representation

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.

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.

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.)

Ever felt a little uncomfortable or weird when you see these types of pictures circulating in Hollywood? it seems rather too frequent that these western  celebrities have sudden decided to show off their new Asian babies.

Although we could never quite put the finger on it but if you were suspicious enough then perhaps your instincts could be enough to show that you care. The answer is YES it;s likely something is 'fishy' going on.

There is a possibility that these kids should not have been placed in their hands to begin with.

From a westerners perspective they are starting the "Happy Family with the odd Asian baby trend" or the stereotypical " I-Know-whats-good-for -Asian-people". While they parade around showing of their Asian babies these celebrities could just as well be quite ignorant. Sure at a glance some would say 'Oh they look so nice together' but in reality these kids were probably possessed through adoption exploits and scandals.

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.

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:

Mostly Water - First written in 1972, it was updated in a 2003 edition that's every bit as relevant now - thus this review focusing on Hudson's new preface, introduction, and detailed account of the book's theme.

He revisited it in his 2008-09 Project Censored award- winning article titled: "Economic Meltdown - The 'Dollar Glut' is What Finances America's Global Military Build-up" in which he explains the following - the "inter-related dynamics" of:

-- "surplus (US) dollars pouring into the rest of the world for yet further financial speculation and corporate takeovers;"

-- global central banks "recyl(ing) these dollar inflows (into) US Treasury bonds to finance the federal US budget deficit; and most important (but most suppressed in the US media),"

-- "the military character of the US payments deficit and the domestic federal budget deficit."

VisualizAsian.com - Continuing with our AAPI Empowerment Series at visualizAsian.com, our next guest is Phoebe Eng, author of "Warrior Lessons: An Asian American Woman's Journey into Power," Vice Chair for the Ms. Foundation for Women and head of Creative Counsel, an organization that connects artists and entertainers with social causes.

LIVE INTERVIEW IS ON TUESDAY, JUNE 23 at 6 PM PDT (9 PM EDT) on VisualizAsian.com, Register here

BBC - Two US journalists arrested by North Korea near its border with China are to face trial, North Korea's state media has reported.

Euna Lee, a Korean-American, and Laura Ling, a Chinese-American, who work for Current TV, who is the sister of famous Journalist Lisa Ling were detained on 17 March.

The North said it had decided to charge the women after completing an inquiry into their "crimes" - although the precise charges remain unclear. The North says the two women illegally crossed the border from China.

"Our related agency has decided to turn the US reporters over for trial based on findings of their crimes," KCNA reported.

Film adaptations of comic books are a dime a dozen in Hollywood these days with a track record that suggests studios are pumping out more Batman Forevers than Dark Knights. But what happens when your task is to bring the words of history's most acclaimed graphic novel — and one of Time magazine's 100 greatest novels of all time — to the big screen?

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.

The intersectionality of race and gender inequality generate a variety of oppressive structures or “scattered hegemonies” that cannot be adequately understood by focusing exclusively on their gendered or racial components. There is a simultaneity to structures of domination which generate forms of racial oppression that are gendered and forms of gender oppression that are racialized. In this presentation I discuss those forms of racism that denigrate the masculinity of Asian males, which I refer to as gendered racism. The exaggerated and derogatory images of Asian American masculinity serve to glorify those forms of masculinity associated with white males. I examine the specific forms of gendered racism that second generation Korean and Vietnamese American males face, and describe how these demonizing myths and images shape the perceptions of Asian American women. In an analysis of 100 interviews with daughters of Korean and Vietnamese immigrants, I find that they frequently juxtapose derogatory images of Asian masculinity with positive images of white masculinity that are circulated in the white-dominated society.

Co-editors: Jacqueline Lo, School of Humanities, The Australian National University
Tseen Khoo, School of Political and Social Inquiry, Monash University
Dean Chan, School of Communications and Arts, Edith Cowan University

Amerasia Journal Editors:
Russell C. Leong, Editor, University of California, Los Angeles

Stephanie Santos, Assistant Editor, University of California, Los Angeles

This special issue of Amerasia Journal on Asian Australia situates sociocultural analysis of Asian diasporas within a broader transnational framework, deploying comparisons with the U.S. to illuminate the ways in which localized concepts of belonging and nation are intricately and inextricably influenced by global forces.

Asian-American political profile rising in US
By JULIANA BARBASSA, Associated Press Writer Juliana Barbassa, Associated Press Writer – Sun Jan 18, 2:12 pm ET

SAN FRANCISCO – When three newly elected Chinese-American city supervisors climbed on stage in Chinatown, flanked by dragon dancers and lit up by camera flashes, they were hailed for making history in a city their forebears have shaped since the Gold Rush Days.

Now their November sweep has been topped with the election of one of them, David Chiu, as president of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors — the second most powerful position in local government.