For people who are fans of seeing (hearing?) positive Asian American images on the radio, this will be a one-two punch: Energy 92.7 – the independent radio station which regularly brought BoA to San Francisco was bought by new owners a couple of weeks back, and immediately changed formats. To add insult to injury, Elvis — formerly of The Doghouse, the team of shock jocks fired in New York for a series of anti-Asian American pranks — is the new morning DJ. SFist has been writing about Elvis’s anti-gay morning pranks and include addresses where you can write about your displeasure.
De Anza’s Gay-Straight Alliance in Cupertino, CA is screening the film “Saving Face,” a romantic comedy about right, wrong, and everything in between. “Saving Face” was the first feature film from writer and director Alice Wu. In the film, a Chinese-American lesbian and her traditionalist mother are reluctant to go public with secret loves that clash against cultural expectations.
You can see the film trailer here for a preview. The movie will be followed by a student-led discussion encompassing the friction between cultural and LGBT values. The movie will begin promptly at 6:15 p.m., so please arrive early. Refreshments will be provided.
“Saving Face” Film Screening, Thursday, October 29, 2009
Conference Room B @ 6:00 p.m., De Anza Community College Campus
For more information, please see the Facebook event invitation here. Please feel free to invite your friends and loved ones — this is a free and open event where everyone is welcome!
In 1969, my dad came to the United States to get a Ph.D., on the recommendation of a mentor of his in Taiwan. The idea was to get the Ph.D., then return to Taiwan and get a high paying job in government, considered the easy way to get prestige and money in Taiwan. About a year after he arrived in the U.S., the U.S. government sent a letter to my mom, inviting her and the kids (myself and my sister) to move to the U.S. with a complimentary green card. This was part of a program the U.S. was running trying to convince foreign graduate students to stay in the U.S. after their studies were over. It was also known as the brain drain program, the U.S. government had in effect at the time, a.k.a. the brain gain for the U.S.
Even with our entire nuclear family in the U.S., my parents still planned on moving back to Taiwan after my dad’s studies were completed. But months turned into years, and at some point it became easier to stay than to go back, so my parents became U.S. citizens and made America their home. For most coming to the U.S. in the past few decades, the idea of returning home was a less common one, instead most immigrants came to the U.S. to find a better a life here for their families. With the recent downturn in the economy in last few years, there’s been a dramatic change in this attitude according to the Tech Crunch which is reporting a reverse brain drain to India and China.
Tech Crunch found in a recent survey of recent arrivals from India, over three-fourths indicated they were planning on returning to India. In a separate study of foreign students, a majority stated they did not think the U.S. was the best place for professional development and they planned on returning to their homes. Some of you reading this may think there’s little wrong with immigrants returning to their homes. The reality is, there is a price to pay if highly skilled workers go back to their home countries. As Tech Crunch states:
… A growing body of evidence indicates that skilled foreign immigrants create jobs for Americans and boost our national competitiveness. More than 52% of Silicon Valley’s startups during the recent tech boom were started by foreign-born entrepreneurs. Foreign-national researchers have contributed to more than 25% of our global patents, developed some of our break-through technologies, and they helped make Silicon Valley the world’s leading tech center. Foreign-born workers comprise almost a quarter of all the U.S. science and engineering workforce and 47% of science and engineering workers who have PhDs. It is very possible that some of the smart Indians who sat in the room with me holding their hand up on Columbus Day will start the next Google or Apple. Many of them will build companies which employ thousands. But the jobs will be in Hyderbad or Pune, not Silicon Valley.
Perhaps many of those planning on returning home will end up staying like my parents, but in this economy there’s definitely a higher chance of these immigrants going home. In my particular case, I’m happy my parents stayed, as I’ve definitely had more opportunities than my cousins who grew up in Taiwan. The question for these new arrivals is whether they and their children will do better in the U.S. or back in their home countries.
A mother called up the admissions officer of a local private high school.
“How can I best position my daughter to get into your high school?” she asked.
“What grade is she in?” replied the admissions officer.
“Fourth grade,” said the mother.
“Too late,” said the admissions officer.
That admissions officer recounting this story at a high school information night said with a grin that the mother went nuts. We knew that he was joking, but in the same room were an Asian family who dragged along what looked to be a fourth grade girl and fifth grade boy. Why were the Wife and I were at the high school information night? Number One Son will be applying to the local private high schools in about a year, and some of the best known private high schools in Silicon Valley were giving presentations and other information.
(flickr photo credit: Joe’s Photo Dump)
It may seem both extreme and crazy, but that Asian family might have the right idea. According to this US News and World Report article, Princeton sociologist Thomas Espenshade calculated that for students with similar grades, test scores, athletic ability, and family background, whites were three times as likely as Asian students to get in an elite college. When I first read that, I got pretty angry. Do I have to push my kids three times harder than white kids just to keep up? I calmed down when I realized that there are a number of caveats to this study. The study did not factor in extracurricular activities other than athletics. Mitchell Chang, a professor of higher education at UCLA, says in the article that Asian students might be less likely to participate in certain kinds of extracurricular activities and that Asian parents push their children to apply to big name schools. Also, Espenshade’s data from the 80’s and 90’s deals with elite colleges – what about the next tier of schools? I wish there was data about those.
Still, I have to admit that I am a bit spooked by all of this. I don’t think that those mitigating factors I mentioned explain away all of that three to one advantage. The Daughter will be applying to colleges next year, and I feel pangs of guilt that I let her drop out of Kumon a couple of years ago and didn’t make her to do club sports back when she was younger. Remembering her experience applying to the local private high schools (there are entrance exams and of course, test prep courses for that exam), it’s going to be a stressful time next year for Number One Son. On top of that, The Daughter will be going to waiting for college acceptance letters at the same time. Spring of 2011 will not be a happy time. Before then, I’ll probably end up reading Espenade’s forthcoming book Not Longer Separate, Not Yet Equal, that has more details from his study.
(Hat tip to John)
I may have been disappointed after watching Kimbo Slice fight on The Ultimate Fighter, but I didn’t have to wait long to watch another fight — this news segment on a fight between an Asian and Black woman on a MUNI bus in San Francisco. [EDITORS NOTE: This is a censored version of the YouTube fight -- the original version is here.]
Apparently, the Chinese lady tells people on the bus that all she wanted to do was sit down, but the other lady refuses to move her bag from the other seat and does not let the Chinese lady sit down. (Ironically, the first thing I thought of was Rosa Parks.) An argument breaks out, with the Black woman woman throwing the first punch and the Asian woman retaliating — unleashing fists pounding on the head and drop kicks! All this over a seat? I’ve had to use public transportation on a everyday basis before, and I can understand that it can be uncomfortable sitting next to strangers, but if I ever felt like I didn’t want to have to sit next to anyone, I would of have simply stood up and gave my seat away.
I don’t know what’s worse –the fight or other people actually not reporting the fight. It had to take another Asian lady to break up the two women, while another man yells to the Chinese lady in the fight, “BEAT HER! BEAT HER!” According to the news and other people who have commented about this video, there’s already been numerous fights on the bus including fights that involved the bus drivers; even the man who uploaded the video mentions that he was previously attacked on the bus as well.
For those who just want to laugh at all this, there’s been several video responses by Youtubers that you can check out: Chonny portraying the Chinese lady and responding to the fight, Peter Chao warning people not to mess with old Chinese ladies, Yahsoldier1’s video explaining how people of color use slang, and AdrienChen625’s response featuring “hitmanbreakeroftheye” singing to BOOM BOOM POW.
Ana Julaton with fellow boxer Glenn DonaireManny Pacquiao isn’t the only Filipino boxing champion. On September 12, Ana “The Hurricane” Julaton won the IBA Super Bantamweight championship (122 lbs) by defeating Kelsey “the Road Warrior” Jeffries. We have written before about female Asian boxers defying stereotypes, but “The Hurricane” not only defies stereotypes but proves that she can be the best at what is typically thought of as a male sport. Her match at the HP Arena in San Jose is said to be the first time a female bout was featured as an IBA main event.
Julaton lives in the Filipino American enclave of Daly City, California, in the San Francisco Bay Area. In this article, she cites the influence of Bruce Lee as an inspiration:
“I wasn’t sure where I fit in; I didn’t know who I was. I found some kind of purpose I guess, in seeing a successful Chinese American like Bruce Lee.”
His influence lead her not only to learn Taekwondo and become a boxer, but also to embrace her own Filipino-American heritage.
Another thing she has in common with Manny Pacquiao is the hall of fame trainer Freddie Roach. With excellent people like Roach behind her, Ana “the Hurricane” Julaton will be making an impact for some time to come.
Even though my parents came to the US from Taiwan in the 70s, I’m not a fan of Taiwanese pop music; maybe it’s because so much of it seem to come from Boy Bands from mainland China or consist of numbingly slow love ballads with videos of forlorn looking couples looking sad at each other in some random-ass wheat field. (Seriously, why are there so many Taiwanese ballad music videos of someone standing in a field? They have buildings, right?)
But this music video by Taiwanese indie-pop band WonFu — not to be confused with Asian American product company Wong Fu Productions — I can get behind, mostly because it takes all of that bubble-gum cheeriness that Taiwanese people love so much and puts it behind a bassline; imagine the catchy hooks of Puffy AmiYumi put through the wringer of a Taiwanese variety show, goofy sound effects and all. If you think they’re good enough to catch live, they’ll be touring cities and venues up and down the West Coast, including Seattle, Portland, San Francisco and schools like Cal Berkeley and UCLA.
It’s common in most metropolitan areas for one culture’s food to be crossed into another, and when it’s for a good cause, all the better. The Fulton street location of popular burrito chain Papalote will be serving Mexipino — that’s Mexican-Filipino — goodness for TONIGHT ONLY, combining Chicken Adobo with Garlic Fried Rice, topping it off with tomato slices and wrapping it in a tortilla. Restaurant owner Miguel Escobedo — Mr. E amongst his DJ circle of friends — will donate 30 percent of all sales to help support the victims of Tropical Storm Ketsana (aka Ondoy) in the Philippines. It’s handheld comfort food, and it’s also going towards a good cause. I was fortunate enough to partake in the taste testing this past Tuesday evening and was floored by how good this burrito was; it tastes the way my mom makes it.
