Hacienda-La Puente, California School Board Member Jay Chen this week announced his run for California’s 39th Congressional District. His announcement is posted on his campaign site and blog as well as his background:

Jay Chen, a Democrat, was raised and educated in Hacienda Heights. A first-generation American, Jay’s parents came to the United States from Taiwan to seek a better future and taught him the value of hard work, the importance of a good education and the responsibility to serve the community. A product of the public school system, Jay earned a scholarship to Harvard University.

After graduating with honors he worked in the business world as a strategy consultant to Fortune 500 companies. Today, Jay is a successful small businessman and serves our country as an intelligence officer in the United States Naval Reserve.  He was elected to the Hacienda-La Puente Unified School District Board of Education in 2007 and after four years of academic success and innovation in the district, he was re-elected with the top vote in 2011.

If his name sounds familiar, it’s because I covered Chen when he interviewed for The Daily Show regarding the “controversy” of his school district’s ““Confucius Classroom” – Chinese language programs partially funded by Chinese government. Chen’s background sounds pretty solid, if not a little too perfect – almost like California State Senator Ted Lieu.

Chen will be going up against an incumbent Republican Congressman, Representative Ed Royce, who has been in Washington for over twenty years and already has $3 million for his re-election campaign. Another challenge that Chen faces is that his Congressional district is about 40 percent Republican and 32 percent Democrat. The district is close to 30% Asian, so Chen may pique the interest of some who may not have considered a Democrat. But no doubt about it, Chen has a huge challenge ahead of him.

[Photo courtesy of Jay Chen for Congress website]

Michelle Kwan honored at the U.S. Championships during a break in the women’s competition Saturday, January 28th evening.

Last week to no one’s surprise, figure skater Michelle Kwan was inducted into the U.S. Figure Skating Hall of Fame in San Jose, California:

“Kwan was the face of figure skating for a decade, beloved as much for her grace and humility in defeat as her long list of triumphs. Though she won five world and nine U.S. titles, she is best remembered for her heartbreaking finishes at the Nagano and Salt Lake City games. The favorite at each, she settled instead for a silver (1998) and a bronze (2002). Indeed, the image of her sobbing as she stood below a beaming Tara Lipinski on the Nagano medals podium is as enduring as her majestic performance at the national championships a month earlier.”

I was at the 2002 Salt Lake City Olympic Games and saw Kwan perform live in the women’s figure skating finals, short program, where she came in first. Unfortunately, a few days later, she fell short in the long program. But I think it is safe to say, Kwan is probably the most well known and beloved American figure skating icon since Peggy Flemming, if not ever, in the United States. For a recent interesting interview with Kwan, a Chicago Tribune sports writer who has covered her entire career interviews her reflecting on her legacy as a skater.

After graduating from the Fletcher School of Diplomacy at Tufts University, she moved to Washington, D.C. to pursue a career involved in public policy – but no details to date have emerged as to what her actual next steps are. Personally, I do hope she helps inspire a new generation of Americans to become more civically involved in one way or another by example as what she has done for young figure skaters across America. Kwan has truly lived an amazing and inspiring life and I continue to look forward to what she does in her next career.

I was watching MSNBC the other day and caught this commercial, which apparently has been around (at least on YouTube) for almost a year. The commercial has testimonials from a wide, diverse group of Tempur-Pedic adjustable bed owners, who express, in English, their love for the product until 0:36 seconds into this this 1:00 minute commercial, where an Asian man speaks in what I think is Cantonese with his wife standing by his side.

WTF is going on? I had to rewind my DVR to see if I thought what I saw was right. This just reinforces the perpetual foreigner concept, and reminded me of the KFC commercial I had blogged about a while ago. I mean, if Tempur-Pedic wanted to reach a wider audience, why didn’t they also have Spanish speaking bed owners in the commercial as well? There are a lot more Spanish speaking Americans than Chinese speaking ones for sure.

The Amazing Race has done an amazing job of having Asian Americans competing as well as often winning the race. This season is no different, with sisters Misa & Maiya Tanaka hailing from San Diego, California. Maiya , 25, is a professional golfer on the LPGA Symetra Futures Tour, and her older sister Misa, 27, is a car buyer.

I have to say, both sisters are kind of cute and come across as pretty sassy. As they say in their interview, the sisters are often underestimated. It’ll really be interesting to see how tough and competitive they are in the course of the race. However, unfortunately in the history of The Amazing Race, there has only ever been one all women’s team that has won. So best of luck to Misa & Maiya!

There has been a long concerted effort to slowly chip away the rights of women’s reproductive rights since Roe v. Wade. Recently, Congress passed the “Let Women Die Bill” 251:170 HR358 where 250 members of Congress thought it okay to let a woman die in the ER rather than perform an abortion, tried to redefine rape as NOT rape if a woman was drunk, drugged or underage, and  passed a law that would basically result in no private insurance coverage of abortion even if women paid for the insurance with their own funds (currently 85% of private
insurance covers abortion). Click here to join the virtual march Dr. Yen is organizing or click here to learn more about this effort.

A fellow 8Asians blogger passed along this article from an Australian newspaper which fascinated me and describes and mirrors some of the challenges that I have seen for Asian Americans and our role in American civic duty, representation, politics, and more broadly, in society:

Ideas emerging from the council challenge the stereotype of a politically passive community. They insist Australia confronts its history of anti-Chinese racism and educate its children about it. They question why Asian faces are absent from our TV screens. They challenge political parties – and the Chinese community itself – to deal with the lack of ethnic Chinese Members of Parliament (MPs). And while they say it’s time the Chinese had a voice, they admit the diversity of the community prevents any one group from claiming to represent it.

In a 2006 census, more than 700,000 Australians (almost 4 per cent of the population) – traced a Chinese ancestor – and I am sure, a slightly broader and larger group of Asian Australians. Chinese is the second most spoken language in Australia outside of English! From the article, Asian Australian immigration patterns and struggles also seem to have also mirrored the United States:

“‘We are seen as very good as surgeons, accountants, doctors, but there seems to be a sort of gatekeeping at a cultural level, so the Chinese are not able to have a voice.” Jen Tsen Kwok, who is writing a PhD on Chinese Australian engagement in politics, cautions against any assumption of a homogenous Chinese community. Instead, there are diverse communities made of different strands: descendants of 19th century migrants who survived the White Australia policy; students from Malaysia and Singapore who came in the late 1950s and 1960s; refugees from Indochina in the late 1970s; and the surge of migrants from Hong Kong, Taiwan and China from the late 1980s.

I only spent a week in Australia – in Melbourne and Sydney – and loved my visit and vacation there. I can’t say that I interacted with a lot of locals, let alone any Asian Australians. But I guess that it’s not too difficult to imagine that many Asian immigrants to predominately white majority countries have experienced similar challenges. I think those of you interested to read about such challenges in a different context – in Australlia – you should read the whole article.

To be honest, I don’t think Americans (including myself) knew much about Australia in general except for our preconceived notions from popular culture – from Crocodile Dundee, Men at Work, the 2000 Sydney Olympics and through actors and actresses (all white) such as Russell Crowe, Nicole Kidman, Heath Ledger, Cate Blanchett and Hugh Jackman.

“One nominee, Phillip H. Kwon, a Korean immigrant who lives in Bergen County, worked under Mr. Christie when Mr. Christie was the United States attorney for New Jersey, and now works in his administration as first assistant attorney general.“

Kwon will be the first ever immigrant and first ever Asian American to be nominated, and if confirmed, serve on the New Jersey Supreme Court. New Jersey’s Asian American population represents about 8% of the state’s population, so not a total shocker that Kwon was nominated.

However, kind of surprising that Kwon will be the first ever immigrant to have been nominated. I mean, when I think of immigrants in New Jersey, rightfully or wrongfully I think of Italian Americans because of The Sopranos and Jersey Shore. Congratulations to Kwon and best of luck to him on getting confirmed!

The most recent Asian American I recall being nominated and confirmed to a state Supreme Court is Goodwin Liu in California.

[H/T Asianspushingazns]

The latest Target commercial highlights the first interracial Asian American couple since I’ve been blogging about Target commercials. It’ll be interesting to see if Target highlights another couple with an Asian American Man (AM) with a White Female (WF) like McDonald’s recently did.

In this television ad, this couple has moved into their newly purchased home. And that home has a kitchen sink that doesn’t exactly work. There’s always Target where you can buy a Brita pitcher. Well, not exactly Target’s best commercial. I liked the last commercial I blogged about, Little Drummer Girl, a lot better. Overall, I’m not into these short Target commercial, but the older longer-form commercials with More To Luv by Minnutes as the background music.