Alpha Asian

 

In this episode, the Journey to the West crew talk about how the working class or blue collar workers experience racism differently. They briefly touch on class as well and how it's a neglected dynamic in the Asian activism sphere: Journey To The West · JTTW Podcasts

Asian-Americans and persons of Asian descent make up an estimated five percent of the total U.S. population. But it’s estimated that Asian actors make up only about one percent of Hollywood's leading roles. Now a social media movement called #StarringJohnCho is pushing to open the creative industry to actors of all backgrounds.

In this presentation, minister Greg Hsu discusses how to lead effectively without losing who you are and how to break the bamboo ceiling .

So somebody had asked me, "Do you think the reason Asian males are suppressed (whether in the dating world or the corporate world) is simply because our cultural values does not match those of Western values?" And I replied back that yes, cultural dissonance does contribute to the suppression of the Asian American male.  I also said that racism and limiting beliefs were significant factors as well. But in my reply back ( The Overconfidence Effect ), I only addressed the supposed difficulties of Asian American men in the dating world.  In this post, I'd like to address Asian Americans in the workforce and some of the difficulties we face there. Now keep in mind that I have a rather sketchy employment history , so my observations of Asians in the workforce is a little limited.  I've worked a lot of odd jobs.  I've worked in retail.  I've been a personal trainer.  I was once a reader for the blind.  I've worked for the government.  I've ...

Sometimes when my wife and I travel, we take note of the local Chinese community. No matter where you go in the world, there is always a Chinese restaurant . As a Chinese American, I'm always curious as to how life is for other overseas Chinese . My parents are prime examples of the wide and varied range of the Chinese Diaspora: my father grew up in Kentucky, my mother was born and raised in India before moving to Hong Kong. A great book to read on this very topic is Sons of the Yellow Emperor by Lynn Pan. As someone who majored in Ethnic Studies and minored in Asian American Studies, I found this book to be an excellent complement to Asian American history books. In fact I would say I enjoyed this book much more than Ron Takaki's Strangers from a Different Shore or Sucheng Chan's Asian Americans: An Interpretive History . Sons of the Yellow Emperor is more focused in that it concentrates solely on the Chinese, but at the same time it is far more global in it...

You say "tomayto." I say "tomotto." You say crime of economic opportunity. I say hate crime: "Hate crime" means a criminal act committed, in whole or in part, because of one or more of the following actual or perceived characteristics of the victim: (1) Disability. (2) Gender. (3) Nationality. (4) Race or ethnicity. (5) Religion. (6) Sexual orientation. (7) Association with a person or group with one or more of these actual or perceived characteristics. People want to obscure the truth with a comfortable, easy euphemism: "economic opportunity." But if it looks like racism, acts like racism and talks like racism, then it probably is racism. It doesn't matter what your motivation is for the racism, whether its economic opportunity or hatred. Here's an interesting comment on the Hyphen blog that puts things in perspective: I love how everyone is approaching this as though it were a conflict with two equally culpabl...

View more news videos at: http://www.nbcbayarea.com/video .

So here's an interesting piece about the Italianization of Japan . Goldsea writer H.Y Nahm talks about how Japan is heading down the same road as Italy with regards to cultural and economic stagnation: In the American mind Japan is slipping rapidly down the slippery slope of cultural and economic senescence that transformed Ancient Rome into modern Italy — a once vigorous people long smothered in too much sauce. A place you go to on vacation, not on business. A place you rhapsodize with words like quaint, beautiful, charming, atmospheric, instead of dynamic, industrious, thrilling. There’s more than spurious analogies for this supposition of Japan’s decline as an economic powerhouse and poetic decay into a great tourist destination. A nation that prides itself on its homogeneity, racial purity, conformity, has no rough, vigorous stock from which to draw the fuel for propulsion back up into the ranks of world powers. Japan has no porous borders across which large numbers of dete...

The reporter refers to this woman as an ABC, but from the interview you find out she's a 1.5 generation.

The Year of the Ox is upon us. My wife and I are going to visit my parents over the weekend for the traditional meal. The Chinese, just like many other Asian ethnic groups, tend to be orally fixated: everything revolves around food. This makes a lot of sense, because historically the people of China went through quite a few hard times: plenty of war, plenty of famines, plenty of poverty. Tough times make tough people, which is why there are Chinese all over the world. An immigrant, by definition, is not passive, but a risk taker. After all, it takes a lot of balls to go on a quest for riches in a foreign and hostile land when you don't even know the language. And yet the Chinese and other Asians are viewed as passive, submissive and adverse to risk. Why is there such a big fat disconnect between perception and reality? Most of the Chinese immigrants of the Diaspora come from the Guangdong region. Historically this region of China has a long tradition of seafaring, and because the r...

I remember a short sci fi story that I read from John Varley called Persistence of Vision . It was about a drifter that came across a society of people who were both blind and deaf. And because these people were both blind and deaf, they of course relied a lot on their sense of touch. Every night, the people of this commune would engage in a gigantic group hug/orgy. EVERYBODY. Man, woman and child. It was their way of being in tune with each other, including everyone, soothing tensions and fostering a group cohesiveness. The funny thing is Bonobo chimps have this type of society. Bonobos have a matriarchal society and prefer sexual contact to violent confrontation to resolve conflict. It is literally make love, not war. Bonobos are closely related to our evolutionary ancestor, the common chimpanzee. Chimpanzees, however, form male-dominated societies. They are very territorial, and they will attack male outsiders on the periphery of their territories. You can see pa...

Sometimes we take things for granted here in the San Francisco Bay Area. News is out that Police Chief Heather Fong is retiring, and a lot of people are surprised to learn of an Asian American female who was the head of a police department. We've had 2 Asian American police chiefs: Fred Lau was the first Asian American police chief from 1996-2002 and is currently the TSA federal security director for Oakland International Airport. Asian police officers make up 13% of SFPD's sworn personnel. So you will find lots of Asian Americans in rather unstereotypical leadership roles. SFPD is not the only agency, however. You will find Asian Americans in the sheriff's department, the FBI, the district attorney's office, the fire department and various other agencies in the city. A true sign that an ethnicity has integrated with society is when it's members permeate every aspect of society.

I was looking around for images to stick on this blog, so I went through a pile of "A. Magazine" back issues. All I could up with was this screwball playing around with a lighter. A. Magazine is now defunct, as are "Yolk," "Transpacific," "Rice" and the short-lived "SAM." So the only real Asian American magazines we have (that I can think of) are "Hyphen" and "Audrey." I'm sure there are others floating around, some specific to Asian ethnic groups. So why aren't there more Asian American magazines? Let's explore a possible answer by "randomly" selecting an issue of A. Magazine, shall we? How about the February/March 2001 issue with Chef Ming Tsai on the cover? oHH Kay. First off the cover offends my heterosexual Asian American male sensibilities, because Ming's holding a flower with chopsticks. I hope the guy or gal who approved this cover was fired. Now let's go o...

My wife works for a high school in Millbrae, a "suburban-city" south of San Francisco. The City of Millbrae is a somewhat affluent area where although Caucasians make up the majority (approximately 63%), Asians make up a significant 29% of the population. One day my wife was talking to a senior student, a Caucasian girl bound for an Ivy League college on the East Coast. The girl related how she felt strange going away to a place where people would not understand what a "cha siu bao" was. My wife and I live in Daly City, another burb-city just south of San Francisco. Asians make up the majority in Daly City and constitute 52% of the population. If you walk into the Trader Joe's here in Daly City, you'll find a diverse clientele, Asian and non-Asian. Yet if you walk into Ranch 99 or any of the other popular Asian supermarkets here in Daly City, you will find non-Asians shop at these markets as well. What the future holds for the U.S. is "tr...