social

LOS ANGELES, CA --   The Asian Pacific American Legal Center, a member of Asian American Center for Advancing Justice, welcomes long-time public interest attorney Doreena Wong as the project director for APALC's Health Access Project

Wong, a long-time civil rights lawyer and expert on health policy and language access issues, spent the prior 11 years as a senior staff attorney at the National Health Law Program (NHeLP), which is a national public interest law firm focused on health care issues.  Wong is also a well-known social justice advocate who has helped to found several Asian/Pacific Islander lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender rights group, including API Equality-LA. 

She has also worked at other notable civil rights and public interest organizations, including the Asian Law Caucus in San Francisco, the ACLU of Philadelphia and Pennsylvania, the National Women's Law Center in Washington, D.C. and a Los Angeles civil rights firm specializing in enforcement of consent decrees in race discrimination cases.

However the rebellion in Libya began, it was both inevitable and entirely predictable that it would quickly become an opening for imperialist intervention and counterrevolution in the oil-rich North African country.

The fact that the “rebellion” received sympathetic, screaming headlines, ferociously hostile to the government of Moammar Gadhafi from the very beginning, should have been sufficient to put the entire anti-imperialist movement on guard. The boiler-plate propaganda about “massacres,” without the slightest evidence, was repeated as if it were the gospel truth. That should have been further evidence of the plans for “great power” intervention (“great” in their oppression, as Vladimir Lenin pointed out long ago).

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:

BEIJING - Chinese analysts have refuted criticism that China is not acting responsibly enough to address the recent increase in tensions on the Korean Peninsula.

It is evident that China is actively making diplomatic efforts to ease the tensions and pushing for contacts and talks among relevant parties, they said, adding that these facts should not be ignored.

John McCain, a senior U.S. senator said China "is not behaving as a responsible world power" in dealing with the Korean Peninsula situation.

The U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Foreign Affairs and the House Armed Services Committee has called on China to suspend economic and energy assistance to the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) to show the DPRK consequences for its "aggression."

China does not control the DPRK, and China's actions are made out of a respect for other sovereign states and humanitarian considerations, said Zhu Feng, professor at Peking University's School of International Studies.

From our work at WTC, we have come to see racism and the internalization of racism as the primary assaults on our love for ourselves and each other. I understand love here as our ability to care for ourselves and each other spiritually, emotionally, physically and intellectually and to do it in a way that does not split us off from ourselves - body from mind, spirit from emotion, individual from community and so forth.

Like most progressive anti-racism trainers, we define racism as having to do with power. Separating it from the human flaws we all share such as prejudice and scapegoating, we see racism as a system of oppression based on race that in this country is perpetrated by white people against people of color.

It involves an unequal distribution of systemic power for people with white-skin privilege in four main areas:

1. the power to make and enforce decisions;
2. access to resources, broadly defined;
3. the ability to set and determine standards for what is considered appropriate behavior; and
4. the ability to define reality.

Privy.net Highlights 360 Must-Visit Places to Eat, Drink, Stay, Play, Shop, and Relax in Los Angeles

LOS ANGELES – (U.S. ASIAN WIRE) -- November 17, 2010 -- Private travelers’ network Privy.net has launched the “Privy 5 Los Angeles Guide” to help visitors and locals discover the best LA has to offer, particularly in the realm of authentic Asian cuisines such as the very top restaurants that serve Korean Barbeque, Shanghainese, Taiwanese Beef Noodle Soup, Dim Sum, Japanese Sushi, Hotpot and Vietnamese Pho.

SAN FRANCISCO, CA - Today, the Asian Pacific American Legal Center (APALC) and the Asian Law Caucus (ALC), members of the Asian American Center for Advancing Justice, applauded the California Supreme Court in upholding California law AB 540 in the case, Martinez v. Regents of the University of California. AB 540 is a state law that allows both documented and undocumented students to attend California's college

s and universities and pay in-state tuition rates.

Last September, APALC and ALC, along with a coalition of nearly 80 Asian Pacific American (APA) civil rights, legal, social service, and community organizations, filed an amicus ("friend of the court") brief with the California Supreme Court, supporting immigrant college students' ability to pay in-state tuition under AB 540. The brief describes how thousands of APA students have been able to afford college under AB 540, how undocumented students would be harmed if AB 540 was eliminated, and how APA youth become undocumented and the challenges they face.

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!

Far East Movement, the Los Angeles electro/rap group, reached a notable milestone recently. Not only did its third album, "Free Wired," debut at #24 on the Billboard charts, one of the highest charting debuts by any all-Asian American group, but its latest single, “Like a G6,” is the #1 single in the country (having already crowned digital charts for weeks).

By coincidence, on Oct. 12, 2010, the day "Free Wired" dropped, TV’s "Glee" featured Asian American actors Jenna Ushkowitz (Tina) and Harry Shum Jr. (Mike) joyfully singing and dancing their way through “Sing!” from "A Chorus Line." Three nights earlier, "Glee" star Jane Lynch hosted "Saturday Night Live" with musical guest Bruno Mars, the Filipino-Puerto Rican crooner whose iTunes-topping “Just the Way You Are” was just pushed aside by "Like a G6.”

This confluence seemed to be a long time coming. Prior to FM, the last group of Asian Pacific Islander descent to run the dance floor might have been the Jets, the Tongan-German, Minneapolis-based family band that had a string of dance/R&B hits, including “Curiosity” and “Crush on You.” That was back in 1985.

C.I.V Blog - The following is a letter of complaint we received over the weekend. It reminds us of how racism against the Chinese in North America (especially when at a time so many US politicians are playing the anti-China card in the mid-term election).

I am beginning to think that racism and racial hatred cannot be abolished. I used to think we could. I treat others well, I respect others, and living here in Vancouver, I was confident that here we tend to look past the colour of one’s skin.

Now, I am fighting against racism as I experienced it in Vegas. But fighting racism once you experience it so blatantly is more difficult since your sense of objectivism and your ability to identify what is right and wrong and your ability to move past bad experiences become very very limited.

As technology advances and the world becomes smaller, we are becoming as a nation, increasingly sophisticated and diverse. In this
new global landscape, few understand this international perspective as much as Schema Magazine. As one of Canada’s premiere sources for “ethnic cool,” Schema has been making waves with its coverage of pop culture news, feature interviews, and perspectives that speak to the minds of the new multicultural generation of Canadians. With its popular in-depth feature series, “But Where Are You Really From?” Schema asked readers to describe their experiences defining their identities. Now, Schema seeks to probe further into the quest for cultural definition, by hosting Balikbayan, Schema’s first-ever travel writing contest!

In partnership with Dot Asia, Schema invites its Canadian readers to answer this thought-provoking question:

“As a second or third generation Canadian, how has international travel to your
country of cultural origin changed your worldview?”

CSU Fullerton - Eleven students and their professor spent the past year engaged in a community project that has resulted in heightened awareness of sexual and reproductive health issues in the Asian American and Pacific Islander communities in Orange County.

Through a $9,000 grant from the National Asian Pacific American Women’s Forum, Tu-Uyen N. Nguyen, assistant professor of Asian American studies, conducted a year-long service-learning course that produced surveys and delivered results in the form of health education campaigns.

“Prior to taking the class, I had little awareness of reproductive health issues that Asian American and Pacific Islander women face,” said Juliane Nguyen, a senior health science and Asian American studies major, who is continuing work on the project. “I didn’t know what to expect from this class at first, but I was very interested about learning how many factors affect health. I learned about reproductive justice and how women are still fighting to have sovereignty over their sexuality, gender and reproduction.”

Here is some interesting news that was passed to me recently.

to my surprise this article was on the Wallstreet Journal website, wallstreet is probably the heart of Corporate America and it would probably be the last place that cares about the dignity of the Chinese people; let alone expose any political propaganda on anti-China campaigns.

But if you want an example of classic American xenophobia, racial profiling and even the "Yellow peril" it is all in this commercial.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OTSQozWP-rM

From the original blog source Fear Mongering 101: Anti-China Campaign Ads 

On 13 August, Noam Chomsky delivered a speech at the Peking University in Beijing. Chomsky, one of the leading public intellectuals of our age, is famous for his political activism and contributions to linguistic and philosophy. The talk, titled Contours of World Order: Continuities and Changes, was mostly about two dominant threats facing humanity: nuclear wars and environmental degradation.

While Chomsky has re-emphasized his criticisms on the United States, he has also expressed his opinions on China. In Chomsky’s view, emerging countries like China and India still have a long way to go to challenge the America. Of particular concern is the environmental cost of China’s development model, and the many internal and social problems that China has to tackle. This week, the Southern Metropolitan Daily publishes an interview with Chomsky. An excerpt of the interview is translated below.

The Khmer Rouge ran what is regarded as one of the twentieth century’s most brutal regimes. Yet the Killing Fields of Cambodia remain unexplained. Until now.

In ENEMIES OF THE PEOPLE the men and women who perpetrated the massacres – from the foot-soldiers who slit throats to the party’s ideological leader, Nuon Chea aka Brother Number Two – break a 30-year silence to give testimony never before heard or seen.

Judges have selected five finalists for the API TV Pilot Shootout.

Writers submitted their TV Pilot pitch idea for an opportunity to pitch their project to a FOX TV executive.

The top five finalists are: 
Amy Anderson “Amy Anderson Project”, Jared Asato “Supreme”, Benjamin Hsu “East Wilshire”, William Lu “Showrunners”, Roy Vongtama “The Zone”

The judges were: Ed Moy, a screenwriter and journalist for LA Asian American Movie on Examiner.com; Kelly Yee, VP of Development @ RipMedia Group, a social media marketing firm specializing in entertainment; and Susan Stark, pop culture follower.

The finalists will work with selected directors to make teasers for their projects.

New York (June 14, 2010) --- Asian CineVision (ACV) and the Taipei Economic and Cultural Office in New York (TECO) have announced a special presentation on New Taiwanese Cinema. The program will be presented during the 33rd Asian American International Film Festival from July 15 through July 24, 2010 throughout various venues in New York City. This unique showcase consists of four feature length films and two short film programs that bring together the works of Taiwan's new generation of filmmakers. TECO continues its commitment to promoting cross-cultural exchanges between Taiwan and the United States by joining ACV in presenting a program that highlights Taiwan's burgeoning independent film community.

Schema Magazine presents a monthly series of web writing workshops and speakers, featuring some of the most pioneering, innovative and ethnic cool voices on the Internet. In the world of social networking and Web 2.0, having an online presence on the web is becoming more and more important. Social media gives us the tools to be a part of this growing conversation, but how do we define our voice on the web as a writer, a producer and as a blogger?

iWriteAboutMe.com showcases dynamic web personalities, social media gurus, bloggers and writers who will talk about how they transformed their personal stories and diverse identities into an online brand.

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.)

As explained in section IV of Remember, the Asian-American Man and Woman are a couple under siege from mainstream America.

Those that choose to remain with each other are stamped as 'Asian and foreign', while on an unspoken but quite apparent level - only Asian women are afforded the opportunity to mingle and integrate into white social circles and white families.

The psychological pressure on the Asian woman to conform becomes immensely powerful, given the life-long indoctrination she is given by a mainstream American media that is completely devoid of images of Asian faces and depictions of viable Asian-American couples/families. This will gradually and inevitably destroy the kindred bond the Asian female shares with the Asian male from a young age, and the damage is thorough and complete.

In other words, the internalized racism that Asian-American children learn from the American Media destroys their ethnic self-esteem - and this in turn erodes the ability of the Asian-American boy and girl to love each other as adults.

By Professor Hyeouk Chris Hahm

Working with diverse immigrant populations who suffered from various mental health disorders in New York City, Professor Hyeouk Chris Hahm had a first-hand look at health disparities among Asian American communities. As a psychiatric social worker for 10 years, she saw a growing prevalence of young Asian American adults dealing with substance use and sexually transmitted disease (STDs). This led her to question the factors associated with risky health behavior patterns, as well as the protective factors of those behaviors including substance use and HIV/STDs risk behaviors among young Asian Americans.

In this new year of 2010 I hope everyone can continue to be optimistic as this ever struggling economy still has a heart beat, although we have been told our economies have recovered our wages are still just as terrible ( I think not ). There is still no excuse for not making the best of what we have and we should continue to strive for new heights.

In the past, this website had primarily worked on with publishing Asian related content, intelligent opinions, informative articles and any positive Asian media.

This year there will be a slight adjustment to the style of posting, usually we would publish news without actual commentary but as of today we will be adding in our 2 cents worth to everything post. Ideally would like to throw topics in the air and have people take it upon themselves to think about issues. 

We'll try to remain objective about each issue.

The first fear mongering article I've come across since the beginning of this new year sums up all the forecasts of "experts" panic stricken and fear mongering media who can only see this world burning in hell.

Here is another sad story from Australia and again so if you are wondering where this country is currently at in terms of racism and a multiculturalism then I assure you then it still rather backwards.

'White Australia' still has problems with Asian people socializing and gathering, apparently they feel threatened by it they have managed to use a bit of their imagination to link Asians gatherings with crime in such a way that would give them the right to ban Asians from social events would stop Gang violence.

Hello, someone sound the Asian civil rights violation alarms, wait a minute... what civil rights? this doesn't exist in Australia since racism is still wide spread where ethnic people are still treated like second class citizens socially and politically. It's just taking far too long for someone to recognize this problem.

Some thing's are better as never said and when words are spoken people should be accountable for what they say. Given that as responsibility, it could also be seen at another angle that there is also the responsibility for not saying what needs to be said.

Much could be said about the media little racist scheme during the U.S president's visit to China to improve economic ties and collaboration between the U.S and China.

Obama was on business trying to look for ways to fix up his bankrupt economy that was left to him in the worst state.

Firstly the white media tried painting China as anti-black racists and claims China disliked "chocolate coloured skin". Though this was not something that came from the Chinese mouths it was indeed straight out the mouth of white media who thought that they could make racists statements without taking responsibility by using China as a scapegoat.

To the people who thought racism was a thing of the past and no longer exists in the 21st century.... you are dead wrong. Some of us probably live in the nicer places in the country with some good multicultural friends but the people in the next town/city may not be so friendly.

To all my other dearest Asian Brothers, Sisters, Families, Civil Rights Advocacy groups, Asian Activists in western countries. We know racism is very much alive and it comes in all shapes and forms in mainstream society.

While we continue to experience it's reoccurring unpleasantness and Deja Vu's, I am all convinced we are still living as second class citizens and are still sunjected to different forms of  racial oppression.

Ancient Taoist once believed the driving universal life principles are found in Yin and Yang, nature will seek neutrality and find balance between interchangeable opposing forces. Though my analogy might sound a little ancient in the philosophical works but you would eventually understand my point in our society at present.