stereotypes

As white Americans move into the minority, some are claiming they're the ones now subject to racial oppression. Do they have a case?

For a small, nerdy cluster of folk -- social science and cultural studies wonks, market researchers, armchair political pundits -- this month is the Super Bowl, Oscars and Olympics rolled into one. That's because the next few weeks will see the gradual, yet grand unveiling of data from the 2010 U.S. Census, an event literally 10 years in the making.

Maclean's article sparked overdue rebellion against powerful voices claiming racial discrimination is not a problem

Maclean's magazine has struck a match. Now a firestorm of criticism is headed its way. Canada may never be the same.

On Nov. 25, Victoria city council unanimously adopted a motion, submitted by veteran councillor Charlayne Thornton-Joe, criticizing Maclean's for their article 'Too Asian' in their widely read special university rankings feature edition (Nov. 2010). The motion, unanimously adopted, described the title of the Maclean's article as "offensive and intolerant" and criticized its contents for "propagating a litany of racial stereotypes."

I agree and Thornton-George and the council deserve credit for speaking out against a media giant. Their action demonstrates how far we have come from the bad old days.

A Recap on the past news about "Too Asian" in Maclean's publication that triggered off public anger over it's racist content targeting Asian Canadians in higher education.

CCNC Statement on Dialogue with Maclean’s
Monday November 22, 2010

The Chinese Canadian National Council (CCNC) and Chinese Canadian National Council Toronto Chapter (CCNCTO) held a media briefing today to report back on the dialogue with Maclean’s magazine on their article entitled “Too Asian”?

Toronto, ON – The Chinese Canadian National Council (CCNC) and Chinese Canadian National Council Toronto Chapter (CCNCTO) held a media briefing today to report back on the dialogue with Maclean’s magazine on their article entitled “Too Asian”?

CCNC and CCNCTO and a number of community organizations met with Maclean’s on November 12th and again on November 17th for hour each time. Maclean’s had offered to publish a letter from CCNC in a future edition. CCNC and CCNCTO, after consulting with various community organizations responded with a 4 point proposal:

There has been some recent discussion surrounding a racist piece of media that had recently surfaced on the Maclean's website about the increasing number of Asian students in their academic institutions (racist...ahem).

Not only has this article unnecessarily making an issue of race but also implying that Universities and colleges are "too Asian" for their liking, a very racist emitting but also at the same time hideous at a glance.

Although the original article has been edited the original version can be found here "Too Asian" (Thanks to Angry Asian Man's post).

So you might ask should Chinese Canadians be concerned? of course not, because we are not the ones complaining. Obviously all those who are enrolled in higher education is obviously there to study and nothing else.

 
Last month was exciting in terms of entertainment news. Musicians made Asian American history, San Diego hosted its annual Asian Film Festival, Jon M. Chu’s career took off, Yao Ming returned to the basketball court, and Brenda Song received an award. Let’s get started!
Making beautiful music — for the mainstream!

For the week of Oct. 30, members of Far East Movement became the first Asian Americans to hit the top of the Billboard charts. Even more exciting was the fact that the number two spot was held by singer-songwriter Bruno Mars, who is of Filipino and Puerto Rican descent.
Far East Movement is made up of Kevin Nishimura “Kev Nish,” James Roh “Prohgress,” Jae Choung “J-Splif,” and Virman Coquia “DJ Virman.”
In a New York Daily News story, Oliver Wang, an assistant professor of sociology at California State University-Long Beach, said, “Far East Movement and Bruno Mars didn’t come just out of nowhere. There’s been a slow push to make it happen through social media. It’s finally hit that tipping point.”

San Diego’s Asian Film Festival: action-packed!

On Sunday, Asian-American actors Daniel Dae Kim (”Hawaii Five-O”), C. S. Lee (”Dexter”), Harry Shum Jr. (”Glee”), Ellen Wong (”Scott Pilgrim vs. The World”), and Aaron Yoo (”Friday the 13th”) talked casting, graduate school and stereotypes at the Asian Americans in Hollywood panel at the San Diego Asian Film Festival.

In particular, each of the actors stressed that their current status as recognizable faces didn’t happen overnight. Lee and Kim both studied acting at graduate school (Lee at Yale and Kim at NYU; the former even asked latter for advice about where he should go), and Shum Jr explained that he first moved to Los Angeles in 2001 to act. After realizing he could “kinda dance,” he built up his skills and his dancing ultimately took over. (For “Glee” fans, he added: No, he doesn’t really sing as badly as Mike Chang does, and yes, there will a continuing storyline for his character this season).

Great news from our Asian American sensation Jeremy Lin as he signs on with the Golden State Warriors.

We did not see wrong when we saw the potential of this new gunner and that's not in any reference to any kind of school massacres that the Media rubs in our faces.

Asian Americans look on with high confidence when they see Jeremy Lin simply put, doing what he does best.

We aren't unfairly biased when it comes to supporting any Asian Americans in sports, I mean sure we should be supporting Asian Americans in all areas of the professional world but Jeremy Lin actually has a little bit more and we can not help but be proud of him. Not only is he being recognized by Asian Americans but in fact to have the basketball world talking him only shows that he has gained early recognition.

The most anticipated film of the summer had its big Hollywood premiere at Mann's Chinese Theatre on Tuesday, and fans carrying both English and Japanese-language signs stood patiently behind barricades, waiting (some since 6am) to catch a glimpse of their favorite actors. Photographers crowded each other for shots of Marion Cotillard and Ellen Page. Security guards positioned themselves on either side of Leonardo DiCaprio as he walked along the street to greet his fans and sign autographs. One of the earlier stars to arrive, Ken Watanabe gamely waved at the fans, inciting cheers as he walked down with his wife Kaho Minami.

Posting from the "Colorblind" Blog:

Jeff was publisher of A. Magazine, one of the most popular and influential Asian American magazines during its run from 1989-2002. Since then, Jeff has published several books including co-editing Secret Identities: The Asian American Superhero Anthology and is widely recognized and respected as an expert on Asian and Asian American pop culture. I have admired Jeff’s work for a long time but only finally got the chance to meet him at Syracuse.

By Jeff Yang, Special to SF Gate
Thursday, February 25, 2010

The notion that Asians and Jews are two shoots from the same cultural rootstock is an old but evergreen meme.

You see it in fringe theories about the Lost Tribes of Israel -- there's an entire body of cryptoarchaeological canon that uses similarities between customs, language and naming convention to "prove" that the ancient vanished Jewish clans ended up in China, India or Japan. (Japan's 50,000-member Makuya sect, which has as its central dogma that the Japanese are descendants of a lost Jewish tribe, keep kosher, speak Hebrew and use the seven-armed menorah as their symbol.)

Halfpipe gold medallist Xuetong Cai of China is flanked by compatriots Zhifeng Sun (left), silver, and Xu Cheng, bronze as they stand on the podium at the FIS snowboard world cup Friday, Jan. 22, 2010 in Stoneham Que. (CP) Source: CIV

We knew during the Beijing Olympics the media took every opportunity to mock the Chinese Athletes just about anything they could find.

When it comes to talking about Chinese athletes, it seems like every article must reemphasize the words  'government-funded', 'state owned', and rather acknowledging the concept of dedication, hard work and discipline as athletic qualities in the Chinese they prefer to call it 'cultural oppression' or even 'inhuman torture'. 

The same rhetorical defamation recycles itself again and in the 2010 Vancouver Winter games the media has taken another stab at it.

Since the Asian American film burst onto the scene thirty something years ago, many of those filmmakers, such as, Christine Choy, Wayne Wang, Mira Nair, Ang Lee, Justin Lin and among others are now comfortably part of the American cinematic mainstream.

Each year, hundreds of filmmakers from around the Asian Diaspora submit their short films to Asian American film festivals. They have given us stories of immigration and assimilation, adversity and triumph, motivation and inspiration of all genres: narrative, documentary, experimental, animation, music video.

Common reoccurring themes include identity politics, alienated youth, hypersexualization, math nerds, over-achievers, stereotypes, suburban alienation, and kung-fu waiters. 
Been there? Done that?

Tell us YOUR Asian American story.

The six men on stage included a poet, a break dancer and a filmmaker. They pounded rhythms on the dhol drum, modeled fresh fashions, slathered whipped cream on bare skin and discussed their passion for community service.

This is the "Mr. Hyphen" contest, a faux pageant in the San Francisco Bay area aimed at redefining the image of Asian-American men beyond nerdy, sexless stereotypes.

Conspicuously absent from the stage were computer experts, doctors, lawyers or dry cleaners. There were, however, martial arts - with a twist.

Pahole Sookkasikon, an American-born graduate student partial to drawing, cooking, and "flirting for free drinks at the bar," knew that his hobbies would not translate well to the talent portion of the show.

Nothing says controversy like an Internet fight over racism in marketing and design. If you weren't familiar with last week's blow-by-blow, Asian author and professor Soong-Chan Rah called out racism at worst and insensitivity at best in the marketing and design of the book Deadly Viper Character Assassins by Mike Foster and Jud Wilhite. Rah accused Foster and Wilhite of fueling racial stereotypes and co-opting Asian culture in order to market their book. It was an especially interesting challenge because Foster and Wilhite's book is all about integrity and character. The conversation exploded with hundreds of comments and eventually led to a conference call between Rah, Foster, Wilhite and moderators.

Scholarly blogger deals with cultural fallacies, ethnic misconceptions.

When you think of an angry Asian man, the image of a ninja wielding formidable weapons comes to mind. The stereotype isn’t far from the mark when you visit “Angry Asian Man,” a blog run by University of California, Berkeley alumnus Phil Yu.

“The name of my blog is provocative and scary,” said Yu. “It’s different from most people’s idea of what an Asian person is supposed to be. Most Asians in this country are not seen as people who are willing to rock the boat. We’re seen as meek people who just let things slide, but that’s not true at all.”

At a panel in the Texas Union on Thursday, Yu and Nhi Lieu, a UT American studies professor discussed Asian-American media representation and identity in America, as well as the influence of Yu’s blog on the Asian-American community.

We all know her story. She was a beautiful, bright 24-year-old graduate student in Yale's pharmacology department who went missing just four days shy of her wedding. Her body was found on what was to be her wedding day hidden behind a wall in her laboratory, a Yale building at 10 Amistad Road in New Haven. A few days later, a 24-year-old animal technician who also worked at her laboratory was arrested for her murder.

I first read about her in The New York Times in my apartment in Manhattan. Across the globe, my brother read about her on Bloomberg News in his office in Hong Kong. We felt the pain and horror of her death and of the tragedy facing her family.

Annie Le was also Asian-American. As her story appeared all over the Internet and on 24-hour news updates, blogs, commentaries, Facebook and Twitter posts, the fact that she was an Asian-American female was to become an important part of her narrative, speaking to uniquely American anxieties about sex, violence, gender and race.

By Craig Takeuchi

It's been a while since there's been an Asian North American box-office hit. The Joy Luck Club, The Wedding Banquet, and Snow Falling on Cedars were all from the '90s. Indie successes like Better Luck Tomorrow and Eve and the Fire Horse (by Vancouver's Julia Kwan) have been few and far between over the past decade. Other filmmakers of Asian descent (Jessica Yu, In the Realms of the Unreal; Cary Fukunaga, Sin Nombre), have established themselves by tackling subjects unrelated to their heritage.

The most consistent local source for such works remains the Vancouver Asian Film Festival, which runs from November 5 to 8 at the Cinemark Tinseltown (88 West Pender Street). Unlike other local events that showcase films from Asia, VAFF emphasizes stories by and about Asian Canadians and Americans.

BOSTON - It's one of the great closing lines in movie history, "Come on, Jake. It's . . . Chinatown." Those words, spoken to Jack Nicholson in, of course, "Chinatown," suggest all too accurately the sheer otherness of the Chinese experience as seen by Hollywood.

That otherness has run the gamut. Patronizing, reductive depictions of China ("The Good Earth," say) have gone hand in hand with Chinese-American stereotypes (cooks and laundry operators mostly, with the occasional opium smoker, for variety's sake, and, more recently, kung fu masters). The most famous Chinese and Chinese-American characters have been shameless caricatures - Fu Manchu, for example, and Charlie Chan.

What can be more depressing than a story like this to remind us of our current society and the state of human morality. It is important that we should continue to advocate against human trafficking and foriegners who go overseas to find Asian wives or sex touring for Asian women (or in this case, Children too).

Typically, these are the types that have the imperialist mindset, they prey on those who are inpoverished and live in difficult conditions. The circumstances that exposes a vulnerability can be said without reference, human trafficking or sexual exploitation of Asian women.

We have similar issues that exist in first world countries only that these  problems exist on a another level. In the social context, racism comes  intertwined with stereotypes, race sexual fetish, Asian fetishism, Pedophilia, Asiaphiles, Sexism, Rapists, murders etc all that commonly share the same basis on the grounds of racism.

"Strangers" of the Academy Asian Women Scholars in Higher Education, Edited by Guofang Li, Gulbahar H. Beckett, Foreword by Shirley Geok-Lin Lim

Abstract - No less than other minorities, Asian women scholars are confronted with racial discrimination and stereotyping as well as disrespect for their research, teaching, and leadership, and are underrepresented in academia.

In the face of such barriers, many Asian female scholars have developed strategies to survive and thrive. This book is among the first to examine their lived experience in Western academic discourses. It addresses the socio-cultural, political, academic, and personal issues that Asian female scholars encounter in higher education.

slanteyefortheroundeye - For some odd reason I thought I would go to the top four search engines including Google, Bing, Yahoo, and Ask, type in the word "asian" and compare/contrast what came up under Images and Videos to see what I would find with all the filters turned off (because I wanted to see what they - meaning the algorithms - or the deep dark mind of search - really thought).

Let's Go Straight To The Results

1. Google:

It's never been easy to be part of the huddled masses. The Statue of Liberty may not be choosy about the wretched refuse she allows in the door, but Americans haven't always been so hospitable. Immigrants from Ireland landed in the U.S. in the 1850s only to find shop windows festooned with signs reading "No Irish Need Apply." The Chinese toiled to build our transcontinental railroad in the 1860s only to see the infamous Chinese Exclusion Act signed in 1882, suspending further immigration. The unwritten rule was simple: pretty much anyone was welcome, except the newest group — or at least the one arriving in the greatest numbers — who would have a harder go of things. All that's changed, though, right? In our new postracial world, haven't we risen above such petty prejudice? Actually, no, we haven't. But the good news is, we're doing better than you might expect.

Well this is no surprise since Rain is the hottest Asian in Hollywood now, we know he's Korean but to them we supposedly all look alike anyway. We can now only pray this movie isn't going to be butchered like every other Hollywood remake (especially whitewashing them).

Here is the reported story.

About two years ago this month, the trades reported that Warner Independent Pictures has set "The Shield" exec producer Kurt Sutter to write and make his feature directing debut on "Awaken the Dragon."

A noir-style remake of "Enter the Dragon," the 1973 martial arts classic that made Bruce Lee a global star, Sutter said he's writing "Awaken the Dragon" as a contemporized drama about a lone FBI agent who pursues a rogue Shaolin monk into the bloody world of underground martial arts fight clubs.

Sutter will look to discover a fight star in the role of the monk and cast an established American actor to play the FBI agent.

Well, guess what? I think they found their fight star.

FATE SCORES, a film by Chinese-Canadian director and actor Albert M. Chan, will have its New York premiere on Sunday July 26th, 2009, at 2:15pm at the Museum of Chinese in America (215 Centre St. New York, NY) as part of the 32nd Annual Asian American International Film Festival (AAIFF).

The film has also screened this year at the Boston International Film Festival, the Wisconsin Film Festival, On Location: Memphis International Film Festival, and the Southeast New England Film, Music & Arts Festival.

FATE SCORES explores themes of isolation, connection, and chance, and is a thoughtful look at the seemingly random interactions between ten strangers on a city park bench, eventually culminating into something extraordinary.

LA Times - Judy Chu can trace the beginnings of her career as a San Gabriel Valley activist and political leader back to the early 1970s and her freshman year in college.

As the young math major, intent on a career in computer science, was crossing the UC Santa Barbara quad one day, someone thrust into her hand a flier about a new Asian American studies course. She decided to give it a try.

"It was like a light went off in my head," Chu recalled. She learned about the history of Asian immigrants and their children, the discrimination and stereotypes they endured and their contributions to American life and culture.

One of the guest speakers was Pat Sumi, a third-generation Japanese American whose activism included registering blacks to vote in Mississippi and Georgia and organizing protests against the Vietnam War.

Examiner.com - Doctor turned comedian turned actor, Ken Jeong, who first hit the big screen playing a short-tempered doctor in “Knocked Up,” can be seen portraying an angry Asian crime boss in the new comedy “The Hangover."

Those who have seen the movie will probably agree that Jeong's character Mr. Chow is quite possibly the most blatantly over-the-top racial stereotype of an Asian man since Mickey Rooney put on "Yellow Face" makeup to play a "crazy Jap in the upstairs apartment" for the movie "Breakfast at Tiffany's."

One of the dumbest things you can do is pay to be insulted, yet many Asians and Asian Americans do it on a regular basis. Both Asians and Asian Americans indiscriminately pay to see movies. Movies that constantly depict them in stereotypical roles, martial arts masters, accented untrustworthy foreigners, sneaky dragon ladies, terrorists, or evil gangsters, exotic, submissive sex objects, asexual, or chauvinistic Asian men and Asian women who exclusively date White/Black men (as depicted in media), or who are oppressed.