By now, this political ad of a Chinese Professor paid for by “Citizens Against Government Waste” has certainly created quite a splash in the Asian American blogger & social media world, most notably Angry Asian Man who posted a very angry entry about it:
“This new political ad, titled ”Chinese Professor” and paid for by “Citizens Against Government Waste,” is running on some serious Red Menace juice, and has to be one of the most racist and xenophobic pieces of fear-mongering propaganda I’ve ever seen.”
But is this ad truly racist and xenophobic? Let’s break this video down under an objective lens and look at it carefully, after the jump: Continue Reading »
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I previously blogged about Jennifer Pae running for Oakland city council, but what I didn’t realize was that Jean Quan was running for mayor. Just the other night, I received a Facebook invitation for a fundraiser for her. Jean Quan was Oakland’s first Asian American woman city council member.
If Quan wins, she’ll not only be the first Asian American to be Oakland mayor, but the first woman to accomplish that feat as well. Quan has a major opponent in former California State Senate leader Don Perata, who is better funded and I have to believe, more well known.
Quan’s background, and those similar to hers, fascinates me:
“Oakland is my home. My family has been part of this city for over a century, since my great-grandfather, grandfather and his two brothers took the ferry to Oakland after the 1906 earthquake to become a part of the new Chinatown.”
Before moving to California, I had known about the Chinese who immigrated to the United States who helped build the railroads. But I had never actually ever met or known anyone whose families preceded the 1960s with immigration reform until I met Evan Low.
Personally, much like the governorship of California, I am not sure why anybody would want to be the mayor of Oakland. The problems there just seem so intractable. Whoever does eventually win to become mayor, I wish him or her the best of luck!
There might be a time in the near future that both San Francisco and Oakland both have Asian American mayors. Now that would really change the literal face of government in Northern California. Imagine all three major cities – San Francisco, Oakland, and San Jose – in the Bay Area had Asian American mayors. Then I’m sure Hollywood would be making Red Dawn III: Invasion from Within.
Shopping With GASP!
Over a week ago, I had a chance to briefly meet Jennifer Pae, a candidate for Oakland City Council at the annual Emerge California fundraising event. If you haven’t heard of Emerge California, it’s “part of a national movement to address the under-representation of women in elected office at the local, state, and federal level.” Apparently, the US. ranks 84th (!) in the world in terms of women being represented in elected office, behind Mexico, China and Pakistan, a country who had a female Prime Minister, Benazir Bhutto. Given the fact that women are the majority on college campuses, law school and medical school, they only make up 17% of the U.S. Congress.
Jennifer took Emerge California’s seven-month training program with classes that teaches skills like Public Speaking and Communication, Fundraising, Media and Messaging, and more. It’s exciting to see more and more Asian Americans, especially women like Jennifer and Jane Kim, running for public office! If you live in Oakland, please consider voting for Jennifer in November!
EDITORS NOTE: The opinions in this blog post are not necessarily shared by 8Asians.com or other bloggers that post on this blog.
On May 31st, I was informed by Tanzila Ahmed of Sepia Mutiny that a major protest was going down at the Los Angeles Israeli consulate on that very day. This protest came as a result of the Israeli military raid on a Gaza humanitarian vessel that left at least nine passengers dead and many more wounded. Immediately after the incident, protests sparked all over the world to denounce the Israeli government’s actions against the Mavi Marmara ship that contained pro-Palestinian activists on board.
Even though I’m passionate about social justice activism, I have never participated in a protest before — I needed to know what the experience was like. When I got there around 4pm, it was slow at first but less than half an hour later, people were rushing in to join the protest, cop cars were circling around like nervous bees, and passing cars were honking in support of the protest (and others who yelled out obscenities against it.) It was an exhilarating experience to be in the thick of it all and to be surrounded by so many passionate people from all religious sects and ethnicities who stood together in solidarity. The sight of so many different people banded together over this matter made me calmly smile, and I got to meet a lot of great people from the Answer LA and the Al-Awda coalitions that organized the demonstration and it was great to gain a little perspective on those who want to put an end to the Israeli occupation in Gaza.
This past Monday, President Obama hosted a reception at the White House celebrating Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month. Amongst the honored guests was Father Vien of the Mary Queen of Vietnam Church in New Orleans, who was profiled in an excellent documentary which I saw earlier this year at a film festival called A Village Called Versailles. The film, which is part of PBS’s Independent Lens series, will be airing this Tuesday, May 25th on PBS and follows the Vietnamese American community awakening politically in the aftermaths of Hurricane Katrina. Now, Father Vien and others are fighting another crisis in New Orleans. The BP oil spill has hugely impacted the Southeast Asian/Vietnamese American fishermen who make up 35-45% of the fishing industry along the Gulf Coast.
I’m glad President Obama takes the time out of his busy schedule to celebrate Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month. As he’s stated many times, it’s personal. His half-sister is Asian American, as well as his brother-in-law and their children.
Our friends at Asian Pacific Americans for Progress (APAP) are rolling out with a Top 10 list of the “top Asian Pacific American progressives” of 2009… but they need your help to find them! Nominate community leaders, workers, students, college grads, faculty, staff, government officials, Hollywood, the private sector, etc. who are working tirelessly in advancing progressive values and representing our communities. If your submission is selected as one of the top 10 progressives of 2009 then they will be featured at the end of the year on Asian Pacific Americans for Progress. Aside from highlighting the dedication of the work being done in the progressive movement by fellow APAs for Progress you’re submission will be eligible for infinite cyber/e-bragging rights. Deadline for nominations is December 4, 2009, 11:59 pst. To submit a nomination, click here.
Folks at Asian Pacific Americans for Progress (APAP) are reporting that a bunch of APA activists are upset at the Oakland Planning Commission for approving a permit for a new bar in Chinatown to be titled “Geisha”, stating that the name invokes violent and derogatory stereotypes against Asian women. The campaign is headed by Diana Pei Wu, Jenn Pae, Angelica Jongco, Xiaojing Wang, and Jen Mei Wu.
No, I’m not kidding you. Aside from the heavy cultural significance of the word, the leaders of this protest also cite that giving the bar with such a name would help support sexual harassment, mental illness, and a negative economic impact with its indirect support for the sex trade and/or pornography. Oh yeah, and don’t forget that rapist in the area who was targeting Asian women. Wait, what? These are all related?
I hate to be the one to say this, but I can’t help think these folks are overreacting in this situation, and wrongly defining the history of Japanese geisha. They were dancing and musical entertainers, and nowhere did violence and overt sexuality come to play in their formal occupation. No, geishas aren’t prostitutes. Maybe some of them were but hey, it’s the oldest job in the world. If anything, they should be focusing their outrage on two Asian American businessmen with a tired and unoriginal idea for a new bar, or at least ask why someone would want to go to a Geisha bar in the heart of Chinatown. Wrong culture, people.
Also, what does the NorCal rapist have to do with this? Did he have a geisha fetish or something and this bar is his one chance to finally hang out in the open? I don’t see the connection.
It’s good to see politically active Asian Americans keeping an eye out for their community but I’m finding it hard to support a group who base their protests on a narrow, sensational definition of a single word, especially when it directly affects two men bringing more business to Chinatown.
PS. And I will say that I used to live down the street from the Geisha House in Hollywood; while I disliked the name, never once did I experience a down turn in the civic quality of life. All of that was caused by the Hummer driving douchebags who would congregate in the neighborhood.
(h/t: spamfriedrice)
Tonight, after I get off work, I will be casting my vote for New York City comptroller in the runoff election between city councilmen John C. Liu and David Yassky. As previously blogged about here on 8Asians, Liu received the most votes in the primary election two weeks ago, but not enough to reach the 40% needed to avoid a runoff.
Those of you living in the New York have probably seen the negative ad campaign waged by David Yassky (who, by the way, has the endorsement of The New York Times). In that ad, he brands Liu a liar:
“That’s the problem with comptroller candidate John Liu. He says he returned contributions from people who got city contracts. Not true. Liu’s commercial claims he found fraud in the MTA. Also not true. And get this: He claims he worked in a sweatshop, but it never happened. His father was actually a top bank manager.”
As several 8Asians pointed out in the internal listserv, it is entirely possible that Liu did work at a sweatshop, but his mother may have denied it in front of the media to “save face.” After all, many immigrant parents come to America to provide a better life for their children. How would it look then, if their own children worked in a sweatshop?
Yassky’s spokesman said Liu is not playing fair either. Yesterday was Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the year for Jews. Yassky, who is Jewish, took the day off from campaigning to observe the holiday. But Liu, who is not Jewish, went out campaigning. In his defense, Liu’s spokeswoman said they had already consulted with Jews about campaign etiquette, and that out of respect for the day, Liu’s team did not knock on doors in predominantly Jewish neighborhoods.
I don’t know about other New Yorkers, but at this point, I’m just ready for this election to be over. No matter the outcome, I’ll be glad to not hear any more negative campaigning for a while.
Tuesday night, city council member Sam Yoon was closely nudged out of the Boston mayoral primary, winning 21% of the vote.
Incumbent Mayor Thomas Menino won 51% of the vote and fellow city council member Michael Flaherty won 24% of the vote. Now, Menino and Flaherty will battle it out in November in the general election. Flaherty still has a big uphill battle to defeat Menino, who has run Boston for sixteen years and is likely to run it for another four.
Given his relatively short time in the Boston politics, Yoon made a remarkable and commendable effort. I’m sure this isn’t the last we’ll hear of Sam Yoon.
If there’s anything I despise, it’s spam.
One thing I hate worse than spam? It’s political spam. And the 80-20 Initiative doesn’t do itself or the Democratic Party any favors.
Lo and behold, I go and check the one single e-mail address I hold currently that I have never given out. I mean, seriously. Since I created this account in 1997, it’s been used for other things under the profile. Every so often, I’ll run some content to the email, but it’s never given out as my personal email for any reason that I can think of. And go figure this out. It’s different from the one that I wrote about back in April on this annoying group.
In any case, I’ve already made up my mind on whom I’m going to vote for in the next election. But I tell you what. If Asian Americans hate the whole spam bit as much as I do? E-mails like this that come out of the blue and obviously target you by based on your last name, would definitely put anyone over the edge and vote against the party that the e-mail is supporting.
When it comes down to it, I personally truly hate marketing tactics based on:
(1) Compiling “phone book lists” looking for people’s last names.
(2) Spammy type emails that don’t have automatic removals.
What’s worse? Political messages are not enforceable by the FTC via the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003. Oh yeah, you as Asian Americans must deal with this “organization” (if you can even call it that) and just take their junk.
I’ll also add that it’s interesting in checking my spam folder for that account, I’m now signed up for a bunch of Asian spam in native language. Pretty nice considering I don’t really read native language sites much, and definitely don’t give them that email even if I did. Gee, doesn’t take a genius to run them both together does it, especially when I don’t get anything else there. Since 1997.
Personally, if I was Obama and Biden’s campaign? I’d probably not take any money from this PAC and make darn sure they weren’t linked. Jaehwan put it into words perfectly in this comment:
“Thinking Asian Americans disagree on different things, but it seems like all of us are united in condemning 80/20.”
If you’re easily offended by racial slurs, do not read this. The intent of this post is to look at words targeting a certain populace is later on applied to a general population.
I was reading my daily dose of news when I ran across some things about the current Republican candidate, Senator John McCain, and something he had said back in 2000. Apparently in response to a question, he replied:
“I hate the gooks,” McCain said yesterday in response to a question from reporters aboard his campaign bus. “I will hate them as long as I live.”
At first, I was in shock since McCain was a Vietnam veteran. It’s not like I’ve never heard derogatory words before, but my initial reaction was:
“Wait one second. Isn’t that the wrong people?”
So I did some research. Apparently the word “gook” comes from hanguk which is reference to Korea: “han” is a reference word towards Korea and “guk” means country. This is similar to Mandarin where Korea would be said as “han guo” in the same referential pattern. But apparently after the Korean War, the term was then used by American soldiers against the Vietnamese, and currently is more generally used against anyone of Asian descent.
But what was really interesting is that there is a generalization going on with all of these slurs; every single one that used to be directed at a certain type of person usually designated by skin or country, is now used in a more general sense against the entirety of Asians. Buddhahead, chink, and a whole bunch of others happen to now be termed for Asians in general.
I’m also curious if ill education has to do with the perception growing from a targeted to a general populace. If you’ve noticed with the slur “gook”, it went from something that had some historical meaning to later on where all Asians are being called that word. The same could be said about many of the other Asian slurs along with other ethnic and religious slurs.
Have any 8A readers noticed similar things going on through the ages? I would imagine that geographical locale would make a huge difference if your ears have picked up on the language and gives a lot more value in deconstructing why and how the words are used. Yet, when these demeaning words are generalized, it loses the effect that it originally had. Either way, they’re bad words.
Photo Credit: (CrimsonNinjaGirl)
Breaking news from the San Francisco Chronicle’s web portal, sfgate.com, that Ed Jew, the City supervisor who was accused of living in a different city while representing the predominantly Asian Sunset District, has resigned in exchange of San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom and City Attorney Dennis Herrera dropping a lawsuit and misconduct proceedings. He is still dealing with lawsuits by SF District Attorney Kamala Harris, who filed felony perjury and fraud changes in connection to his residency, and the FBI who indicted Jew on bribery, fraud and extortion by allegedly telling people who tried to establish Quickly branches in his district to pay him up to $84,000 in bribes.
It just makes me wonder when the Asians in SF will stop trying to focus their efforts in getting an Asian supervisor just in the Sunset, and actually start developing politicians in different parts of SF where we have significant populations–like everywhere else in the City. Even though I now live outside of SF, it’s always amused me to see how all the efforts by Asians to get elected to the SF Board of Supervisors was always focused on the Sunset, and yet it seemed that less attention was paid to Asians running in other districts, like the Richmond, Chinatown, or even Visitacion Valley/Bayview. Considering that SF is 40% Asian, I would think that we would try to support Asian politicians all over the City, and not just areas that seem to be a sure bet.
(Flickr photo credit: Neko Ewen)
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