the medium of its perpetuation, and the subject race to be controlled are all one. When the operation of the stereotype has reached this point, where the subject race itself embodies and perpetuates the white supremacist vision of reality, indifference to the subject race sets in among mass society. The successful operation of the stereotype results in the neutralization of the subject race as a social, creative, and cultural force. The race poses no threat to white supremacy. It is now a guardian of white supremacy, dependent on it and grateful to it.

For the subject to operate efficiently as an instrument of white supremacy, he is conditioned to accept and live in a state of euphemized self-contempt. This self-contempt itself is nothing more than the subject's acceptance of white standards of objectivity, beauty, behavior, and achievement as being morally absolute, and his acknowledgment of the fact that, because he is not white, he can never fully measure up to white standards.

The stereotype, within the minority group itself, then, is enforced by individual and collective self-contempt. Given: that the acceptable stereotype is the minority version of whiteness and being acceptable to whites creates no friction between the races, and given: fear of white hostility and the white threat to the survival of the subject minority, it follows that embracing the acceptable stereotype is an expedient tactic of survival, as selling out and accepting humiliation almost always are. The humiliation, this gesture of self-contempt and self-destruction, in terms of the stereotype is euphemized as being successful assimilation, adaption, and acculturation.

If the source of this self-contempt is obviously generated from outside the minority, interracial hostility will inevitably result, as history has shown us in the cases of the blacks, Indians, and chicanos. The best self-contempt to condition into the minority has its sources seemingly within the minority group itself. The vehicles of this illusion are education and the publishing establishment. Only five American-born Chinese have published what can be called serious attempts at literature: Pardee Lowe has a one-book career with Father and Glorious Descendants (1943), an autobiography; Jade Snow Wong, another one- book career with the most famous Chinese-American work, Fifth Chinese Daughter(1950), an autobiography; Diana Chang, the only serious Chinese-America writer to publish more than one book-length creative work to date, has written and published four novels and is a well-known poet; Virginia Lee has one novel, The House Tai Ming Built in 1963; and Betty Lee Sung, author of the semiautobiographical Mountain of Gold (1967). Of these five, four--Pardee Lowe, Jade Snow Wong, Virginia Lee, and Betty Lee Sung -- confirm the popular stereotypes of Chinese-Americans, find Chinese-America repulsive, and don't identify with it.

The construction of the stereotype began long before Jade Snow Wong, Pardee Lowe, Virginia Lee, and Betty Lee Sung were born within it and educated to fulfill it. It began with a basic difference between it and the stereotypes of the other races. The white stereotype of the Asian is unique in that it is the only racial stereotype completely devoid of manhood. Our nobility is that of an efficient housewife. At our worst we are contemptible because we are womanly, effeminate, devoid of all the traditionally masculine qualities of originality, daring, physical courage, creativity. We're neither straight talkin' or straight shootin'. The mere fact that four of the five American-born Chinese-American writers are women reinforces this aspect of the stereotype.

The sources of Chinese-American self-contempt are white Christianity, the sojourner's state of humiliation, overt white racism, and legislative racism. Each served to exclude the Chinese-American from the realm of manliness and American culture. The Chinese were the target of the largest missionary campaign ever mounted in the history of mankind. It's now in its fifth century. The American missionary movement is now in its second century. In 1871, the Reverend John L. Nevius wrote:

The Chinese as a race are, as compared with the European nations, of a phlegmatic and impassive temperament, and physically less active and energetic. Children are not fond of athletic and vigorous sports, but prefer marbles, kite-flying, and some quiet games of gall, spinning tops, etc. Men take an easy stroll for recreation, but never a rapid walk for exercise, and are seldom in a hurry or excited. They are characteristically timid and docile... While the Chinese are deficient in active courage and daring, they are not passive in resistance. They are comparatively apathetic as regards to pain and death, and have great powers of physical endurance as well as great persistency and obstinacy. On an average a Chinese tailor will work on his bench or a literary man over books with his pen, more hours a day than our race can.

The Chinese in the parlance of the Bible, were raw material for the "flock," pathological sheep for the shepherd. The adjectives applied to the Chinese ring with scriptural imagery. We are meek, timid, passive, docile, industrious. We have the patience of Job. We are humble. A race without sinful manhood, born to mortify our flesh. Religion has been used to subjugate the blacks, chicanos, and Indians along with guns and whips. The difference between these groups and the Chinese was that the Christians, taking Chinese hospitality for timidity and docility, weren't afraid of us as they were of other races. They loved us, protected us. Love conquered.

It's well-known that the cloying overwhelming love of a protective, coddling mother produces an emotionally stunted, dependant child. This is the Christian love, the bigoted love that has imprisoned the Chinese-American sensibility; whereas overt and prolonged expressions of hatred had the effect of liberating black, red, chicano, and to some degree, Japanese-American sensibilities.

The hatred of whites freed them to return hate with hate and develop their own brigand languages, cultures, and sensibilities, all of which have at their roots an assumed arrogance in the face of white standards, and defiant mockery of the white institutions, including white religion. One of the products of these cultures born of overt racist hatred was a word in the language for white man, a name loaded with hate. A white man knows where he stands when a chicano called him "gringo," or a black man called him "honky," "Mr. Charlie," "ofay," "whitey," or an Indian calls him "paleface." Whites aren't aware of the names Chinese-Americans and Japanese-Americans have for them. And it's not a little embarrassing for an Asian-American to be asked by a curious white what we might call him behind his back.

The first Chinese were sojourners to America. They arrived in a state of humiliation as indentured servants, coolie laborers to California to perform the labor of slaves, which were outlawed in this free state. They never intended to settle here. The whites encouraged them with overt white racism and legislative racism to leave as soon as they could. The first Chinese so loathed this country that they regularly burned all their letters and records of their stay, journals and diaries, and tossed the ashes into the sea in the hope that at least much of themselves would make it back to China. As a consequence of their total self-contempt, Chinese- America has no literary legacy. Of the Chinese who stayed not one complete account of one Chinese man's life in California, in diary, in journal, or in the form of correspondence, survives. Nor is there any oral history. All that survives from those old men is the humiliation of being foreign.

If life here was something to be erased from memory, death here was the ultimate humiliation. They were contemptible in life on American soil. Life they could endure. But death, no. So the practice of returning the bones to China for burial in hospitable ground, an eloquent and final expression of their loathing of America released after death, which the whites regarded as quaint and heathenish.

Legislative racism, the only form that openly survives, was invented to cope with the Chinese specifically and the first applied against them with success. Legislative racism culminated in the passage of The Chinese Exclusion Act by the U.S. Congress, giving the Chinese the distinction of being the only race to be legislated against by name.

The racist policy applied against the blacks defined them as nonhumans, as property without legal status. This resulted in political schisms among the white majority and contributed to a costly war, thus failing as an instrument of white supremacy. It also failed to control the blacks and condition them into white supremacist self-control. The policy of extermination and incarceration applied against the American Indian was another costly failure.

For the Chinese, they invented an instrument of racist policy that was a work of pure genius, in that it was not an overtly hostile expression of anti-Chinese sentiment, yet still reinforced the stereotype and generated self-contempt and humiliation among generations of Chinese and Chinese-Americans, who, after having been conditioned into internalizing the white supremacist Gospel of Christian missionaries, looked on themselves as failures, instead of victims of racism. This wondrous instrument was the law. They gave the Chinese legal status, access to the protection under the law as "aliens ineligible for citizenship." We were separate but equal under the supposedly blind impartiality of the law. Legally we were masters of our own destiny, limited only by our intelligence and talent.

The game was rigged. The Chinese were forced into Chinatown and out of American culture and society by laws supposedly designed to protect fish, secure safety against fire, and protect public health. One law stated that only "aliens ineligible for citizenship" of the laboring class would be admitted into the country. A fancy way of saying only men, no women. this law was designed to control the Chinese population. It discouraged Chinese from staying by denying them access to their women, underscored the state of their (supposedly voluntary) humiliation in America, and guaranteed that even should all the Chinese stay they would not reproduce. And eventually they would die out.

This law worked. At the turn of the century the ratio of men to women was 27 to 1. Then a little after the turn of the century the Chinese population took a sudden decline. White historians like to say that suddenly a lot of us went home to China. We didn't, but our bones did, six months after we died here. This law was doubly successful in that it contributed to the myth of Chinese-American juvenile decency and thus added to the effeminization of the racial stereotype. According to this myth, the reason juvenile delinquency stayed so low in Chinatown until the last twenty years was that maintenance of the strong Chinese family. Nothing less than Confucianist Chinese culture was making law-abiding citizens of us. The reason there was no juvenile delinquency in Chinatown has less to do with Confucian mumbo jumbo than with the law against the birth of Chinese kids. There were no juveniles to be delinquent.

What holds all this self-contempt together and makes it work is "The Concept of the Dual Personality." The so-called "blending of East and West" divides the Chinese-American into two incompatible segments: (1) the foreigner whose status is dependent on his ability to be accepted by the white natives; and (2) the handicapped native who is taught that identification with his foreignness is the only way to "justify" his difference in skin color. The argument goes, "If you ain't got Chinese culture, baby, all you got's the color of your skin," as if to say skin color were not a culture force in this country.

The privileged foreigner is the assimilable alien. The assimilable alien is posed as an exemplary minority against the bad example of the blacks. Thus the privileged foreigner is trained to respond to the black not the white majority as the single most potent threat to his status. The handicapped native is neither black nor white in a black and white world. In his native American culture he has no recognized style of manhood, in a society where a manly style is prerequisite to respectability and notice. His pride is derived from the degree of his acceptance by the race of his choice at being consciously one thing and not the other. Black, white, chicano, or a museum of Chinese culture. In his use of language, voice inflection, accent, walk, manner of dress, and combing his hair, the handicapped native steeps himself in self- contempt for being "quick to learn... and imitative." At worst, he's a counterfeit begging currency. At best he's an "Americanized Chinese," someone who's been given a treatment to make him less foreign.

Paris Hilton for President

2008-08-05T21:54:00.000-07:00

From a fellow blogger on the Fighting 44s.

Paris Hilton Responds to McCain Adfunny videosFunnyOrDie.com

See more funny videos at Funny or Die

Martin Bashir's comments about "Asian babes"

2008-08-05T21:48:00.000-07:00

I saw this on AAM. It's about Martin Bashir's comments at the Asian American Journalists Association's annual banquet. It says:

The London-born presenter, who moved to the US four years ago, said: "I'm happy to be in the midst of so many Asian babes. In fact, I'm happy that the podium covers me from the waist down."

Bashir, 45, also managed to embarrass fellow presenter Juju Chang by saying a speech should be "like a dress on a beautiful woman - long enough to cover the important parts and short enough to keep your interest - like my colleague Juju's."

I'm out of rice chaser jokes, but I will say is that I saw this story on the relatively fringe website Angry Asian Man, and the story somehow missed the prominent areas of the NY Times, CNN, and BBC. You would think that in a room full of professionals who make their living by being taken seriously for their minds rather than their bodies that there would be a bit of an outcry over this. I'm wondering where all the Asian American journalists were that day.

I know that there are politics that your average journalist doesn't control, and perhaps to a certain degree, this isn't anything nearly as serious as say, the beating death of Vincent Chin, but one would think that there would be a bit more outcry at such a statement made at the annual banquet of the largest Asian American journalist organization in the country.

Multilingual Society

2008-08-04T21:36:00.001-07:00

There were two interesting stories about multilingualism today. First, there was a story here about high school officials in New Orleans moving to enact an English-only rule for valedictory speeches after two Vietnamese co-valedictorians said a few words in Vietnamese (seen on Angry Asian Man). Second, there was a story in the NY Times about Mayor Michael Bloomberg and his Spanish tutor.

The notion of a multi-lingual America, in my opinion, is a complex one. Being the most diverse nation on earth, most immigrants to this country come from a background in which English is not the dominant language, and as a country that seeks to welcome immigrants ("Give me your tired, your poor"), it's only right that we honor the diversity of the people who make up our nation. At the same time, there needs to be some sort of legal structure that enables us to work together with a common language. I remember reading a couple years ago about an alleged rapist who was an immigrant and who spoke a unique dialect of an African language which only had something like 5,000 speakers, almost all of whom lived in one tiny village in Africa. The law required the courts to provide a translator, and since they couldn't find one, they had to set the guy free. My view is that pure English-only legislation hinders our growth as people, while downgrading the importance of a common language hurts our ability to remain a country of cooperation and common sense. We need to have a structure and culture that honors and learns from our people and our heritages while preventing us from becoming a bunch of people who can't build the tower of Babel because we can't communicate.

My thoughts on the two stories are this: I think it's ridiculous what the New Orleans school district is doing. The students said a few words in Vietnamese, and they translated their own words into English so that everyone could understand. I would hope that the audience would want to hear about the students, their heritage, and their history, and I would hope they would prefer the full version, including the language in which they were raised, rather than some whitewashed version to please the xenophobes. It would be different, perhaps, if the entire speech was in Vietnamese, but since everything was translated into English, the standard common language, I don't see why there should be a problem.

I also think it's great that Mayor Bloomberg is studying Spanish. So many of his constituents come from a Spanish-speaking background, and it's good to know that the mayor of New York cares. There is a bit of unfairness in this. Bloomberg has a big advantage over poor politicians since he can afford to work for a dollar a year and to hire whatever tutors he needs. A less wealthy politician would not have access to the same resources. That being said, it's still great that he's making an effort to educate himself in a language that many New Yorkers use on a daily basis.

Multilingualism in America is a controversial subject that people will continue to debate in the near and far future. Feel free to debate the topic here or in the forum.

Jaehwan’s NYC Trip/New Podcast

2008-08-02T00:25:00.000-07:00

Jaehwan and betterasianman.com's William

I had an excellent trip in NYC over the past couple of weeks. Not only did I spend time with family and take some time to look for traditional Chinese storybooks in Chinatown, but I also had the opportunity to meet and hang out with Fallout Central William and 44/FOC Kwak. It was good to meet both in person after working with them for so long. For those who are curious, these two guys definitely do know how to attract women. They were second only to my two year old son (who, for whatever reason, always gets beautiful women to squeal and approach him).
Kwak76 and Jaehwan

We had some good discussions about PUA (Pick Up Artists) and Asian American activism, and it was cool to meet guys who were on the ground doing stuff, even though I might not agree entirely with what they do or what it represents. I did find (and I already knew) that there were many areas in which our philosophies do overlap, and it was fun discussing our similarities.

While I was in the former Fallout Central studio, which is now the Better Asian Man studio, William and I decided to put together a quick podcast. You can download it here, and you can see it on William's blog here. In the podcast, we continue the discussion about PUA, and we also talk a bit about that Esther Ku clip that people have been discussing on all the Asian message boards. I spoke a bit more also about how I believe that literature can save the world (or at least our part of the world).

Even though I was stumbling on my words after sweating through the sauna-like temperatures of the New York summer, this was probably my favorite podcast to date. Not only did the 'cast give us both ample opportunity to share our philosophies about life and Asian American activism, but it also showcased some true emotional issues. I think you'll all appreciate William's personal approach to his craft. If you listen to the podcast, he draws emotion when he talks about the psychological toll on Asian men that comes from Esther Ku's punchlines. He knows this damage first hand through the testimonies of his own clientele. Both of us are relatively immune these days from this kind of psychological damage--him because of his bootcamp, and me because I've heard that stuff so many times--but there is no doubt that such jokes and statements continue to wreak havoc on younger Asian American men.

By the way, I've been talking to some local people about the concept of teaching Asian men skills with women. People hate the "kiss-and-tell" approach (I put "kiss" in quotes because kissing isn't what the APB disciples brag about), but the idea of teaching male confidence has some strong supporters. So maybe William and even APB are on to something.

From an activist standpoint, PUA is still low brow, and oftentimes it's self-serving for a lot of their acolytes. Selfish people, many of whom take these classes, can't effect change because they only think about themselves and can't see the needs of the larger society. But at the same time, it's relatively easy to promote, and people understand it better than literature--after all, not everyone wants to read, but everyone wants to hook up. I was thinking about this today. I still believe that the literature approach would cure a lot of societal ills, including damage from the Esther Ku style attacks, but at the same time, it may not be practical and it may often be too difficult to get things done at that literature level. Literary people are not known for their debating or organization skills or ability to take criticism, and more often than not, those debates simply fall flat. (Think of the Lois Ann Yamanaka debate where the board of the AAAS resigned over an award; something similar happened to Frank Chin before that). Usually most of the bare-knuckle brawling that takes place in the arts comes from jock-ish agents, publishers, salespeople, and the like. It's that whole jocks vs. nerds thing that Brooks discusses in my favorite NY Times article; jocks are practical and thick-skinned warriors but don't always see the big picture, while nerds are sensitive types who can see the big picture but can't always lead or translate it into practical action. The institutions of literature may simply be too nerd-centric to accommodate change without huge expenditures of time, money, and effort.

So maybe some sort of action at the level of pure attraction and interaction may make sense. People can focus on boosting confidence levels as a means of empowerment. As in all forms of activism, I think there needs to be some sort of moral code, but perhaps forming the moral code is an area where "high brow" and "low brow" can work together.

Bob Malaythong and the Commercial

2008-08-01T20:51:00.001-07:00

I'm back after a brief hiatus. It was an interesting break. I will probably have a feature/opinion article coming up soon.

I was reading the New York Times yesterday (paper edition since I was actually IN New York), and I saw this article on Bob Malaythong, an upcoming Olympian in the sport of badminton. It's an interesting immigrant story, and it sounds like he has come a far way. Becoming an Olympian in any sport is a hard, competitive process, and he should be proud.

One thing that really disturbed me, however, was the following text from the beginning of the article. It says:

Ortiz would be David Ortiz, the Boston Red Sox slugger. He teamed with Chicago Bears linebacker Brian Urlacher to play badminton against Malaythong and his partner, Howard Bach, in a national commercial for Vitamin Water.

The commercial ends with Ortiz spiking the shuttlecock deep into Malaythong’s leg.

You can see the commercial here:

I understand that badminton is an underfunded sport, but for the life of me, I can't understand why the American Olympic committee would let two of their upcoming competitors agree to be in a commercial in which they get trounced by two "American" (read: white or black) guys who don't even play the sport. You would think that someone would stop them. From the story, Bob Malaythong clearly needs whatever money he earned from the TV spot, but I would think that any self-respecting badminton or Olympic organization would ask him not to do it. Or maybe pressure Vitamin Water to rewrite the script. I'm sure they could've arranged something that would earn Bob money and save these poor Vitamin Water people from embarassing themselves with their racial nonsense.

Bob Malaythong and the Commercial

2008-08-01T20:51:00.000-07:00

Ortiz would be David Ortiz, the Boston Red Sox slugger. He teamed with Chicago Bears linebacker Brian Urlacher to play badminton against Malaythong and his partner, Howard Bach, in a national commercial for Vitamin Water.

The commercial ends with Ortiz spiking the shuttlecock deep into Malaythong’s leg.

You can see the commercial here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YfwqSBWDW_A

I understand that badminton is an underfunded sport, but for the life of me, I can't understand why the American Olympic committee would let two of their upcoming competitors agree to be in a commercial in which they get trounced by two "American" (read: white or black) guys who don't even play the sport. You would think that someone would stop them. From the story, Bob Malaythong clearly needs whatever money he earned from the TV spot, but I would think that any self-respecting badminton or Olympic organization would ask him not to do it. Or maybe pressure Vitamin Water to rewrite the script. I'm sure they could've arranged something that would earn Bob money and save these poor Vitamin Water people from embarassing themselves with their racial nonsense.

Rountable with the Asian Playboy

2008-07-21T23:53:00.000-07:00

After this blog post, I am officially taking a break from activism, blogging, and all things related for the next week and a half. I have been working overtime for the past month with three events, and everyone has to recharge from time to time. My time is now.

So the last Fallout Central Podcast took place on Sunday. You can download it here. It was a roundtable discussion with me, the Asian Playboy, and the four Fallout Central hosts, three of whom had taken the Pick Up (aka "How to Get Girlz") course (it sounded like Kwak said that Albert had taken it), and one of whom has a wife who supposedly greatly respects the Asian Playboy. For those who are new to this site, the Asian Playboy is kind of like an Asian "Hitch;" he teaches Asian men to pick up women. He gets mixed reviews when he comes to this site; guys like Rebel respect him, while guys like Xian knock him around, and gals like Box beat him up, slap him, and kick the shit out of him. But it's all good. Most of his detractors, from what I've seen, are not against what he does, but most of us don't see what he does as a form of empowerment. As I mention in the podcast, it's low brow.

William, the moderator and former producer of Fallout Central (which is now under new management), is now a certified "pick up" coach under Playboy and is running a new site called betterasianman.com which promotes the same stuff, but he was a fair moderator, and he let me say everything I wanted to say. Kwak and Albert, who had also taken the course, were also fair. You can listen to the podcast and hear just about all my thoughts on the subject.

The only thing I might elaborate upon is the "certain segment" of the population that I kept referring to. APB and I both agreed that his services are only geared towards a certain segment of the population--guys that have real problems with women. APB himself talked about a 40 year old unattractive Filipino guy who studied with him and was able to attract women for what seemed to be the very first time in his life. I can't imagine going through that metamorphosis at the age of 40; this guy has real problems. If you look at APB's site, you can see guys who are so proud of their ability to actually get sex that they post pictures and stories of the women they score with, with or without their consent. (Read some of "Johnny Wolf's" posts--I quote some of his disturbing writings in the podcast.). For some of these guys, APB has shown them the promised land of actually getting women, and he is a hero to them. Read his blog, and you'll see guys who define their entire self-worth by how many people they sleep with. (and yes, it's a numbers thing rather than a quality thing--the guys don't seem selective at all, although given their situation, maybe they shouldn't be.)

The only point I would have made is that philosophically it is unlikely that the certain segment of the population to whom APB caters will be able to create lasting change in society. I don't want to be judgmental, but if a person has trouble talking to women at the age of 40, it's unlikely that he will be able to create anything new. He has lived his entire life defensively, and it will take a small miracle to become the kind of person who can lead other people to greatness. From a social standpoint, this is why a focus on intellectual and artistic endeavors yields greater results than anything pick-up related.

In any case, I don't disagree with what APB does. Certain people obviously pay for the service, and if it makes them happy, so be it--he's providing something that they want, and for the most part, even though it's extremely tacky, it's probably clean. Just don't call it activism.

MD to Blogger

2008-07-21T16:47:00.000-07:00

This article was one of today's most e-mailed on the NY Times website. It's about a doctor named Arnold Kim who quit medicine in order to work full time blogging about gossip and rumors about Apple, the computer company. The title of the article is My Son, the Blogger: An M.D. Trades Medicine for Apple Rumors. I thought this was a bit of a strange title, considering the article only mentions the Kim's father once. It seemed to imply some sort of hackneyed filial duties that Asian men have towards their parents, and it reminded me a bit of those old corny lines from the Karate Kid--"Miyagi, you have dis-honored me!" (Of course Sato wasn't Miyagi's dad, but the quote reverbed in my head.)

In any case, it was an interesting article about a hobby becoming a very lucrative career, and I especially found interesting the now often repeated fact that the internet allows people to easily find others who share their interests. There are enough people who love Mac products so much that they read a blog about Mac rumors. The internet is an awesome thing.

The article says,

Dr. Kim is not a millionaire blogger yet, and given the slumping online advertising market, he faces some hurdles as he expands the site. But he has reason to be optimistic.

Stepping away from medicine felt somewhat strange, he admits. Dr. Kim was bringing home a six-figure income as a doctor, but he recognized that blogging was becoming more lucrative. He says the site also yields a six-figure income for him.

Six figures as a blogger on Mac products. I must be writing about the wrong subject matter. I don't even make six figures as a blogger if you count the two numbers that come after the decimal point. (Skrips bought me dinner when I visited him in Seattle, so I can probably claim to have at least surpassed the decimal point, though that was friendship rather than pay...)

Mr. Inada

2008-07-20T23:21:00.001-07:00

For those who have been following Thymos's local Portland annual activist event, we concluded on Friday with an excellent event hosted by Oregon Poet Laureate Lawson Inada. Mr. Inada was one of the editors of Aiiieeeee! during the 1970's, and he was appointed a couple of years ago by Governor Ted Kulongoski as Oregon's Poet Laureate. He has a deep history in the Oregon Japanese American community and is a both a poet and an activist.

Our event was advertised as a "coffee time chat" about activism. Mr. Inada began by asking us to write down all the places we lived. He told us we could draw it as a map, or we could just list the places sequentially. He then went around the room and asked us to tell our story.

It was absolutely amazing. People I had known for a long time had life stories that I would never have imagined. As Mr. Inada later explained, the purpose of the exercise was to show everyone where each person "was coming from" and how each person's life eventually brought them to the Red and Black Cafe where the event was held. I was particularly struck by the stories of the older JACL members. Their families had all endured some form of hardship and displacement due to the internment. It was a common bond that tied them all together, and each member was able to a certain extent to share some story about coming from internment. (Though interestingly enough, no one spoke about it directly.)

Mr. Inada spent most of the rest of the chat talking about organizations, about recognizing common events and milestones, and about inter-organizational sharing. He knew all about our organizations, and he knew the key players who made things happen. He encouraged us to work together and to remember history.

One lesson I took from Lawson's chat was the idea of commonality. We all come from different perspectives, and yet somehow we can find common bonds where we overlap. Within the crowd, we had diverse people such as a Vietnamese refugee, a Cuban refugee, an immigrant from Afghanistan, and a Korean adoptee. Yet everyone was at the Red and Black to discuss activism and ways in which we could create a better society for all. Everyone was there to learn how we were similar, despite the fact that we came from all over the globe.

A big part of activism, I think, is learning to work with people who think differently. This particular event showcased a lot of that. Frank Chin has criticized the JACL, and yet they supported us financially to bring him up here. During the Frank Chin movie, one of the filmed interviewees criticized the JACL by saying the organization lacked courage, and an audience member yelled out, "Bullshit!" But it's all good, and we the feedback. Hardly anyone left during the movie, and everyone stayed around to ask questions and to engage one another on issues. We actually had a larger crowd for the Curtis Choy discussion than we had for the Vincent Chin panel last year. People will never always agree on everything--Dinesh D'Souza and Tim Wise both have strong viewpoints based on the same, mostly agreed-upon facts--but we all learn to coexist. D'Souza thinks affirmative action is racist, while Wise thinks the absence of affirmative action protects racism. They'll never agree on perspective, but they don't have to, as long as everyone is honest and forthcoming. (I've found that many disagreements take place because people just refuse to say what they really think.) People can still debate issues without getting personal, and they can still live in the same space.

The Frank Chin event, overall, was a great experience, one of the best of my life. It was worth every second and every effort we put into it. When we bring pioneers and give them the space and opportunity to teach us, we learn more than we could ever learn on our own. I highly recommend all Thymos and all the 44s to seek out our teachers and to listen.

Rice Chaser with a Badge

2008-07-18T09:54:00.000-07:00

According to SF Gate:

The city of Oakland is expected to pay $2 million to settle a federal lawsuit filed by 16 Asian American women who said they were pulled over for no reason by a police officer who then groped or sexually harassed them.

I saw this news from 8A John, although I'm quoting a different article.

I remember reading about this Richard Valerga guy a while back, but apparently the issue was resolved only recently. A rice chaser with a badge. Not only is this action an abuse of power, not only does this kind of behavior erode public trust in the system, but it lacks all traces of creativity on the part of the rice chaser himself. I mean, come on. What ever happened to the old days when rice chasers would take Japanese classes and pretend to be interested in the culture? What ever happened to the days when rice chasers shed tears to show their sensitive sides while watching the Joy Luck Club? What ever happened to the days when rice chasers with ponytails would take Taekwondo classes and try to "help" women with their stretching? There are so many chasers in the world, and the fact they have to resort to this kind of uncreative behavior is a crime on top of a crime.

I think the public solution, long term of course, is to open the commentary. Fight the stereotypes by saying, "We know what a rice chaser is, we know what rice chasers do, and you may think you're pulling one over on us, but you're not." Then invite all your friends and get them involved.

On a more theoretical level, while I was googling this article, I came upon this wiki entry called Sex Crimes against Asian women in the United States. This wiki article documents quite a few chaser crimes, including the particularly unique Michael Lohman, the guy with the bottles. In the second subsection of the "Asian fetish theory" section, the article says,

Sex crimes targeting Asian American women are often attributed by some Asian American advocacy groups to the existence of an Asian fetish in the perpetrators of the crimes. Yin Ling Leung, organizational director of the National Asian Pacific American Women’s Forum, claims that sex crimes targeting Asian American women are a form of hate crime and a distorted form of racist love:^[2]

That "racist love" link leads to another wiki entry, which says,

The term was coined by Frank Chin and Jeffery Paul Chan in a 1972 article entitled "Racist Love." Chin and Chan differentiate between the terms racist hate and racist love. They distinguish between unacceptable stereotypes, such as Fu Manchu and the Yellow Peril, which represent minorities who cannot be controlled by whites; and acceptable stereotypes, such as Charlie Chan and his Number One Son, which represent minorities who can be controlled by whites. Hence, acceptable stereotypes form the basis of racist love. When the perpetuation of such acceptable stereotypes reached a point as to be embodied and perpetuated by the race of people it represents, this race, as a social, creative, and cultural force, would have been successfully neutralized by white supremacy. Chin and Chan write:

White racism enforces white supremacy. White supremacy is a system of order and a way of perceiving reality. Its purpose is to keep whites on top and set them free. Colored minorities in white reality are stereotypes. Each racial stereotype comes in two models, the acceptable and the unacceptable. The hostile black stud has his acceptable counterpart in the form of Stepin Fetchit. For the savage, kill-crazy Geronimo, there is Tonto and the Hollywood version of Cochise. For the mad dog General Santa Ana there's the Cisco Kid and Pancho. For Fu Manchu and the Yellow Peril, there is Charlie Chan and his Number One Son. The unacceptable model is unacceptable because he cannot be controlled by whites. The acceptable model is acceptable because he is tractable. There is racist hate and racist love.^[1]

Frank Chin's influence is everywhere, and he is 100% correct about racist love. People who have racist love towards Asians and Asian Americans praise our so-called docility because it keeps us in our place. The stereotypes serve to neutralize our anger, our sense of frustration, and our efforts to organize and take action against trends that affect us.

It's interesting that Chin and Chan published this essay in 1972, more than 35 years ago. Why hasn't this thinking become a part of Asian American culture? It's relevant to everything we do and influences much of our self-conception, but it has not entered our culture in the same way "by all means necessary" or "I have a dream" has. Why hasn't this thinking--which is so obviously right--become more mainstream?

Wiki has the answer again, further down in the same article:

Authors Sau-ling Wong and Jeffrey J. Santa Ana criticize Chin for being misogynistic, homophobic, and for glorifying stereotypes of aggression:

“ Frank Chin, perhaps the best known of the androcentric cultural nationalist writers, relies on misogyny and homophobia in his attempt to delineate and construct a (hetero)normative Asian American manhood. In his critique of racist Hollywood caricatures of Asian men, for example, Chin glorifies stereotypes of aggression in black, Latino, and Native American men.^[2]

Haha...never underestimate a Kingstonian. Or in this case, a pair of Kingstonians. "What? You're against racism? You see things in other cultures that you admire? You're a racist...and a homophobe!!!" I don't know if I've read this particular article by Wong and Santa Ana, but it's so asinine how people throw accusations of sexism and homophobia when they can't win an argument. I've been reading these Asian American papers for a long time, and I don't recall ever seeing any kind of actual documentation of racism or homophobia that these anti-Chin forces bring up, from anyone. All we ever see is the same old Kingstonian swiftboating and name-calling.

In any case, returning back to my original point, I think we need to open dialogue on this issue. We get enough practice on message boards, but we need to also start talking to our friends and family about it too. Build your vocabulary and do your research. The information is out there.

Mr. Chin and Mr. Choy

2008-07-14T13:49:00.001-07:00

Frank Chin at the Hall Street Grill

Mr. Chin came to Portland, and he has left Portland. Mr. Choy has done the same. Portland will never be the same. Thymos will never be the same. An entire world of possibilities has opened for our organization and our city, and our knowledge of strategies for Asian American change virtually quadrupled overnight. All this, and the event isn't even over yet--Lawson Inada speaks next Friday at the Red and Black Cafe. Go here for more info.

A brief recap:

Mr. Choy

The screening of "What's Wrong with Frank Chin?" attracted about forty people, which was smaller than our Vincent Chin event last year, but which was about the same size as the WWWFC screening in Seattle three years ago when the film first came out. We expected smaller numbers than Vincent Chin since we were talking about literature rather than hate crimes, but that we could equal Seattle was remarkable considering:

a) We have so few Asian people here, significantly less than Seattle in both numbers and percentages.
b) Frank Chin wasn't scheduled to be at the screening.
c) Three years have passed, and the film is no longer a new release.
d) We're located in a city where the JACL, an organization that Frank criticizes in the film, is by far the most powerful Asian American civil rights group in town. (Our local Portland JACL was actually a sponsor of this event and is probably the only JACL chapter ever to sponsor an event around Frank Chin. Mad props to them for valuing truth and people above politics.)

In addition, it was remarkable that we were able to get people to turn out for a movie about a man who is so different from the mainstream. Last year when we publicized Vincent Chin, we were in all the papers, all the Asian American websites (helped in large part by Asian Pacific Americans for Progress), and on all the airwaves. Everyone wanted to help us. We were riding a wave of popularity that we didn't deserve. This year, our event was listed in only one newspaper--the Asian Reporter--and only the Fighting 44s and Fallout Central publicized it. All the other major outlets either refused or didn't respond, and we fought for every bit of coverage we could get.

(Though I must admit that my time as a 44 prepared me well for this. I still don't know who else lists the 44s on their blogroll...)

The film was amazing as always, and for those who haven't yet seen it, check it out. You can order it from Curtis's website.

As for the event itself, the organizers had had much discussion about Frank Chin not being at the screening of his own film--Frank himself had said that he preferred not to be there--but in the end, Frank's keen foresight once again proved to be correct. Having a discussion with Curtis Choy alone allowed people to ask Curtis questions about his film, about life as an independent filmmaker, and about his relationship with Frank Chin. People asked very interesting questions about what went into the film and what didn't make the final cut. I won't go into his answers (you had to be there, and it's top secret), but it provided a very different perspective from the Seattle event, which was focused more on activism than the film itself. I actually liked our event a lot more, even though I must admit that it was fun watching Frank verbally pound the shit out of a Seattle heckler three years ago.

Mr. Chin

Frank Chin surpassed everyone's highest expectations in terms of his activism and knowledge. The guy knows everything. For those on the 44s who know me and who know my style of debating, you know that I'm proud of my knowledge of history, literature, and activism. My style of argumentation always refers back to facts and logic above emotion. I'm proud of that. This weekend, however, I got taken to school. Frank Chin posed questions about culture that I had never even thought of, let alone try to answer. Not only did I not know the answers to his questions, I hadn't even come up with the questions themselves! I know I wasn't the only one who felt this either. It's been two days since our guests left, and people are still talking about it.

In my last long 44s piece, I've mentioned the aura that surrounds some of these warrior activists from the 60's, but Frank's charisma was amazing. I have never ever seen an Asian American have the effect on people that Frank had. In addition to his scheduled program, we had a number of other engagements where he spoke with Portlanders. After just two minutes of talking to him, everyone in his presence began thinking about culture all the way back to the roots of their childhood. He knew all our childhood stories. He astounded everyone with his knowledge of the traditions and of history (you can see some of his work on his blog). It didn't matter if the people in his presence were male or female, Asian or non-Asian; everyone was spellbound. We all had to acknowledge the sifu/sensei in our presence.

I can't tell you everything he said--mostly because I'm still absorbing it myself--but the gist of his message was that we don't know the traditional stories from Asia. We know English stories like Jack and the Beanstalk. We know German stories like Rumpelstiltskin. We know Danish stories like the Ugly Duckling. But we don't know Chinese stories or Japanese stories or any other Asian stories, and therefore we don't know who we are or where we came from. American culture accepts stories from all over Europe and makes them a part of American culture, but the same acceptance does not take place for Asian stories. Instead of real stories, we get nothing but racist stories like the Five Chinese Brothers that have no basis in tradition or real culture.

I'll post more on this in the future--about where to find these stories, what they mean, etc. Right now, as I may have mentioned, I'm still absorbing it, and I'm trying to both learn what he showed us and to incorporate it with the (seemingly scant) knowledge that I already have. You'll be hearing more from me.

JH

PS: This is just an aside that has little to do with the topic at hand, but you've all seen our internet message board debates where someone says, "Well, why don't you get off your butt and do something?" Or they'll say, "What have you done for Asian Americans?" Imagine being Frank Chin or Lawson Inada. You could respond to that rhetorical question by saying, "I created the Day of Remembrance for Japanese Americans" or "I, with three of my friends, invented Asian American literature!" That's an accomplishment.

Japan Promoting Energy Frugal Ways

2008-07-04T22:56:00.000-07:00

Green, of course, is in, and with the high energy and food prices, Americans and others around the globe are looking to find new ways to reduce greenhouse emissions and to conserve energy. Apparently Japan has been a leader in conservation ever since the oil shocks of the 1970's, and they are now set to become a leader in teaching the world to conserve.

Japan is by many measures the world’s most energy-frugal developed nation. After the energy crises of the 1970s, the country forced itself to conserve with government-mandated energy-efficiency targets and steep taxes on petroleum. Energy experts also credit a national consensus on the need to consume less.

It is also the only industrial country that sustained government investment in energy research even when energy became cheap again.

The last paragraph is ironic for those who have followed Thomas Friedman's columns. Friedman has been advocating a gasoline tax for years in order to finance investment in green technologies and to encourage Americans to conserve. But of course the Bush administration didn't have the foresight to heed his advice (though Bush said many times that we were "addicted to oil"), and now we're stuck with high prices without the benefit of the research tax.

I hope that Japan is successful in sharing their conservation culture with the world. One thing I noticed when living in Japan was that the Japanese do tend to have a more holistic view of society. When you thank someone for going out of their way, for example, Japanese people usually don't say "no problem" or "don't mention it," they usually say, "just do something good for someone else sometime." There's more respect for society and a greater appreciation for the symbiotic relationship between parts of society. Perhaps this mindset allowed the conservation meme to spread quickly in Japanese society.

In any case, America will have to adjust its culture to the new reality of global warming. Hopefully we can learn a thing or two from Japan, an island country which has managed to do very well without natural resources. From the experiences of Kawasaki Heavy Industries, it looks like the high energy prices are forcing us to reconsider the way we produce, and hopefully we'll take it to the next level by altering our culture to work in a way that is more beneficial to the planet and others who live on it.

Generations in Academia

2008-07-03T09:46:00.000-07:00

There was a brilliant article in the Times today about how Baby Boomers are retiring from academia and causing a cultural shift. The article talks about the life experiences of the different generations and how their values are different based on those experiences. The comparison of Mr. Olneck and his socialist upbringing with Ms. Goldrick-Rab in the Reagan years put the two generations in perspective.

The younger teacher, Ms. Sara Goldrick-Rab, observes:

“Senior people evaluate us for tenure and the standards they use and what we think is important are different,” she said. They want to question values and norms; “we are more driven by data.”

She's 31, and I'm 32, and I can attest to the fact that that is definitely the way a lot of my generation thinks. In educational issues, I want to see the facts and the facts, and when I'm done, I want to see more facts. I like the ideological stuff as well, but everything has to be supported by (or at least not contradicted by) facts.

There was another interesting quote at the end by a moderate married to a conservative:

The notion that campuses are naturally radical or the birthplace of social movements, Ms. Kelly-Woessner said, was specific to the 1960s and ’70s. “I think the younger generation does look at it differently.”

I think she may be right, but in the whole life cycle of the typical person, a person's college years is the best time to actually do something. It's during those years that a person is most free from direct corporate involvement and social obligations (family, suburban life, etc.). Most college students don't have the life experience to create a philosophies solid enough to lead movements, but they have advantages in power and freedom. And so while the idea of social movements starting on campus may still have roots in the 60's and 70's, I wouldn't write off college activism just yet.

Fallout Central heading towards the final stretch

2008-07-01T00:20:00.000-07:00

Fallout Central came out with another podcast episode this past weekend, and I was the featured interviewee. I used my time to promote our Thymos Frank Chin Event. As always, I wasn't as smooth as Albert and William, but I had fun. I hope my podcast episode encourages people to learn about Frank Chin and to get involved with Asian American activism. Almost all problems we discuss, along with the beginning solutions, is already out there. Most of us just don't know about it. Check out my interview--39 minutes of me talking about activism! (That's an exaggeration of course!)

Just a few things:

1. During the interview, I erroneously credited another friend for coming up with the literature event. It was actually my other friend Bao who came up with the idea. He also ran our fundraiser. Apologies to Bao.

2. Unless someone else takes over, next week's episode will be Fallout Central's last. Listen to the podcast to find out why. I was almost tearing up while listening to William describe how the podcast is coming to an end for him. I seriously believe they injected serious life into the AA internet world, perhaps more than any other group in recent years. With those awesome workshops and interviews, I can say that they personally changed my own views about how activism can be done. This will be a tremendous loss for the entire online AA community--their courage and energy has been nothing short of amazing. But those guys will be back in some form or another. Activism and fighting for what's right is an addiction, and it never goes away.

The site will still be there, and if anyone is interested in taking over, it sounds like it's up for grabs. But if you do contact them, please make sure you're good at speaking and interviewing. Judge yourselves well. I don't want to see any politically correct, wholesome, exciting-as-sawdust types taking over and ruining their rep.

3. After this event is over, I may post a few theories and experiences on the whole financial aspects of fundraising and activism. Activism needs to become more aware of the role of businesses and business leaders, and we seriously need to start supporting business leaders who are courageous enough to join the underdogs in our fight for truth. And if you're an Asian American who stands for truth and doesn't peddle orientalism, you ARE an underdog. In the meantime, if anyone else has any experiences with activism and finances, please post here.

White Cafe

2008-06-30T12:43:00.000-07:00

This is just too funny. (Thanks to urB4N for posting.) Evidently there is a cafe in Japan where Japanese women go to get served by white guys. According to the presentation, the owner came up with the concept by walking through Shibuya and asking 200 Japanese women what they wanted. They apparently "all told her the same thing," that they wanted a cafe where the waiters were "male, good looking, would treat them nice, but most importantly, were Western." And so owner's dream was consummated with Butler Cafe that employs only white guys as servers!

By the way, it's interesting to note the dual terminology that CNN uses. On the top bar, it says "lah[reporter's name].white.cafe," but throughout the program, they avoid using the term "white;" they refer to the white guys as "Western." If you look at the servers though, they're all white as snow. That has to be a media relations thing; you can only imagine the outcry if CNN made a story about how Japanese women prefer "white" guys. With "Western," you can blame the pro-white racism on culturism! This lets people say, "It's not because of my race, it's because of my culture! And who doesn't love other cultures! Culture is good, maaaannnn!!!"

Also, it's pretty interesting to see what qualifies as a white "Prince Charming" in Japan:

(Though I'm not a woman...maybe "Prince Charming" really is as hot as he thinks...)

I really don't know what to say. This is something that is taking place in Japan, and as Asian Americans, there isn't much at the present time that we can do. So rather than get bent out of shape over what we can and can't control (though as always, it's fine to vent!!!), I'd just like to dedicate two music videos to some of the people involved.

First, here's one for Mr. White and Sexy above:

"I'm Too Sexy" from Right Said Fred.

Second, here's one to all the non-white men from western countries who have been excluded from the white cafe:

"Where is the Love?" from Black Eyed Peas

The Silent Fight Masters

2008-06-27T21:26:00.001-07:00

I saw this article in the NYTimes a few days ago. It's about communities, neighbors, and how American society has become more fragmented throughout the years. The author references one of my favorite books of all time, Bowling Alone by Robert Putnam. If you have time, check out some of the comments on the Times article. If you have more time, pick up a copy of Bowling Alone. I can all but guarantee that this book will deepen your understanding of the communal bonds in society that have become increasingly rare in modern living. As far as the article itself, there are probably a thousand ways to read it and a thousand separate lessons that one can glean from thinking about it, but I'd like to relate it to Asian American activism.

A few years ago, I had the opportunity to meet Connie Young Yu, a Chinese American historian. I met her through an introduction from my high school English teacher, and I was told that she was one of the pioneers of Asian American activism. My goal was to talk to her about activism, and though I didn't know much about her, I knew that she was part of Lawson Inada, Frank Chin, and Curtis Choy's crew, and I knew that she was instrumental in creating the Asian American cultural movement in the 60's and 70's.

After making an appointment with Connie, I drove to her house, which was located in a rural area just outside of San Francisco. The rain was pouring down that day, and I remember how wet it was, especially as I had to track through the mud in order to get from my car to her house.

Connie looked like any normal Chinese woman. She was of medium height, spoke English with a relaxed and deliberate cadence, and was concerned with what any other host would be concerned with--whether her guest needed something to drink and eat, where to sit, etcetera. She was very friendly and forthcoming, identifying herself primarily as a historian and not an activist, and talking about her long family history. It was clear that family was very important to her.

As the conversation progressed, she began to talk about her role in Asian American culture during the 60's and 70's. She talked about working with several key historical Asian American figures. What came through in the subsequent discussion itself was Connie's sense of confidence in herself, her place in history as a pioneer of Asian American culture, and her knowledge and experience that came from a life well lived. I was starstruck by this small woman who had achieved so much in her lifetime. The experience and strength was evident in her deep knowledge of the times. Connie had chosen to be at the forefront of a new culture, creating it in her own image. Though she and the other activists never achieved mainstream recognition--and Connie herself would probably acknowledge this--they lived authentically. Not many people have the will and strength to do this. The depth of experience coming from an authentic life was palpable.

It's rare to experience this kind of awe in the presence of another human being. An analogy that 44's black belt member Xian used to describe this sense of awe was the martial arts master. There are some masters who have practiced karate or kung fu for decades. They may be older, they may not be as loud or as forceful as they used to be, and they may now be very quiet and soft-spoken, tempered by years of repetition. But when you come into the presence of such a master, there is no mistaking their depth of knowledge. They know everything that you would want to know, plus they know much that you will never be able to know. Their years of study and mastery create an instant aura of respect the moment you meet them. Meeting people of this level of knowledge and experience, as Malcolm X described his first meeting with Elijah Muhammad, is like being in the presence of the sun. The acolyte defers to the master.

I've felt the same kind of awe when talking to other Asian American activists of that generation. When these people started changing the world, there was no unified entity or conception of Asian American culture. Frank championed traditional Chinese culture, Lawson learned from his experiences in the camp, and Connie reported on Chinatown, and they, along with others, helped Asian American activists to reconceptualize their lives, history, and future. The task at hand required an enormous amount of creativity and initiative. It took tremendous strength and thought to create a culture based on truth, when the alternative of relying on stereotypes was such an easy and ready possibility.

The film "What's Wrong With Frank Chin," which Thymos will bring to Portland in two weeks, demonstrates the depth of experience that this generation of activists had. The film has rare footage of Chinese and Japanese American counter-cultural types living during the 1960's, people dressed like hippies, learning freedom, and exploring their culture as people did during the 1960's. This kind of experience was lived forty years ago and will never ever be lived again. Our leaders of the time are the only ones who know the stories of that time, and they are the only ones who can tell it.

Going back to the original Times article and relating it to activism, creating community with people of different experiences transcends anything that we can do on the internet or even by reading. There are amazing analytical minds on the Fighting 44's, but the internet has been a mixed blessing. While it has succeeded in finding and uniting great minds from everywhere who can collaborate on intellectual questions concerning Asian America, it also fragments people, creating "invisible lines" that distract us from the real life communal experiences that allow us to fully understand life. How can you fully know a person without seeing the daily troubles that that person goes through? How can you understand the full depth of a story without hearing from someone who lived it? Reading and writing are great for intellectual ideas, but it can only go so far without being backed by action. When it comes to truly understanding anything that has to do with other people, the task goes beyond mere words. Think about it--would you go to a doctor who only learned medicine from a book? Would you fight the UFC Champion after learning how to throw a left hook from a book? Social activism and life are no different; they require active participation.

Active participation, I think, was the central idea of the Times article as well as the idea of social capital that Robert Putnam describes in Bowling Alone. It's difficult to break the cycle of fragmentation that is endemic to our modern culture, but to truly understand a person or to understand an action, one needs to become an active participant, and one needs to actively engage other people. This is the main reason Thymos is bringing Frank Chin, Lawson Inada, and Curtis Choy to Portland; we want people to see them, to hear their stories, and to know their accomplishments. We want them here in person. We want people to be able to interact with them, and to have the opportunity to ask questions about what they experienced and what they think about the development of culture.

I'll end with a conclusion that is not really a conclusion but more of a beginning. I think everyone who is interested in changing things needs to get out and touch someone. We've seen this before with many analyses of the racial situation--while discussions can be funny and interesting, and while they are no doubt important and necessary, eventually people want to come to a place where they can exert control over their lives. To do so requires human contact. By creating real community, people will be able to learn from the past rather than guess about the past, and hopefully people can work together to create the future.

Special thanks to the Gold Sponsors who are bringing this once-in-a-lifetime event to Portland and who demonstrate true leadership to businesses around the country. Take it from me, a moderately seasoned activist: activist efforts go nowhere without the support of strong government and business leaders, and we in turn need to support government and business leaders who take a stand for what's right. This is something that has been sorely missing from the dialog about activism.

Thymos's Gold Sponsors for the Frank Chin Event are:

OHSU’s Center for Diversity and Multicultural Affairs
Oregon Commission on Asian Affairs
Crowell Ing LLP
Janet and John Jay / Studio J
Diverse Empowered Employees of Portland (DEEP)
Cellar Door Coffee
Korean American Citizens League

Also, see us now on the web at thymos.org and see our complete list of sponsors and program.

I'm Voting Republican

2008-06-23T16:15:00.001-07:00

Funny stuff.

http://imvotingrepublican.com/index.php

Chinese Athletes and the Life After

2008-06-22T20:05:00.000-07:00

I saw this interesting article yesterday about how athletes in China cope with the sports schools, where they enroll Chinese kids who are very young and teach them nothing but sports. The article was good, and the video was good too--I found that footage of the Chinese athletes in the training room inspiring; it's not often Asian Americans see Asian people training to compete at that level. However, the point of the article was the opposite argument--the gist was that the sports schools' heavy focus on sports can sometimes have a negative effect on other aspects of the athletes' lives.

I know the American media sometimes focuses on less flattering images of other cultures, but this article struck a chord with me. I liked the article because it humanized the athletes' effort. I was particularly touched by the story of the Olympic canoeing champion Yang. The guy is literally among the best in the world, and he's only doing it for the money. It's a sad irony.

Lawson Inada at the Thymos Frank Chin Event in Portland, July 11th

2008-06-19T12:37:00.001-07:00

Lawson Inada has generously volunteered to serve on the panel of the Thymos Frank Chin Event on July 11th, at Doernbecher Childrens Hospital! Lawson is the Poet Laureate of Oregon--appointed by Governor Ted Kulongoski last year. He is a nationally recognized poet, and he was co-editor with Frank Chin, Shawn Wong, and Jeffrey Paul Chan of Aiiieeeee! the groundbreaking first anthology of Asian American literature. He is one of the featured interviewees in Curtis Choy's "What's Wrong with Frank Chin," and we are fortunate and appreciative of his support and participation in our event. He will be running the panel with Curtis Choy, filmmaker and director of "What's Wrong with Frank Chin."

I had the fortune of seeing Lawson speak last year at one of the governor's events, and I can attest to the fact that he is an absolutely dynamic speaker. Having gone through the Japanese American internment camps during WWII, his poems, essays, and speeches contain a lifetime of experiences.

For those of you who will be attending our two day event, you will have the opportunity to see three legendary pioneers of Asian American literature and activism. And what's best is that it's absolutely free--our generous sponsors (whom I will speak about in a future essay) are covering the bills because they believe, as Thymos does, that there should be no price to pay for recognizing our cultural heroes. This is perhaps a once-in-a-lifetime event, and if you are in the Portland area and can make it, we will welcome you. For more information, pm me or e-mail me at naruguard-44***at**yahoo.

From http://www.oregonpoetlaureate.com/

Lawson Fusao Inada is an emeritus professor of writing at Southern Oregon University in Ashland. Inada is the author of five books: Legends from Camp, Drawing the Line, In This Great Land of Freedom, Just Into/Nations and Before the War. He is the editor of three important volumes, including the acclaimed Only What We Could Carry: The Japanese-American Internment Experience. On two previous occasions, in 1972 and 1985, Professor Inada won Poetry Fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and his work has appeared in The Best American Poetry.

In addition to these individual publications, Inada has written critical introductions to a number of works, such as John Okada's No-No Boy.

He is also a contributing editor for the Northwest Review and was the narrator for PBS specials on "Children of the Camps" and "Conscience and the Constitution." In 2004 he was one of only 185 artists, scholars and scientists chosen from a nationwide pool of 3,200 applicants to receive a Guggenheim Fellowship. He is currently serving as the Steinbeck chair for the National Steinbeck Center, a forum established to promote a community-wide celebration of literature in the tradition of John Steinbeck.

Inada has been recognized by the President of the United States, appearing at the White House in "A Salute to Poetry and American Poets." His poetry volume Legends from Camp (1992), received the American Book Award and was featured on CBS Sunday Morning. He is a winner of the Governor's Arts Award (1997), the Oregon Book Award (for Drawing the Line, 1997), and the Pushcart Prize (1996) for poetry.

In 1997, he was awarded a Creative Arts Grant from the Civil Liberties Public Education Fund and his work has been the subject of a documentary titled "What It Means to Be Free: A Video about Poetry and Japanese-American Internment" and an award-winning animated film of "Legends from Camp" made in collaboration with his son, artist Miles Inada.

The Fighting 44s on SF Gate

2008-06-18T10:53:00.001-07:00

I saw this article by Jeff Yang from Efren at the 8Asians website. (Don't click on Efren's article if you're at work--it may not be work safe.) As you all know, Jeff was the founder of A Magazine a while back, and he still writes often about Asian American issues. I posted one of his articles on this blog before (and coincidentally, I got the article from Efren at 8Asians again).

Jeff's article is about heterosexual interracial relationships among Asian Americans, while Efren's is about homosexual interracial relationships. While I would agree with Efren's opinion that gay Asians have it worse, I still don't think he fully understands the heterosexual position. It's not about who has it worse; it's about recognizing inequality and doing what we can to understand that inequality.

Anyway...our own site is mentioned in Jeff's article, and our own Dialectic the Stealth M.C. is quoted:

As blogger Dialectic wrote on the popular Asian American online forum TheFighting44s (where four out of the top five most popular posts relate to interracial relationships): "If heterosexual white male patriarchy and what it did in the world were not so powerful, I think it would be fair to say that Asian American women and men would be 'out-dating' or 'out-marrying' at similar rates, and that we wouldn't elevate whites, denigrate ourselves, or worry about whether we're sexually and personally worthy of others to nearly the same extent that we do now."

Not only is it good to see the Stealth M.C. quoted in the mainstream news for tens of thousands of (edit: SF Gate has 8.1 million unique visitors a month) people to see, it's also good to know that we're popular, and it's good to know that people are reading stuff on our site. Keep up the good work, everyone, and keep the dialogue going!

Obama and Black People in France

2008-06-17T22:15:00.000-07:00

I'm blogging a lot about Obama these days. The truth is that whether you like him or not, his candidacy and his status as the first black nominee of the Democratic Party are having repercussions around the world, and he will continue to change the national dialogue not just for African Americans but for all minorities all over the world.

Today, the New York Times printed an article about Obama's influence in France. Evidently black people in France are inspired by his candidacy and are beginning to assert themselves culturally.

It was funny because I read this paragraph:

A new black consciousness is emerging in France, lately hastened by, of all things, the presumptive Democratic nominee for president of the United States. An article in Le Monde a few days ago described how Mr. Obama is “stirring up high hopes” among blacks here. Even seeing the word “noir” (“black”) in a French newspaper was an occasion for surprise until recently.

and was thinking that it was purely intellectual and questioning, kind of like the way we privileged, middle class Asian Americans are emerging. Then I read

Meanwhile, this past weekend, 60 cars were burned and some 50 young people scuffled with police and firemen, injuring several of them, in a poor minority suburb of Vitry-le-François, in the Marne region of northeast France.

Wow.

I hate to say it, but France and Europe may need this kind of action. They've never had a civil rights movement, and a lot of racism in Europe just simmers. Take, for example, soccer. There is so much racism in European soccer, and so little of it goes unchallenged. See this video:

I can't imagine this sort of thing continuing unchanged if the "leader of the free world" is black.

Obama says Asians are short

2008-06-16T12:25:00.001-07:00

Thanks to Jun from 8Asians who posted this.

At around 3:00 into this interview with Jimmy Kimmel, Kimmel asks if he can dunk, and Obama says:

There's pretty good basketball in Hawaii but the only thing is, since obviously there are a lot of folks from Asian ancestry in Hawaii, generally the teams aren't as tall. So I was going down and posting up quite a bit.

Not too long ago, the 44's had a similar discussion on the "short Asian" stereotypes here.

I am disappointed that Obama would say something like this, much as I was disappointed when he responded to 80/20. On the 8A website, I mentioned that maybe it's a Hawaii thing; I've noticed that people from Hawaii have a different way of talking about race as people on the Mainland. One would still think that Obama would've been more sensitive to the mainland issues here. From the video, it looks like he wasn't trying to make a joke, but it's a bit strange that a major party nominee would say this, especially given the people of different colors within his family tree.

Anyway, it won't change my vote, but it does make me think about how far society needs to progress in talking about Asian American race issues.

Happy Father's Day from Barack Obama

2008-06-15T22:08:00.000-07:00

Saw this today.

Obama is taking a super risky strategy, and I'm loving it! This is awesome! Yes, I'm a liberal, but I also have some conservative leanings, and I hate the victim mentality. Of course Obama is not the first African American person to empower his people by creating a message primarily of responsibility: Bill Cosby did it, and Malcolm X did it before him. But Obama, to my knowledge, is the first outward proponent of this "responsibility" philosophy to simultaneously:

a) Have a strong standing with black people
b) Have a strong standing with white people
b) Have the charisma to say what he says while connecting with people

I was surprised that Cosby wasn't able to connect with people, especially after he put his money behind his words by paying for kids' college tuition (which I thought was awesome). Malcolm connected with people, but he got pushed out of the mainstream because of his more incendiary public statements. Obama has a special gift of oratory and connection that allows him to truly connect with people, AND he has a good standing in both communities. He's getting some great opportunities, and he's really using them well. I hope it'll help him win the presidency.

By the way, I'm waiting for more Asian American leaders to tell it like it is. I'm waiting for one of our leaders to stand up on Father's Day and say, "You know what, we gotta end this IR disparity! Together! Once and for all!"

(That's a joke. Kind of.)

From the beginning of the article:

CHICAGO — Addressing a packed congregation at one of the city’s largest black churches, Senator Barack Obama on Sunday invoked his own absent father to deliver a sharp message to black men, saying “we need fathers to realize that responsibility does not end at conception.”

In an address that was striking for its bluntness and where he chose to give it, Mr. Obama directly addressed one of the most delicate topics confronting black leaders: how much responsibility absent fathers bear for some of the intractable problems afflicting black Americans. Mr. Obama noted that “more than half of all black children live in single-parent households,” a number that he said had doubled since his own childhood.

“Too many fathers are M.I.A., too many fathers are AWOL, missing from too many lives and too many homes,” Mr. Obama said to a chorus of approving murmurs from the audience. “They have abandoned their responsibilities, acting like boys instead of men. And the foundations of our families are weaker because of it.”

Accompanied by his wife, Michelle, and his daughters, Malia and Sasha, who sat in the front pew, Mr. Obama, the presumptive Democratic nominee, laid out his case in stark terms that would be difficult for a white candidate to make, telling the mostly black audience not to “just sit in the house watching ‘SportsCenter,’ ” and to stop praising themselves for mediocre accomplishments.

“Don’t get carried away with that eighth-grade graduation,” he said, bringing many members of the congregation to their feet, applauding. “You’re supposed to graduate from eighth grade.”

Blogging in Different Cultures

2008-06-14T21:16:00.001-07:00

I had read a while back that Japanese had surpassed English as the most common blogging language in the world, and that the typical Japanese style of blogging was different. I was casually aware of most of the facts presented in this web video (click on "featured video, Blogging Japanese Style"), but the interviews with the Technorati board member and the food blogger made the differences more human. Blogging in Japan, as with blogging in the U.S., reflects the culture of the people creating the blogs and articles, and the blog culture represents the way many people in the culture think.

Joichi Ito from Technorati sums it up well:

I think alot of the American image of blog posts is posting to the public. How can I get more traffic to my blog? What do I have to say to the world? Whereas in Japan it's usually to your five or ten friends. A lot of it is writing stuff that you talk about when you meet, and then a lot of it is writing about what you did when you met.

I'll trust Mr. Ito's expertise when evaluating the Japanese market, but in the U.S., I can say from experience that he's spot on. With the exception of our editor Dialectic the Stealth MC, who is using the proceeds from the google ads on this website to upgrade his ride from a Lexus to a Porsche, and publisher Lopan, who is trying to catch up with Jerry Yang, I think most bloggers and commenters on this website are trying to reach a lot of people just to reach people. The questions are typical for an American blog: How do we get more people here? How do we increase our exposure? How can we change the world?

(In all fairness to the Stealth MC and Lopes, we all know it's not just about the Benjamins. World domination also plays a big role in the master plan. Bwahaha...[insert evil laugh like the one in Michael Jackson's Thriller].)

There are a few basic points that the video makes:

1. The Japanese blog a lot in part because they are a middle class society with access to mobile technologies.

2. Most Japanese bloggers write for their small circle of friends rather than for the world.

3. Japanese bloggers tend to stay away from politics and other divisive issues. They tend to say nice things about people. As the program host says, "Americans blog to stand out, while the Japanese blog to fit in."

4. Comments on blog posts are unusual.

That interview with Junko Kanetsuna put things into perspective. While I understand how a person could love food and blog about the different foods she has eaten, it would seem unusual to me that she could blog for three years and not comment on bad food, rude service, or high prices. Hard opinions are what I would expect her readers to look for. If I were blogging on her site, that would be the first topic I'd approach. But then again, that's an American-like view, which is the point of the video.

The lack of comments on Japanese blog posts also seems funny to me. For example, I can't imagine the 44's being interesting without the participation of the commenters. People come to this site for the commentary and criticisms of the blog posts as much as they do for the blog posts themselves. Often the conversations become much more interesting than the original posts themselves, both on the blog and on the forum. It helps us all because we learn from each other. Plus, we inform those who only lurk on this site.

It's a very strange phenomenon because we really do absorb the influence from whatever culture in which we live. Our values, ideas, and goals are influenced in large part by the people around us. There's no one right way of living or thinking, and it's interesting to see how other people around the world think.

What do you all think? (I know not all of our people here are in North America, so I imagine there might be some interesting perspectives.)

JH

PS: On another cultural difference, I thought that dude blogging about his son was creepy. I was especially creeped out when I was watching him take pictures of his kid. Some things are just personal, and it's scary for Americans, I think, to learn about a guy posting pictures of a young child on the internet. It's also disturbing for me to think about how this might affect a child, how it might affect his individuality, and how it might stigmatize him in the future. But this, of course, is also an American view. The word for "privacy" in Japanese is borrowed from English ("puraibashii"), and people usually refer to each other by the family name, perhaps denoting the importance of the family unit over the individual. Stigma in this sense might be a problem in the U.S., but perhaps it's not such a problem in Japan.

Another interesting cultural difference...

Tim Russert Dies

2008-06-13T14:00:00.000-07:00

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080613/ap_on_en_tv/obit_russert

This is really sad and unexpected.

His signature trait there was an unrelenting style of questioning that made
some politicians reluctant to appear, yet confident that they could claim extra
credibility if they survived his grilling intact.

The 3rd Most Dangerous Job in the AA Blogosphere

2008-06-12T21:56:00.001-07:00

In terms of reputation, being a 44's blogger is probably the third most dangerous job in the Asian American blogosphere (behind Reappropriate Jenn and 8Asians Bo, though the latter is almost entirely self-inflicted). Because I'm fairly prolific on the site, I'm bound to present some views that people aren't going to agree with. In many ways, the game is stacked against me. The more I post, the more opportunities I have to piss people off. It's a low odds game, and it doesn't always pack that large of a payoff.

So I have a few follow up words about my last blog post. I don't expect to change any views, but there are just a few things that need to be said.

1. Negativity: There are a few points that I need to make about someone's statement that "most ideological blog entries here have to be about what things aren’t." My last blog post wasn't about "what things aren't" but rather about what things are and what we need to do to fight against a dangerous philosophy and a dangerous demogogue. I'll pull back from the demogogue thing if it makes people more comfortable, but I still think it's a dangerous philosophy.

Still, if I'm reading everyone's complaints correctly, people want a more positive message.

I agree with everyone about positive messages, but I think it's also important to talk about where we are today. I'm reading the "Feminine Mystique" right now. I'm more than halfway done, and I've not yet read a single constructive, prescriptive suggestion from Friedan in the entire first half of the book. So far it's nothing but complaining about how oppressed women are, how Freudian thought oppresses women, and how housework stifles the mind. "Why We Can't Wait" by Martin Luther King started out the same way--it was all about how things are so bad that "We Can't Wait." It's about how white people oppress black people with laws and violence. It's really quite depressing, and the negativity is crazy.

However, most activist literature is similar. Activists start by describing the problem. That's how most solutions are framed. Those books are well read because they tell the truth. In my view, you can't really talk strategy until you know where you're at. So if I'm negative, it's because we're in a negative situation. And we need to recognize the status quo before we can change it. I'm really not all that out-of-the-ordinary in how I describe this.

2. Negativity 2: I think people also need to realize that negative news sells better than positive news. I've looked through my blog posts, and whenever I write about people like Daniel Inouye, Khoi Vinh, Helen Zia, or Ruby Chow (and they're there--just look for them), I never get any comments (props to Lopan for saying something about Vinh). These people are leaders and trailblazers in our community, but no one says anything about them. Natalise has more comments than Senator Dan Inouye, Khoi Vinh, Helen Zia, and Ruby Chow combined! I rarely break double digit posts unless I say something about Hong Kingston or feminism or anything else that gives people a reason to fight.

This is just the way things are, so no need to change; I'm just pointing it out. Other blogs are like this too--dailykos and gawker operate the same way. But please realize too that I'm being positive too. It's just that my positivity usually goes unnoticed, as it does on virtually all the other sites out there.

The only exception, of course, is when I post things either about Obama or Ultimate Fighting. All I can say is "Thank God for Ultimate Fighting." At least there's one place where I can find love for my posts. Thank you kimtae and Rebel for supporting me when I post on this stuff. Dana White for President.

3. Strategy: I think I've mentioned many times before, but strategy can't be done over the internet. This blog is good for news, and it's good for sharing views and intelligence. If we're going to strategize, we do that in person. The internet format just doesn't lend itself well to that kind of activism. Even net warriors like Obama for America meet in person. I hope people are not blaming me for the limits of the internet, and I hope we can take it to the next step when we meet in August.

4.

The last thing I want to remark on is my thesis itself, the idea that Kingstonism must be stopped.

I've fulfilled my promise of shutting up and listening, but still, after three or four days of me not posting, no one has posted anything positive that Kingston has contributed other than just being there and drawing attention to Asian people, a criteria which could be applied to just about any Asian American, including Michelle Malkin, John Yoo, and all the other "disgrasians."

I imagine that Maxine Hong Kingston, were she the main character in "It's a Wonderful Life," would jump off the bridge only to see a world where Asian men and Asian women were represented together in media, where we had a thriving intellectual culture, where we lived with trust and happiness, where Asian American women avoided the suicide problem, and where Asian American people had the confidence to become great athletes, politicians, and whatever else they would want to become. Michael Lohman would be too damn scared of Asian women to pull off any of that disgusting fluid nonsense. I'd probably be arguing FOR Falling For Grace since it would be so rare to see a WM/AF in the movies. Fallout Central would be a TV show because the media would be dying to hire Asian guys.

I'm joking, of course, but if you look at the historical record, it was definitely heading in this direction until the early 70's when "Woman Warrior" came out. Sessue Hayakawa was a leading man pre-Kingston, as was Bruce Lee. Asian American culture began thriving with Frank Chin, Shawn Wong, Connie Young Yu, and others. We were on the road to great intellectual achievements. And then the great hijack took place.

I'll try to make my arguments less personal, but as you can probably tell, I'm very much a big believer that Orientalism is a problem, and I wouldn't have pointed the finger at Kingstonism if I didn't believe it was at the heart of the problem. As you all know, we're raising money for Frank Chin to come to Portland, and I can't tell you how many times Asian Americans have said that they want someone more mainstream. It's not even white people who object; a lot of times it's our "own" people. Certain people have explicitly voiced their preference for something more "mainstream," and "Kingston" and "Tan" have come up. Some might say that it's a function of white America that they're popular, but I think that denies agency to the Asian American people who have helped to re-create and enforce this system of orientalism.

Contrast this to the fanfare that was in the air when Amy Tan visited. It may sound like I'm talking about a harmless trend, but this orientalism affects everyone here in spirit, energy, and money (and I can tell you a thing or two about this). I don't think people can understand the depth of Kingstonian thought until people have been on the ground trying to raise money, talking to people, and seeing how the politics take place. It's ironic that most would consider a book like "Joy Luck Club," where women cut off their flesh for soup, more mainstream than "Banana Boys," a story of Asian people just going through life. As they say, money talks, and it's true. Comparing this years fundraising efforts with last year's Vincent Chin event, it's clear to me that people won't go against the status quo unless some Chinese person literally dies. I just think that's too late. Why should we wait for culture to reach a boiling point before acting against the status quo? I was remarking to William from Fallout Central that had I known the market for Asian American gender representation, maybe I would've opted for something more mainstream. Maybe we could have had a "Falling for Grace" or "Joy Luck Club" fundraiser for our event. Shit, maybe I could just dye my hair blonde and become a rice chaser. We put so much effort into our activism only to have a dangerous philosophy sideswipe our efforts.

So this is my view. If we still disagree, I hope we can do so respectfully.

Evolution vs creationism in the letters section

2008-06-11T11:29:00.000-07:00

I saw this in the New York Times today.

To the Editor:

Re “The Cons of Creationism” (editorial, June 7):

The debate over science versus creationism is in part fueled by the
notion that everybody’s opinions and beliefs are equally valid. While in a
democratic society we should be respectful of each other’s opinions and beliefs,
this is not how science operates.

The scientific method has well-
defined rules by which we decide whether a solution to a scientific problem is
correct or not. It is not that we believe or have the opinion that a certain
solution is correct — we prove it scientifically one way or another.

Thus there are right and wrong solutions that may seem unfair,
undemocratic and elitist. But this is how science advances and produces the
marvelous technological developments that surround us. And this is not a belief.
It is a fact.

Ivan K. Schuller
La Jolla, Calif., June 7, 2008

The bolded section is mine. Schuller is right; you advance when you know your facts or have positions that are defensible. The whole idea of every view being equally valid is incorrect when it comes into conflict with fact and logic. It may sound cold, but that's the way things are.

Maxine Hong Kingston, Ignorance, and the Battle for Mainstream Recognition (Asian American Feminism Pt. 4)

2008-06-08T23:10:00.000-07:00

"What in G0d's name??? They let ASIAN-MAN-HATER#2 Maxine Hong Kingston write a new introduction to one of the RARE humanizing portrayals of an Asian man as a s*xually-potent being??? WTF and HTF did THAT happen??? Shyt, why not let David Duke write a new intro to the Autobiography of Malcolm X for chrissakes???"

--"Krome" from Modelminority.com

The dialogue above is a classic from the Asian American blogosphere. I've seen it quoted a few times. This may be the first and only time you see a 44's blog post link to mm.com, but I have to commend the commenter Krome for his insightful observation. While I wouldn't condone the language that followed Krome's quote above (which you can see in the link), I think he's 100% right about the hypocrisy and/or ignorance of the book publishers. Considering the fact that Kingston has spent her entire career emasculating Asian men (through the aforementioned essay by our friend Krome), promoting a culture of pseudo-feminist narcissism (It takes a real egomaniac to name her autobiography "The Woman Warrior," especially when she hasn't even fought anyone or achieved anything of value), distorting important Chinese myths (Mulan and Yue Fei are two different characters), making up lies about Chinese culture (contrary to Kingston's words, the Chinese words for "slave" and "woman" are not the same), and turning Asian American literature into a black hole that sucks the life out of our community rather than uplifts the level of intellect and thought of our people, it's incredibly ironic and hypocritical that the publishers hired her to write the introduction to a book that goes against everything she has spent her career destroying. As Krome correctly implies, letting Kingston write a new intro to "The Lover" is like letting David Duke write a new intro to the Autobiography of Malcolm X. She just happens to be the same color as the people she oppresses.

Recognizing the indefensible lies that Kingston perpetuated about us, these days it seems that Kingston has very little support even among hardcore activists. Reappropriate Jenn, for example, who calls herself an Asian American feminist, usually deflects criticisms of Kingston by saying that there are other--therefore implying better--Asian American feminists, though Jenn still somewhat defends Kingston. She, of course, is right on the first part; wrong to defend Kingston though. AsianBGirl, Sargassosea, and Xian say the same, though without defending Kingston. They too are right.

Where some of us diverge, however, is on our ideas on how to best cope with a mainstream that is hostile towards our own recognition as human beings. We agree on facts, but we somewhat disagree on solutions. I say "somewhat" because we're only slightly off. We probably agree on 95%, but the remaining 5% is the thesis of this post. Some feel that we need to simply find and identify the real feminists, while I think we need to find and identify the real feminists while attacking the power base of the fakes. It's a 5% difference, but it's significant.

Xian writes:

I think we need to waste less time and energy complaining about fake activists and spend more time strategically planning our real activism.

AsianBGirl says:

If it is the case that the majority of APIA feminism is filled with the hype of ideas that Kingston/Tan created, then I will definitely a support a change/redifining of APIA feminism. But in my personal experience, it’s been happening. The only difference is that unlike Kingston and Tan, they’re not acknowledged by white people.

I agree with both of them on the facts. I think Xian is correct in saying that we need to spend more time planning real activism, and I think AsianBGirl is correct in stating that the major difference between Kingston/Tan and others is the acknowledgement on the part of white people.

However, while I agree with Xian and AsianBgirl on the facts, I would probably take a slightly different approach when it comes to activism. (And I'm saying this with the temporality of internet discussion in mind--I hope they'll consider the validity of my arguments and current stance). Given the fact that the toxic Kingstonian "feminism" is mainstream and supported by mainstream institutions, I don't think it's enough to simply concentrate on the good while ignoring the bad. We need to stamp it out and take over the mainstream. Working by ourselves is good for the time being, but ultimately it's not enough, and we should always keep the final goal of conquering the mainstream in mind.

Here's where we agree (I don't know if everyone agrees on #2, but I haven't yet heard any substantial counter-arguments):

1. Kingstonism is mainstream which means that it's the form of Asian American Feminism most accepted by white folk.

2. Kingstonism is a terrible form of feminism and doesn't accomplish anything.

3. There are real Asian American feminists out there.

Here's where we disagree. Xian writes:

It’s my firm believe that if you build “it” (an equitable social justice ideology) they will come.

There is no need to actively destroy mainstream ideas. We merely complete our comprehensive, inclusive agenda, and do outreach.

While I agree with Xian that we need to build it, practically I think we have to go after mainstream coverage. Even if we decide to start small, part of our goals should focus on destroying that which poisons us. We should be intent on destroying mainstream ideas and replacing them with our own so that we can harness that institutional support. My reasoning is simple. Given the reach of the mainstream--through broadcast media, mainstream news outlets, influence in the universities, along with the paid ivory tower figureheads who promote Kingstonism--there is no way that a small band of disparate feminists can maximize their efficiency in getting the message out without taking aim at the mainstream and seeking mainstream support. We eventually want the funding, the airwaves, and the media coverage. Even here as we speak and learn, we haven't yet identified any strong Asian American feminists who are creating the intellectual ideas that can liberate Asian American women from Kingstonian orientalism. Why is it so hard to find them? It's because we are fighting against the tide of the mainstream. We shouldn't be fighting against the tide. The tide should be supporting us. If we don't have the goal of changing the tide, we'll always be swimming upstream. As Noam Chomsky said, the media "manufactures consent" with its pervasiveness and repetition. While we need to build up the real feminists, we also need to stop the fakes and liars.

I think it's clear: Real feminists can't live side by side with the Kingstonians because our ideas don't mesh well with one another. We promote truth; Kingstonism promotes lies and distortions. We celebrate ourselves; Kingstonism celebrates the supposed rescuing of Asian culture by Western culture. We promote compassion; Kingstonism promotes narcissism.

Xian is right in that we need to concentrate on the positive. We need to organize people like Catty, himself, AsianBgirl, Sargasso, Jade, and Nightshade so that we can take our intellectual capital and create something big. On the other hand, our end goal should be to capture the mainstream coverage and to change the zeitgeist. And while we're building up our current capital, we should draw the line right now: we're not Kingstonian.

Think about civil rights hero Martin Luther King. When he filled up those jails in Birmingham with people, he wasn't trying to create a spectacle that only black people would see. He wasn't trying to prove to black people that racism existed. They already knew that. He was trying to enter the conscience of every American and to show that society needs change. We can start small, of course, but our goal should be clear from the very beginning; we want to throw off the shackles of the status quo because we're not like them, and we want to force the mainstream to become like us. We're truthful. We're alive. We know right from wrong. There's no reason for anyone who believes in equality to object to what we promote, and there's no reason for them to mistake us for the other side.

The Chinatown Bus

2008-06-07T22:52:00.000-07:00

Those of you from large metro areas have probably taken buses like these. I remember taking it once for a ridiculously low rate from Chinatown to Boston. I wondered how they could afford such low rates. (Well, not really, I kind of already knew.)

The NY Times had an interesting article on the economics and culture that surround these buses.

I don't have much comment, but I will say that John Liu is awesome. That guy is going to go far.

“This is an example of immigrant entrepreneurship that has far transcended the immigrant community,” said City Councilman John Liu, a leading figure in local Chinese-American politics. “But as with all things in New York, growth has to be recognized and managed; otherwise we’re left with another Wild West situation.”

The Martial Art of Chess, Wu-Tang Style

2008-06-07T22:36:00.000-07:00

Saw this in the NY Times. They've got a funny multimedia video feature on the page. Check it out!

The article says:

RZA, 38, learned the game when he was 11, from a girl who, as he writes in the manual, also took his virginity. Though he and his cousin GZA, another founder of the group, both love chess, they did not play much when they were younger because, GZA said, they were too poor to own a board.

Now they play chess almost every day, and RZA, holder of the Hip-Hop Chess Federation belt — a trophy he picked up last fall at a tournament in San Francisco that featured rappers and martial-arts experts — is turning his interest into a business. On Monday he started WuChess (wuchess.com), a Web site where fans can play chess online, chat, see scores of their games and other personal information, and get news about RZA and Wu-Tang. RZA said that the site might one day offer monthly tournaments, with the winner playing him online.

“The way you have to think in chess is good for everyday thinking, really,” he said, “especially for brothers in the urban community who never take that second look, never take that second thought.”

This is absolutely awesome. Chess is a great way to instill discipline, to learn how to respect the mind, and to give people a community activity to get them off the streets. It's a moneymaking venture, but if it works, it'll do wonders for kids. It's funny too that the Times calls it a "martial art" in keeping with the martial themes of the Wu-Tang Clan. It's fitting though; in Russia and around the world, chess is considered a sport.

Maurice Ashley, the first African American chess grandmaster, has said that chess saved him from the streets. Ashley has also used chess as a way to help kids. But even though Maurice Ashley could whoop RZA in chess while blindfolded, RZA's got the star power. Hopefully this will do some great things for the community.

(The natural question, of course, is whether there is a similar activity that is good for Asian American culture. I have my ideas. I'll share them in August!)

Hillary Clinton Ends Campaign

2008-06-07T21:52:00.000-07:00

Hillary Clinton ended her campaign for Democratic nominee for President of the United States today. Obama became the nominee on Tuesday after the primary season ended, but now he's really the nominee now that his chief rival has conceded.

If you've been following my own commentary on this election (both on this site and others), you know that I wasn't too crazy about how Clinton ran her campaign with her attack politics, even though I acknowledge that she's an amazing politician who has more fight than a pit bull. Some of her attacks were her own doing, while others came from her husband Bill. There's a good analysis of her campaign at CNN.com.

At the same time, Hillary undoubtedly broke down barriers for women. She proved that women can have a shot at the highest office in the land. You could see this from the excitement that she generated with women all across the country, and her campaign, even though she didn't win, changed the national dialogue. She should be proud of this.

So now that she has endorsed Obama, it's time for the Democrats to unite the party and move on. Let's get Obama into office!

Ruby Chow Dies

2008-06-05T13:07:00.001-07:00

I saw this on AAM today, and I found an article about it here.

I remember reading about Ruby Chow in several biographies of Bruce Lee, but I didn't realize what a community figure she really was. Check out this:

She was the first Asian American on the King County Council, elected in 1973 and served three terms before retiring in 1985, and the first woman elected president of a local chapter of the Chong Wa Benevolent Association, an international organization that advocates for Chinese immigrants.

and this:

The restaurant evolved into a hangout for CEOs, politicians and journalists. Through the restaurant, Mrs. Chow played ambassador, demystifying the Chinese community and making the culture more widely accepted in predominantly white Seattle.

"People either loved her or they didn't," said Mona Locke, who met Mrs. Chow soon after husband Gary announced his candidacy for governor. "But regardless, they respected her because they understood that she was led by her heart, compassion and conviction."

I also think she was right to fight against calling Chinatown the "International District." It's not "international;" it's Chinatown. Let's call it what it is.

We have so many heroes out there whose accomplishments are not celebrated to the extent that they should be. Ruby Chow was a trailblazer.

(Picture of Ruby Chow from the Seattle Times.)

First Black Person on a Major Party Ticket

2008-06-03T20:33:00.000-07:00

With his victory in Montana tonight, Barack Obama claimed the win as presidential nominee for the Democratic Party. From the NY Times article:

A last-minute rush of Democratic superdelegates, as well as split results from the final primaries in Montana and South Dakota, pushed Mr. Obama over the threshold of 2,118 delegates needed to be nominated at the party’s convention in Denver in August. The victory for Mr. Obama, the son of a black Kenyan father and white Kansan mother, broke racial barriers and represented a remarkable rise for a man who just four years ago served in the Illinois State Senate.

Hillary Clinton has not yet conceded, but earlier today she said that she might possibly accept the VP spot were Obama to offer it.

Congratulations, Senator Obama, on your win. Congratulations, Senator Clinton, on a hard fought battle.

The Science of Racism

2008-06-03T11:19:00.000-07:00

I'm sure most of you remember the controversy with James Watson just half a year ago. If you don't, you can read about it here. In the controversy, James Watson said that he was "inherently gloomy about the prospect of Africa ... because all our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours – whereas all the testing says not really".

There was an interesting follow-up interview between Henry Louis Gates, Jr. and James Watson on MSN just yesterday. Read an excerpt of the interview here, and read Gates's follow up here. I like the Gates's follow up because he's right: Watson is a racialist but not a racist. Gates writes:

I don't think James Watson is a racist. But I do think that he is a racialist—that is, he believes that certain observable traits or forms of behavior among groups of human beings might, indeed, have a biological basis in the code that scientists, eventually, may be able to ascertain, that the "gene" is some mythically neutral space and what it purportedly "measures" or "determines" is independent of environmental factors, variables and influences.

Gates clarifies:

But I did leave Cold Spring Harbor convinced that Dr. Watson believes that many forms of behavior—such as "Jewish intelligence" (his phrase) and the basketball prowess of black men in the NBA (his example)—could, possibly, be traced to genetic differences among human beings, although no such connection has been made, and will probably never be made on any firm scientific basis, it seems to me.

In his conclusion he says,

As I drove away from Cold Spring Harbor, I realized that my conversation with Dr. Watson only confirmed something I already, with great trepidation, have come to believe: That the last great battle over racism will be fought not over access to a lunch counter, or a hotel room, or to the right to vote, or even the right to occupy the White House; it will be fought in a laboratory, in a test tube, under a microscope, in our genome, on the battleground of our DNA. It is here where we, as a society, will rank and interpret our genetic difference.

Brilliant observations.

I just want to say that this "racialism" probably affects no one more than Asian Americans. In Asian America, we voice this racialism without fear because it's so ingrained in our culture. Witness, for example, the eugenics debate between one of the bloggers at 8Asians and our black belts Makulita and Minbo. I don't demonize Asian Americans for thinking like the 8Asians blogger, but we need to recognize that it's a problem and that, as Gates says, is so far not based on any real science or fact. And we also need to realize that this racialism isn't "just another" perspective; it's a philosophy of life (and we can refer to it as such since so many Asian Americans believe it) that causes real problems in both individuals and the general culture. People literally kill themselves and others over these so far unsubstantiated racial theories. We need to confront it head-on.

As a means of getting these issues on the table, another blogger from 8 Asians generously recommended that we have a discussion about it. Certain other parties, however, did not respond. Dialectic and I are always ready for debate, as are many of the 44's black belts, as are the guys on Fallout Central. If any racialists ever want to debate the issues or discuss them in real time, our doors are always open, and we are ready. These are issues that affect us and our children, and we will not ever back down from voicing the arguments against blind racism or blind racialism that need to be heard.

Bo Diddley dies

2008-06-02T12:00:00.000-07:00

Bo Diddley died today.

There are a lot of articles on his contributions on the web today, and from the interviews, it seems that there is general agreement that he was instrumental in creating rock and roll. He unfortunately never received much compensation for his contributions.

From a cultural standpoint, most of us are pretty aware of the racial politics that took place during the 1960's over music. Elvis was talented, no doubt, but his color (or lack thereof) definitely helped him with the music producers in his quest to become "the King." In the Times article above, check out the multimedia section where Diddley discusses race.

Since the discussion of traditional Asian vs. modern Asian often comes up, the 44's might find this section of an article about his famous beat interesting.

Performers as diverse as Elvis Presley, Buddy Holly, Jimi Hendrix, Mick Jagger and Bruce Springsteen have been inspired by the syncopated Bo Diddley beat — bomp ba-bomp bomp, bomp bomp — which has been traced to myriad sources, including the drumbeats of the Yoruba and Kongo cultures. At the Beatles' first American news conference in 1964, a reporter asked John Lennon, "What are you most looking forward to seeing here in America, John?" He replied, "Bo Diddley."

Definitely check out the multimedia section of the first article above. It's interesting and historical stuff.

Asian Feminist Jurisprudence

2008-06-01T07:24:00.001-07:00

A few days ago, Sunny Woan, whom I know personally, sent me an article (download it here) that she wrote for the Washington and Lee Journal of Civil Rights and Social Justice Law. In the article, Sunny describes how "white sexual imperialism" affects "Asian feminist jurisprudence." I agree on all the facts presented in the article, and while I don't know if I'd embrace the thesis as it is (I'll explain in an upcoming "Feature" blog post), it's definitely a step in the right direction.

What sets this article apart from other "Asian feminist" works by Asian American women is that it doesn't practice the same "Pin the Tail on the Asian Male" Kingstonian propaganda that normally characterizes so-called Asian American feminism. This is one of few instances I've seen in a mainstream publication where an Asian American female takes the white male patriarchy to task for colonialism and violence. Most so-called Asian American "feminists" gloss over real instances of racial mistreatment by colonialist attitudes in favor of attacking the much easier target of Asian men, and it was refreshing (though I was admittedly somewhat uncomfortable with the discussion of rape, violence, and prostitution) to see real perpetrators questioned.

I will be writing a more comprehensive treatment on Asian American feminism in the next week or two. In the meantime, what do you think of this article? (Even though Sunny is a friend, feel free to share your real views about what she writes. Of course, the same rule applies to anything I write.)

(Image from http://evatt.org.au/news/53.html)

Isolated Tribe Spotted in Brazil

2008-05-31T00:10:00.001-07:00

Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond is one of the most popular books among the readers of this blog, so I thought you might enjoy this story of an "uncontacted tribe" in Brazil. According to the article, more than half the world's uncontacted tribes live in Brazil or Peru, and the governments are trying to insure the survival of these tribes by protecting their land.

This description of what we see in the pictures is also interesting.

Ultimate Fighting and the Military / Elite XC

2008-05-30T22:20:00.000-07:00

Asian American issues, politics, social issues, and...Ultimate Fighting. Well, most of these guys study martial arts, and martial arts come from Asia. Jaehwan is armed to the teeth with excuses to talk about fighting! In my own defense though, I know that kimtae, Rebel, Lopan, Catty, and others who are also big fans.

The NY Times had an article today on MMA and the military. Apparently MMA is influencing military culture. American soldiers are beginning to participate in MMA competitions, and the Army is beginning to promote and hold tournaments. The American military is using MMA to draw in their demographic, 18-30 year old males, and they are emphasizing the warrior aspect of fighting as a motivator for their troops. It's a good article. Check it out.

I do think sports like MMA build character. I wonder if it's good for kids. If parents were teaching their kids boxing or karate, one would think it a good thing. These seem relatively civilized. MMA? Even though most MMA fighters are extremely respectful and humble, the jury is still out on that one. Maybe it's my own cultural bias.

In other news, Elite XC is taking place tomorrow night at 9 pm Eastern and Pacific Time on CBS. It'll be the first time that a major MMA event takes place on American prime time. Kimbo Slice is fighting. I'm ambivalent about this competition. While I think UFC needs some competition given the meager payouts to their fighters, it looks like Elite XC is taking the cheap route by showcasing a backyard brawler like Kimbo. It would be nice to see another fight league which is somewhat comparable in quality to the UFC. Pride was such a competition, but they had poor management, and the UFC eventually bought them. Strikeforce is also a good competitor, but I wonder if they have the promotional skills that the UFC has. We'll see.

Too Male, Too White

2008-05-28T23:31:00.001-07:00

I saw this feature on the NY Times website today. In his blog post, Nicholas Kristof raises the issue of Op-Ed pages being the domain of old white men, and indeed, the NY Times is guilty of this; I don't think they have anyone but Dowd (white female) and Herbert (black male) representing. I like Kristof's piece, but quite honestly, I find it somewhat disingenuous. When I and other Asian Americans wrote him before complaining about his treatment of Asian American culture, he blew us off, implying that he somehow knew what was best for us.

I agree that it's important to get a diversity of ideas on the Op-Ed pages. Guys like Friedman, Krugman, and (my favorite) Brooks wield great power over public opinion with what they do in that space. What I find funny, however, is that when major newspapers do diversify their Op-Ed section, they often staff it with minority guys who give the typical responses that one would expect from a black guy, or a Hispanic guy, or an Asian....no, I guess I've never seen an Asian Op-Ed person.

Take Bob Herbert, for example. He is a black columnist who only talks about race, and when he does talk about race, his viewpoint is always typical. He doesn't practice the hypothetical gymnastics that Friedman uses, nor does he deliver the caustic one-liners like Maureen Dowd, nor does he get ultra-creative like David Brooks. Herbert only talks about race, and he only does so with observations that society believes a black man is supposed to have. Ruben Navarette from CNN is exactly the same--these Op-Ed commentators white-wash their non-white views.

Does this help us? I guess it does to a certain extent since there are obviously black guys who think like Herbert or Hispanics who think like Navarette. Some diversity is better than none.

However, there are also some extremely creative minorities out there who could do better. Cornel West, for example, has been very creative when dealing with race, as have people like Claude and Shelby Steele. Francis Fukuyama, despite the fact that he is probably wrong, wrote an absolutely brilliant political masterpiece with "The End of History." Amy Chua (and I know she may not be a favorite here) wrote what I thought was a very intelligent piece on markets in East Asia. Intelligent and creative minorities are out there.

Now I realize that the Times can't hire Fukuyama to write their Op-Eds since Fukuyama has bigger intellectual mountains to conquer, but there has to be someone who possesses a combination of Fukuyama's depth with mainstream wittiness. And minorities don't always have to write about minority issues. If the mainstream media is serious about diversifying its ranks, it needs to look harder not only to find minorities willing to take the job, but to find minorities who exemplify the wit and range of its white writers. These people are out there.

Generations

2008-05-27T18:28:00.000-07:00

I saw this post from the fine people of 8Asians today. In the post, Efren links this article by Jeff Yang (founder of A Magazine) in today's SF Gate.

Let's skip the identity questions for now. As I've mentioned before, I think identity as a form of activism is a complete waste of time (in the words of Frank Chin, it's "bullshit"), and I think we already have identities that we just need to become more comfortable with. I was actually more interested in Yang's words about technology.

I think most of us Asian American bloggers are in our late 20's or early 30's, and perhaps Yang is correct in saying that some of us might be out of touch with the way younger people are communicating today. Many of us are not on Facebook or MySpace, and I can speak for myself personally when I say I feel a bit out of the loop. I saw this other scary article (scary for me, anyway) about how social networks are changing the way people talk to one another. Obviously Youtube is changing the way celebrities are created, and obviously the blogosphere is allowing non-mainstream voices a greater audience. If the internet didn't exist, we could very easily still only have Kingstonian Long Duk Dong types of portrayals and thinking, and that should scare everyone. So Yang is definitely correct when he talks about tranformative technologies.

However, I think it would be premature and wrong to say, as Efren and Yang seem to imply, that Gen X is somehow outdated. The theory/history is problematic on three counts. First, there has hardly ever been any major political or movement led and sustained only by very young men and women. People in their teens usually look for guidance from their older peers, the same way people like me read Frank Chin, David Mura, and Hegel (who isn't Asian but has some really cool ideas about government and history) or speak to real life leaders in our community in order to learn from their experience. Experience counts for a lot.

Second, Yang says that social media is more about "inclusion" than "effort." While he's correct on that count, social media doesn't imply social movement. Social movements are about both inclusion and effort. Within a social movement, effort is the more important of the two because that is where people create new ideas.

Third, let's not discount the importance of reading. I've stressed this many, many times on this blog and to everyone I know in real life, but there is no substitute for the book as a form of communication. Whether we're talking audiobooks or regular books, we're still talking about the single greatest medium for communicating deeper ideas. To that end, the "dialogue" that Yang discusses as being a part of social media isn't going to save us. What will save us are big ideas and the ability to absorb big ideas, and these ideas take place in books. I just finished reading an 800 page book on Lincoln, and I can assure you that I now know more about how he operated than I could've ever learned in a movie or on a MySpace page. Any movement within Asian American media will require the production of book-length works.

I also think it's premature for Yang to say that he now understands the mindset of these young Asian American kids because they are reacting differently to "Ni Hao Kai-Lan" and "Jackie Chan Adventures" and "American Dragon: Jake Long." Remember, we're talking about kids! I'm sure many of us also thought we had it figured out when we were that age. For many of us, it wasn't until later in life that we looked at the world, learned about politics, met different people, and figured out that there was something in the world that needed some serious fixing. While these young Asian American kids may be satisfied with the status quo right now, there is no guarantee that that satisfaction will last once they get experience and knowledge that only comes with age. In fact, barring some kind of drastic social upheaval, it's unlikely that they it will.

I've always thought that we need to engage the younger people of the world, and to that end, some people from Gen X probably have to learn the new technologies. On the other hand, the rise of a new generation does not in any way imply the obsolescence of a current young generation. We're all part of the same culture, and there's no reason at all that we should stop fighting for what we know is right.

By the way, I just did a Google search on Frank Chin. It looks like Aiiieeeee! was published in 1974, which would mean that Frank Chin was 34 at the time. Imagine what would happen if he interviewed younger Asian Americans at the time and determined that his way of thinking was out-of-date and irrelevant. Asian American lit would never have been born.

Everyone plays a role within our culture and society, whether we're young, in our late 20's/early 30's, or older. Part of creating a strong social movement, I believe, is recognizing that people perfect certain skills at certain points in life. It's just a matter of making use of these skills and enabling others to make use of their skills.

(Kai Lan image from here.)

The Personal and Political

2008-05-25T15:51:00.001-07:00

Thanks to Box who sent this article. I had seen it a few days before, but I had pushed it aside because I was working on other stuff.

The article is the front page story of the New York Times Magazine this week. It's an autobiographical story written by a former blogger at Gawker.com. Gawker is one of those huge gossip blogs, where they have paid professional bloggers around the clock who drop in and comment on events and celebrity gossip around the world and in the big cities. The Times Magazine story is about how this young woman blogged about her personal life and made herself into a celebrity, and how her world came crashing down because of the public scrutiny, which inhibited the woman's own attempts to find her own authenticity.

I often wonder how blogging can hurt a person's reputation. Even in our forum, we see how seemingly trivial points of conversation can suddenly balloon into something that destroys a person's online reputation, and some of these online events could become disastrous had they been public events with people using their real names. As a blogger, this story resonated with me because one always has to somehow keep one's life and reputation safe. I know how hard some of us try to protect our reputations with secrecy, and I think it's usually a good move. Once you put something online, it's there forever. It never goes away.

As someone who blogs on an Asian American political and intellectual blog, an idea came to me while reading this, especially in light of D's article on narcissism and Jade's article on feminism. On the 44's, because we have such a strong focus on logic and rational thought, we're shielded from a lot of the other problems that other Asian American activists have. Because we're rational, there's no need for us to share all that much detailed info about our personal lives. Rationality is the key, and it should (in theory) be readily understandable to anyone who follows the logic. But most activists don't follow this code.

Take, for example, the typical Asian American feminist. Now I don't want to stereotype, but from my own experiences, almost every conversation with a self-avowed non-44's Asian American feminist uses eventually ends up with a discussion of IR, followed by a defense of why she is dating or married to a white guy (and no, I've never met a self-avowed non-44 Asian American feminist married to or dating an Asian guy. Yuri Kochiyama was married to Bill Kochiyama, but she didn't adopt AA feminism until years later when the AA feminists asked her to.). These conversations usually end up with, "I'm an Asian American feminist, my body is mine, my boyfriend is white, and I'll do whatever I want. You don't own me...footbinder!"

What usually follows is nothing short of bedlam. The angry MM-types jump in and start making sexist personal comments against the AA feminist, which most of us would deem unacceptable and rude. This brings more Asian American feminists (with their white husbands) into the fold, and they usually react by making racist comments about Asian men, even though it was only a small number of militants who were participating in the personal attacks. The Asian feminists with their white boyfriends grab the higher terrain by virtue of their post-colonialist privilege, and the militant Asian men fight back. Pretty soon, no one is listening to anyone. Upon even just a little bit of thought, a neutral third party could see that this whole debacle would not have started had the first feminist not used her personal life as a political crutch.

Contrast that to our method over here. Every so often someone will share some personal info, but hardly ever does anyone use their personal life as a political attack tool. In other words, there's never any, "I'm married to a white guy, and you'd better not criticize me, or else I'll call you 'sexist.' In fact, I've faced so much prejudice from my IR that you'd better recognize me because we're taking over."

Everything here is relatively detached. We don't question people's choices, nor do we advertise our own choices in order to make a political point criticizing someone else.

This is the way discussion should be. This way, we're only talking about ideas. I would think this would (relatively, anyway) protect us from the personal scrutiny which the Times author describes.

B.J. Penn knocks out Sean Sherk!

2008-05-25T15:11:00.001-07:00

Last night, B.J. Penn defended his UFC Lightweight title against Sean Sherk. Through three rounds, Penn outboxed Sherk, using his reach/height advantage and pinpoint accuracy to continuously deliver jabs to Sherk's face. The fight never went to the ground. Penn drew blood from Sherk from the very first round, and both men continued to eschew grappling in favor of a straight boxing match. At the very end of round 3, Penn hit Sherk with a series of punches that threw him backward against the cage. When Sherk tried to duck another Penn punch, Penn rushed in with a flying knee to the head, followed by a barrage of punches once Sherk went down. Though he was saved by the bell, the referee declared Sherk unable to continue when he didn't get up.

I was betting that B.J. would win, but I never thought he would win with a knockout. During Sherk's last fight with Franca, Sherk was hit with four or five hard knee shots to the head, and he kept moving forward, eventually winning the Franca fight by decision. So the fact that B.J. won by knockout was even more impressive. If you have a chance to see B.J.'s performance, do. It was definitely one of the better fights I've seen. The best thing was that both fighters wanted to fight. B.J. never backed up, and neither did Sherk. They just kept going at it until one of them fell.

In other fights last night, Vanderlei Silva knocked out Keith Jardine in less than a minute, but that should have been expected, since Jardine never came close to Silva's level of skill.
Lyoto Machida out-boxed Tito Ortiz in what was promoted as Tito's last UFC fight, and he kept his perfect record. Machida basically avoided Tito's attacks and aimed punches and kicks into the gaps that Tito was leaving in his attack plan. He was moving backwards the whole time. Chuck Lidell fights the same way. Some say it was a good technical fight; I say it was boring.

(For those who care, Penn is half Korean, and Machida is half Japanese. That's my excuse for posting this here. Oh, and Catty, we had some technical difficulties, so we had to watch it on the internet. Believe it or not, the quality was very good. So even people without TV's can satisfy their need to see blood.)

(Picture above from the Washington Post.)

Tragedy for Steven Curtis Chapman

2008-05-22T22:52:00.002-07:00

You all know that I'm always debating with fellow 44's skrips and xian over religion. Though I dislike the idea of organized religion immensely and feel that it hurts society more than it helps, it doesn't stop me from empathizing with the human trials that people of religious organizations go through. Though we disagree on many things, we're still all human.

Angryasianman had this story about Christian singer Steven Curtis Chapman. His 5 year old daughter, his youngest of three daughters adopted from China, was killed by one of his teenaged sons who was driving an SUV and didn't see her. I'm sure it must be heartbreaking for the whole family, especially the son. According to the article, Chapman was persuaded by his biological daughter to adopt from China, and he and his wife had founded an organization to financially assist families trying to adopt.

When I was in high school, I actually went with a Christian friend to see Chapman perform. He was a talented performer who clearly had passion for his music, his audience, and his family. My heart goes out to them.

If you want to help the family, there is information on his website here. There's a video of their little girl on their blog over here, and you can also comment on their blog with condolences.

Pin the tail on the Asian male: Asian American Feminism Part 3

2008-05-22T22:52:00.001-07:00

Jenn from Reappropriate posted an article about an Asian American male criminal (forwarded to her from her Asian American feminist friend Carmen at Racialicious), and then she went on a rant about how this ONE criminal's behavior is a symptom of Asian American malehood. Check out the the original post here regarding this article, followed by the discussion here. You can see from the discussion that the blog post is so out of line that even Jenn's strong supporters like "Ramona" have their doubts about whether the assertions and stereotypes are fair.

The story is this: some crazy Asian guy had a girlfriend who left him for a black man. He was crazy and angry, and he started writing threatening letters to black men married to white women, including (half-black) Derek Jeter and Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. He posed as an angry white woman, sending threats to black men for two decades. Finally he was caught.

This guy Tuason (who is of Filipino descent) is clearly mentally deranged, but according to Jenn:

Perhaps most damning about this story, however, is how some Asian American men might find in Tuason a kind of twisted martyr to the emasculated Asian American male struggle. Tuason is no hero: he is little more than an overgrown Kenneth Eng, hateful and bitter because life has handed him lemons. Tuason’s actions are not noble, they seem foolish, like the ranting of a child. Clearly, not all (or even most) Asian American men act like Tuason (or Eng). But some (including some readers of this blog) seem to follow his line of thinking (albeit far less extreme) [Jae's comment: How does she presume to know his "line of thinking?" All he said was that he was angry his girlfriend left him for a black man.]. I modestly suggest that perhaps Asian American men should consider how their own rantings on Asian American male sexuality might be perceived; in this case, Tuason does nothing to win the argument that he is more masculine, or more virile, than his ex-girlfriend’s new boyfriend. [Cuz obviously he's Asian and is just like the rest of those Chinamen who can't get any! And who said he was trying to be "more virile?"]

The “masculine” thing for Tuason to do would have been to move on past the rejection of his former girlfriend, live a successful life, and prove to himself and the world that he is as masculine as he needs to be. The “masculine” thing to do would have been to redefine what masculine is, and in so doing, love the embodiment of masculine that Tuason could be. But Tuason could not overthrow the mainstream paradigm of American masculinity that disadvantages him and men like him [Whooaaa...again, presumption on the part of the blogger. How does she know what he's thinking? And since when is it about Tuason's race? Since we played the Kingstonian game of pin-the-tail-on-the-Asian-male!]. Instead, he wrote angry anonymous letters by email to men he did not know, threatening to prove his own virility by castrating the men who had threatened it. The look in Tuason’s eyes are like that of a child, defeated and thus embittered, petty, infantile and foolish.

Call me old fashioned, but I think Asian American men are better than that. So, stop acting like you’re not.

Whhhooooaaa. So basically she blames us for what this ONE guy did. Or she links him to us as if we have some kind of cultural foible that makes us do this kind of thing. True to the traditional Kingstonian paradigm, we're guilty before the trial even began, despite the fact that we weren't even at the scene of the crime! You can see why even her supporters are a bit uncomfortable supporting her on these obviously biased statements. Even though this guy has nothing to do with me or any of you, somehow we're responsible for him. It would be like hearing of the D.C. Sniper and saying, "Oh look, what that black man did! Why can't you black men behave!" But of course people don't say that, because unlike black men, we Asian men lack media and cultural power. Jenn recognizes individuality in black men or white men, but somehow we Asian men are all part of the same faceless Mongol horde where we're all guilty of something. It's the method of Kingstonian Asian American feminism: Pin the tail on the Asian male. If you gotta blame someone, blame someone who can't fight back. Pin it on the Asian guy.

Let me quote Xian from the discussion:

Why are white crazies treated as individuals, and minority crazies are used to tar-and-feather their identity group? Why do we have to watch the news and respond to any negative actions committed by a non-white person with "Oh shit, tomorrow's going to be challenging!" while a white male would never face the same?

I don't blame Jenn. Everyone attacks the Asian man. It's like a sport for these Kingstonian feminists, and she has acknowledged that she comes from that school of thought. But I do think we have to realize: Kingstonian feminism is not a good thing.

This is why I originally said that Asian American feminism needed to be eliminated. As maogirl and nightshade said, it's just a movement to make it socially acceptable for Asian women to fuck non-Asian men--which I guess is a fine and noble goal according to some people's values, but it's a piss poor version of feminism, and it's an insult to real feminists. Xian and Catty debated with me, and I then modified my position in Part II to say that a good Asian American feminism might be possible, but it would have to differentiate itself from Kingstonian feminism. Now I'm going to refine my position once again--I think we NEED Asian American feminism, AND I think it NEEDS to take aim at eliminating Kingstonian feminism. This game of Pin-the-tail-on-the-Asian-male has got to stop. Otherwise, how else will Asian American women empower themselves? How else can we ever come together as a community? (and yes, I realize that that's not necessarily the goal of all the players)

Quite simply, there is no room for two feminisms with one based on un-truth, and the other based on truth. You can't have this double standard where one "feminism" has the chief aim at pinning the tail on the Asian male for every crime under the sun, while another is seeking truth for Asian women. They just won't work together. Historically, Kingstonians have been too busy attacking Asian men to even devote time to their own empowerment goals. These two feminisms can't live under the same roof. One will eventually kill the other, and the one based on truth will overcome the one based on stereotypes. So why waste our time? Let's just get rid of the lies and stereotypes NOW.

I just want to point out a few more things. In the discussion, Jenn wrote:

To jaehwan and xian,

*rolls eyes*

Whatev. My post clearly denotes that I am talking about how I have more respect for the Asian American identity -- as a whole -- than Tuason's actions done in the name of the emasculation stereotype. That last line is all about how Tuason is an embarassment to his community.

But James is right. I'm not writing for you. It took a hiatus to realize that your brand of sanctimonious, blind sexism will never change and I need to stop caring about it.

It's almost ludicrous how a post like this, that's about sexism and racism that comes from an extreme form of fundamentalism that has victimized me and my relationship, still can't generate a reasoned discussion regarding how you -- jaehwan and xian -- might be helping to feed a sexist and racist beast.

1. I'm not "embarrassed" by Tuason. He's not me. The only thing we share is race, and unless I come from a race of gods (or unless I'm a white guy in an Amy Tan novel), there will always be bad people within my race. Most Asian men don't act like Tuason. In fact, it's the first time I've heard of an Asian man doing this.

2. Xian? A sexist? I don't have to comment on this--you've all seen his writings on compassion and empathy. I challenge anyone to find anything on that he wrote that is sexist. Calling Xian a "sexist" is like calling Gandhi a violent thug.

3. Tuason, though I disapprove of what he did, didn't demonstrate sexism either. How is it sexist to write harassing letters to black men? Unless Clarence Thomas and Derek Jeter are actually women in reverse-drag AND Tuason was aware of this fact AND he harassed them based on their female gender, there was no sexism. How could there be sexism if there were no women involved, either in person or in speech (other than "she left me")? I don't defend what Tuason did, but someone has to point out the irrational charges of sexism. Oh, that's right--Tuason is one of those Asian guys. Guilty when charged! Sexist Asian pig!!! I guess that would incriminate me too...

Anyway, I'm now convinced that we need a new Asian American feminism. But this time it has to be different. Let's channel those local activists and create a BIG movement. Let's empower ourselves together.

The Fighting 44's on Frank Chin's Blog

2008-05-20T21:05:00.000-07:00

This may be my shortest blog post ever. The Fighting 44's has now been mentioned on the blog of Frank Chin, the great Asian American civil rights fighter of the 20th century and the man whose writings have probably been the greatest influence on my own personal thinking regarding race. Frank doesn't mention any of the other big Asian American sites, just the 44's and Thymos, because the 44's is the top Asian American blog/message board on the internet, and Thymos is the top Asian American activist group.

To learn more about this great freedom fighter/literary warrior, go here.

To see the man in action, come to Portland on July 11th and 12th. We're bringing him here. If you're feeling generous and want to contribute to this excellent event, go to my site here.

Dale Minami wins Citation Award

2008-05-18T21:36:00.000-07:00

According to AsianWeek, UC Berkeley School of Law just gave civil rights leader Dale Minami the Citation Award, which is one of their highest honors.

Check this out:

Previous Citation Award recipients include: U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren; California Supreme Court Justices Allen Broussard, Cruz Reynoso, Roger Traynor, and Matthew Tobriner; and U.S. District Judge Thelton Henderson.

“Dale Minami brought the first employment discrimination class action on behalf of Asian Americans; the first lawsuit to stop the police from making mass arrests of young men in Chinatown because they might be gang members; the first tenure cases representing Asian American professors; and engineered the strategy leading to the appointment of the first Asian American judge in Alameda County, Ken Kawaichi,” said Minami’s law firm partner, Donald K. Tamaki, who introduced Minami at the event.

Tamaki and Minami worked together on Korematsu v. United States, a lawsuit that overturned a 40-year-old conviction for refusal to obey exclusion orders aimed at Japanese Americans during World War II, and originally upheld by the U.S Supreme Court in landmark decisions.

Korematsu v. United States was a landmark decision. To the best of my knowledge, it was the first time that the Supreme Court legitimized the decisions of those Japanese Americans during WWII who practiced civil disobedience in response to a terrible and illegal seizure and detainment based on race alone.

Minami also deserves props for his work in his bold stand on recognizing good vs. bad role models for Asian Americans. He was one of the notable leaders who wrote to the Director of the National Park Service to set the story straight on JACL leader Mike Masaoka, who urged Japanese Americans to comply with the government. Minami set the record straight. See here, where a letter he co-authored says,

Research findings and evidence have been presented to the National Park Service, proving that Masaoka and the organization he represented, the Japanese American Citizens League (JACL), did not defend and firmly uphold the community’s civil and constitutional rights. On the contrary, he and the organization he represented not only espoused going along with infringements upon these rights, but they also suggested discriminatory policies.

The hardest part of activism is taking stances against other people, whether they are dead or alive. Thank goodness we have fearless people like Dale Minami who are willing to stand for truth. Congrats to him on yet another victory.

First White Valedictorian at Morehouse College

2008-05-17T14:09:00.000-07:00

I must admit that I was a bit ambivalent when I saw this headline and read this article. Part of the reason for black universities was to raise the status and education of black people, and for a white person to go in there and become valedictorian seemed to be an insult, even if he's the best performer out there.

On the other hand, there really is no reason to segregate based on race since schools like Morehouse are predominantly black. Black people can still go there and feel as if they aren't the minority, and they can focus on building up their culture through an educational institution that puts their needs first. Plus, trends don't go on forever; after 140 black valedictorians who preceded Packwood, one would expect that a non-black valedictorian would eventually emerge.

So after pondering the situation, I can't see any reasons not to celebrate this guy's achievement. It's clear from the article that he's a bright guy and quite popular with the other students. Plus, there was a quote that 44's might find funny:

"One guy came up to me and told me -- he didn't like the fact that I was here," recalls Packwood. "He absolutely didn't like the fact that I dated black women."

"So I heard him out, and said, 'I appreciate your opinion but don't agree with what you have to say,'...and now we've become, not necessarily close, but very cool," Packwood says.

About Packwood's detractors, he says:

Even though he received the support of school administrators, Packwood's scholastic success did not come without some controversy. When word got out that he might become the next valedictorian, some of his classmates - even friends - were admittedly chafed.

"They approached me and said, 'Yeah, I have a problem with you being valedictorian. I know you've earned it and even though I know you on a personal level - I like you a lot - but it disturbs me that out of roughly 3,000 black men - there's not one that's done as well as or better than you academically,' " says Packwood.

I don't think people should be disturbed though. He's just 1 out of 140, and from the description about Packwood and his popularity at the university, it's clear that he's genuine. Plus, it's just grades. It's not as if he's claiming to be anything other than what he really is.

Orientalism in the media

2008-05-16T10:24:00.001-07:00

Thanks to John from 8 Asians for blogging about this story. I have a slightly different take on the article.

We've all read this kind of nonsense before, plus we've all seen this kind of thing before. An Asian woman marries a white guy, has a half Asian child, then goes around China, making her voice really loud, and speaking down to the natives. I used to read this stuff in A Magazine, and now we read it in the NYTimes and Asiance. I've seen it during my travels to Asia. Seriously, if you're in Asia and you hear a female voice start complaining loudly, turn around, and most likely you'll see one of these Toy-Langston/Hong-Kingston types, raising her voice and using her white man's status as a crutch. No one ever mentions the internalized racism behind the though processes of these nouveau orientalists, nor does anyone ever mention how they use the mainstream media to spread their views. Nor does anyone ever mention how much they look down on Asian people.

Here's my favorite quote from the author, Ms. Vivian Toy:

By then, it had become clear why my children were attracting so much attention. They look Chinese, but not exactly. They look Western, but not quite. What they really look like is what they are: a blend of me, a Chinese-American, and my husband, a blond 6-footer of English and Irish descent.

This, to me, basically confirmed that I was reading the words of a real live white-chaser. Why does she mention her blond husband's height? The answer should be obvious--she needs to draw a difference between the short, tiny heathen Chinee' and her tall white husband. If we were reading the words of anyone other than an Asian person, we wouldn't hear mention of the height unless it were relevant to the discussion on a non-racial level (i.e. "my tall husband who loves basketball but married a shrimpy little midget").

It's getting ridiculous. A good number of the younger Asian men I know (including some on this board) are much taller than the average American, yet these Toy Langstonist Kingstonians just love to ignore them. Not that height should make a difference in one's value as a human being--but why is it that people feel free to denigrate Asian people based on physical stereotypes?

Toy's internalized racism comes out a paragraph later:

The gawkers reminded me of my own painful experiences of being different: grade school classmates who would pull their eyes into squints and launch into a mocking sing-song; a college adviser who suggested I switch my major to biology since Chinese are better suited for the sciences; colleagues who have mistaken me for some other Asian-American woman.

Translation: "But I'm not like all those other Asian American women! I'm different! I married a white man!"

I didn’t have the benefit of experts to consult while I was in China, but I felt it was important to tell my children and their cousins, who are also mixed race, to expect more staring and touching. Some Chinese had never seen anyone who was multiracial and they were simply curious, I told them. I suggested that they should stare back and make a silly face at anyone who made them feel uncomfortable — an idea that made them laugh. They tried it a couple of times, too. A few Chinese on the receiving end made their own funny faces in return; a few others turned tail and left us alone.

Well, Ms. Toy, that's a real great way of encouraging multi-racial understanding. It's a real great way to raise your kids. Toy's hypocrisy comes out once again. Despite whatever fancy New York Times words she uses, she's not trying to encourage any kind of understanding whatsoever--she's just trying to get attention for her and her children. I don't know why people like her do this kind of nonsense.

We Asian Americans need to talk about this phenomenon because quite honestly, it's a form of racism that affects us much more than any of the other common topics that come up on common Asian American boards and discussions. It seems so innocuous, but only because anti-Asian racism is so common. Imagine if Toy were a black woman writing about how her multiracial son was a combination of her, a black woman, and a cultured and non-thuggish white man in order to draw a contrast. The Times would be fielding complaints left and right. Yet somehow, it's culturally acceptable to denigrate Asians.

I think Cathy Bao Bean, another militant Kingstonian, demonstrated best the thinking that goes behind these new orientalists. From her own website:

In 1959, when I was a Junior in Teaneck High School, I learned about Hybrid Vigor in Biology class. The idea was that when two different strains of corn were crossed, the result was greater than was normal for either parent type. In 1974, when I was a new mother in the maternity ward, I wondered if the same principle couldn't be deliberately applied to cultures - in our case, the Chinese and American.
• Physically we had the makings for such an experiment. Our newly born son was half Asian, half Caucasian.
• Intellectually, I formulated his prospects from the wealth of his dual heritage, translating his ancestors' stories into a future neither side could have imagined, yet both had anticipated to some degree.
• Practically, I worried just how much difference it would make that he wasn't an ear of corn.”

There's some serious manifest-destiny kind of thinking going on here.

I think we need to complain about this phenomenon, and I think we need to complain loudly. There's no reason for us to continuing taking these "benevolent" racial attacks parading as searches for self-identity.

Rule of the First

2008-05-13T18:11:00.000-07:00

Just saw this article in the Washington Post about racial incidents that the Obama campaign is facing as they move around the country. As the article mentions, Obama himself is shielded from this, but his supporters, even those who are white, are getting some pretty bad treatment from people who don't want to see a black president. In addition to the vandalism and racial remarks from people, people, including ethnic officials, are launching ethnic and (completely baseless) religious insults:

In a letter to the editor published in a local paper, Tunkhannock Borough Mayor Norm Ball explained his support of Hillary Clinton this way: "Barack Hussein Obama and all of his talk will do nothing for our country. There is so much that people don't know about his upbringing in the Muslim world. His stepfather was a radical Muslim and the ranting of his minister against the white America, you can't convince me that some of that didn't rub off on him.

"No, I want a president that will salute our flag, and put their hand on the Bible when they take the oath of office."

Obama's campaign workers have grown wearily accustomed to the lies about the candidate's supposed radical Muslim ties and lack of patriotism. But they are sometimes astonished when public officials such as Ball or others representing the campaign of their opponent traffic in these falsehoods.

Someone once wrote that the first person of a specific minority to enter a new field always needs to be above the fray. Jackie Robinson, for example, had to endure people spitting on him and making death threats, while Rosa Parks had to remain a model citizen in the midst of the hoopla surrounding the bus boycott. I think Obama is finding himself in the same situation. So for you 44's who operate on a higher level of knowledge, I'll share this small bit of awareness regarding the Obama campaign. For everyone else, let's keep it under wraps so that the country can focus on the issues.

Earthquake in China

2008-05-13T09:43:00.000-07:00

I'm sure many of you have already seen this. There was an earthquake in China a couple days ago that has killed upward of 12,000 people. It comes on the heels of the cyclone in Myanmar. They say it's China's worst natural disaster in three decades.

The quake, which was estimated preliminarily to have had a magnitude of 7.9, ravaged a mountainous region outside Chengdu, capital of Sichuan Province, just after lunchtime Monday, destroying 80 percent of structures in some of the towns and small cities near its epicenter, Chinese officials said. Its tremors were felt as far away as Vietnam and set off another, smaller quake in the outskirts of Beijing, 900 miles away.

Many of the casualties came from a school that collapsed. It's very sad.

Post-American World

2008-05-12T16:46:00.001-07:00

Thanks to evil_FUX for posting this excellent article. Discuss here or in the forum. It's good to finally hear some good news or positive outlooks coming out of the media. God knows that we need some encouragement after 7 years of Bush and a tanking economy. Zakaria is right. We can all thrive. Billions of people leaving poverty is a good thing.

My favorite part of the article is the pro-American part:

More broadly, this is America's great—and potentially insurmountable—strength. It remains the most open, flexible society in the world, able to absorb other people, cultures, ideas, goods, and services. The country thrives on the hunger and energy of poor immigrants. Faced with the new technologies of foreign companies, or growing markets overseas, it adapts and adjusts. When you compare this dynamism with the closed and hierarchical nations that were once superpowers, you sense that the United States is different and may not fall into the trap of becoming rich, and fat, and lazy.

Though the system has its faults, Zakaria is right on about the openness. One of the hard issues that the U.S. faces less than other countries is the problem that Zakaria mentions--other societies are not as open. I know someone who lives in Thailand, for example, and he has told me stories of people pissing off the government officials or rich people and then just disappearing. When it happens, people don't ask questions. They pretend it never happened. People don't feel free to ask questions.

This lack of openness exists even in other fully industrialized countries. Look at the problems with the Japanese educational system. I have Japanese friends who were surprised to learn about Japan's war crimes only after they traveled to Australia. Because few people question the system in Japan, few people change the system. Moral and political questions will hopefully become more open in the future--as some mentioned in the "few children" post, openness to new ideas and people can save some of these countries (though, in some cases, not right away)--but for right now, it's the American advantage.

For Asian Americans involved with culture--as we are--this should also be an advantage. We can question colonialism and racism. We can question why things are the way they are. We don't have to take the world as it is. The capitalist systems and those who run it may balk at allowing our viewpoints in the mainstream media, but we have the freedom to share them. We can publish these views on the internet, and we can talk about our ideas with our friends and family. This is privilege. In this case, I think we should take advantage of it.

(Disclaimer: When I say that our viewpoints are not in the mainstream media, I only describe the system today. We're right, and if we organize efficiently, I don't think they can keep us out forever.)

Portland Asia Fest

2008-05-11T14:21:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, AsiaFest took place at the Oregon Convention Center in Portland. I had the opportunity to run the booth for the Oregon Commission on Asian Affairs, which is the official government liaison between the Asian American community in Oregon and the governor's office. It was fun. I spoke to the people about our upcoming Frank Chin event, and I was able to see many people in the community whom I haven't seen in a while. They had a number of really cute performances by little kids.

It's really important to get out there and meet people. For me, it humanizes the whole advocacy/activism thing. You can't really know a person's problems or issues until you've conversed with them in person. My demographic--young people with or without families--was not very well represented, but it was a lot of fun working the floor.

I think I also learned a thing or two about promotion. The booths with the brightest and friendliest displays or games got the most action. The only reason people came to my booth was that I was located next to the unmanned Spirit Mountain Casino display, and old ladies kept approaching me to find out when the bus left from Chinatown. Next year I may not be so lucky with my location--they may put me next to Falun Gong (who was also there) or Asian Americans for Hillary (if she's still running after the new president is already in office)--so it's best to be proactive with the promotion.

Hmong Hip Hop

2008-05-11T14:20:00.000-07:00

They had an interesting video feature in the New York Times today. It's about Hmong Hip Hop and how a certain artist named Tou Saiko Lee uses it to talk about his heritage. I've never really taken much of an interest in hip-hop and spoken word, but it's pretty cool how Tou is using this to bring his Hmong community together; the after-school sessions where he teaches hip-hop looked pretty wild. Also, check out the part of the video where he raps with his grandmother (4:12). It's a nice sounding fusion.

Along with this video feature, the New York Times also had an article on General Vang Pao, who is mentioned in the video. I haven't been following the Vang Pao story, but it seems that things got messed up once again because of America's involvement in SE Asia.