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WHEN she was a philosophy student at Harvard College eight years ago, Liane Young never thought twice about all the interracial couples who flitted across campus, arm and arm, hand in hand. Most of her Asian friends had white boyfriends or girlfriends. In her social circles, it was simply the way of the world.

But today, the majority of Ms. Young’s Asian-American friends on Facebook have Asian-American husbands or wives. And Ms. Young, a Boston-born granddaughter of Chinese immigrants, is married to a Harvard medical student who loves skiing and the Pittsburgh Steelers and just happens to have been born in Fujian Province in China.

Ms. Young said she hadn’t been searching for a boyfriend with an Asian background. They met by chance at a nightclub in Boston, and she is delighted by how completely right it feels. They have taken lessons together in Cantonese (which she speaks) and Mandarin (which he speaks), and they hope to pass along those languages when they have children someday.

Ed Lee’s inauguration Sunday morning marked a historic moment for San Francisco, which now has its first-ever elected Chinese American mayor. But unlike when he was first appointed a year ago by then-outgoing Mayor Gavin Newsom, yesterday’s ceremony saw an affable Lee downplaying his background in the Chinese community, instead emphasizing his role as an innovator for the city as a whole. 

Thousands gathered to witness the swearing-in, administered by former San Francisco Mayor and now United States Senator Dianne Feinstein. The ceremony began at 11a.m. after an hour of dance and musical performances. Introduced by former Mayor Willie Brown, Lee, the 43rd mayor of San Francisco, was joined by his wife, Anita, and two daughters, Brianna and Tania.

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.

That Minority Thing - Some 93 percent of studio directors were male this year — Nora Ephron with her “Julie & Julia” and a handful of other women notwithstanding. Damien Dante Wayans, with “Dance Flick,” joined Olatunde Osunsanmi of “The Fourth Kind” as black directors with studio releases, while a few directors were Asian or part Asian.

Uniformity would seem to shut out potential viewers and revenue. But there is really no way to be sure whether sales would go up or down if the studio directing pool were more diverse.

In some ways, studio directors are looking even more uniform than in the past. In 1999, a report on diversity from the Directors Guild of America, whose statistics include nonstudio films, found African-American directors to have worked 5.4 percent of total days covered by the guild’s film contract, while women logged 7.4 percent , Asian-Americans 1.5 percent and Latinos 1.1 percent.

NAM - Last year, Frank Chang spent about $1,500 on non-surgical cosmetic procedures. This year, the 35-year-old Chinese American may go a step farther.

“I may be getting a lift for my eyes,” said Chang. “The reason I am not doing it yet is because I am a bit afraid of the pain.”

Chang said if he were happy with the results, he would continue to do more surgical procedures “in a healthy way.”

Chang is one of an increasing number of Asian-American men defying a cultural stigma to engage in cosmetic surgery in order to improve their appearances. Experts say what is motivating men to seek plastic surgery may be the need to raise their chances of surviving a job market that is increasingly favorable of younger workers, and to be competitive in romantic relationships.

Global Times - His eyes fixed again on the photos on the wall: colorful pictures of protests against CNN during last April's Olympic torch relay in the United States. They hang like trophies, souvenirs of a glorious past.

"I still feel passionate," smiled Rao Jin, 24-year-old founder of Anti-CNN. com, "but not as spirited as that time."

Rao's been busy. After a round of meetings with business partners and media-savvy advisors, he's re-branding the whole website: gone is the "combative title" of "Anti-CNN". In its place is "ACCN", short for "Access China Communication Network."

A new slogan "Just another voice" replaces "Don't be like CNN!"

Tsinghua graduate Rao, also the owner of IT company Cesky, said he wants "limited commercialization" and "modernization" of Anti-CNN into a "comprehensive community news website."

An article from Color line  looks in the past incidents involving asian males losing it and going on the rampage.

Looking back at the incident in Binghamton, a NY Vietnamese immigrant, Jiverly Linh Phat Wong or Voong shot 13 people to death before killing himself. Richard Poplawski shot and killed three Pittsburgh, PA police officers and injured two others during a standoff that lasted nearly four hours. Understanding race and gender is crucial given that one of these are anti-Asian discrimination, the other is antisemitism and white supremacy, and both in co-relation to masculinity.

Rampage & Race: Reacting to Anti-Asian Discrimination

People are unaware of the anti-Asian discrimination in the U.S, a recent example such as the tRep. Betty Brown (R-Texas) who said that Asian Americans should consider changing their name to make it “easier for Americans to deal with.” This sort of comment might be offensive enough from an ordinary citizen, but coming from an elected official with legislative power to implement her racist ideas is alarming and indicative of the kind of discrimination that Asian Americans routinely face especially in institutions.

Jaemin Kim writes on racial inequality of asian women & social trends in the article 'Asian Women: Rape And Hate Crimes'

"Older, White Critics ... Missed the Boat" by making an issue of the interracial relationship in the movie Rachel Getting Married, posted Defamer.com last October. In rare form, the popular blog site -- known for mercilessly ridiculing celebrities and media players -- took a principled stance. The posting chided well-known film critics for focusing on race when reviewing the film. The critics were preoccupied with the fact that white Rachel was marrying a black man. In the film, however, the couple's ethnicities go unmentioned. And this is the way a "cultural melting pot" should be, Defamer rhapsodized.

Hegemonic Harvard and omnipersent Oxford: Western Dominance in the Global Organization of Higher Education

JAMES JF FOREST , P H.D. Assistant Dean, Academic Assessment and Assistant Professor, Political Science United States Military Academy West Point, NY 10996 james.

A Paper For Presentation at the Annual Meeting of the International Studies Association Montreal, Canada March 17-20, 2004

The views expressed are those of the author and not of the Department of the Army, the U.S. Military Academy, or any other agency of the U.S. Government.

The author gratefully acknowledges the support of the Strategic Studies Institute in funding research for this paper Abstract Universities worldwide stem from a common model. Even in India and China, which have their own rich traditions of advanced learning, modern universities are Western in origin.

Posted by Abigail Sewell on Jan 24th, 2009
The willingness to believe in the possibilities of America is the social ideology underlying the inauguration of America’s first non-white President, but is it enough to usher in a post-racial America?
We stand at the brink of a new history — one whose name is more contested, whose identity is more ambiguous and whose future has hardly been conceived. The symbolic implications of race are transforming now, just as the symbolic implications of race were transformed with the Civil Rights Movement.

Asian Americans are often seen as the model minority, with higher rates of education, income, and employment. But this perception might be overshadowing the problems of lack of health insurance coverage among the Asian American community. In a January 2007 study by Kaiser Family Foundation called “Key Facts: Race, Ethnicity, and Medical Care,” Asian Americans, when compared to other minority groups, had relatively high rates of health coverage. Of the white, non-Hispanic population, 13 percent were uninsured, with Asian Americans falling not far behind, with 19 percent uninsured. In contrast, 34 percent of Hispanics, 32 percent of Native Americans and Alaska Natives, and 21 percent of African Americans were uninsured. Comparatively, Asian Americans were the best-performing minority group in terms of health coverage.

China urges step-up efforts to attract overseas talent
(Xinhua) Updated: 2009-01-08 22:33

BEIJING - China has called on state enterprises and academic institutions to step up efforts to attract more leading Chinese scientists studying overseas, a move that would enable the country to stay globally competitive.

According to a guideline issued by the General Office of the Communist Party of China(CPC) Central Committee, high-quality Chinese talent in foreign countries, especially those at the frontier fields of science and technology, is needed for China to embrace global competition and forge ahead with its opening up.

ASIAN AMERICANS IN THE TELEVISION MEDIA: CREATING INCENTIVE FOR CHANGE
Audrey Kwak

RACE AND PLACE: EQUITY ISSUES IN URBAN AMERICA. By John W. Frazier, Florence M. Margai, and Eugene Tettey-Fio. Boulder and Oxford: Westview Press 2003. Pp. 274.