8Asians | An Asian American collaborative blog

This New York Times article “For Chinese-Americans, Schools Earn the Prize“, was published back in early November, but I just got this sent to me a few days ago and thought it was interesting:

“LAST February, Jerry Yang and his wife, Akiko Yamazaki, pledged $75 million to Stanford University for a variety of programs. Two-thirds of their gift will go to build a new environment and energy site. The balance will go to the medical school. Like other prominent Chinese-Americans, Mr. Yang, who is the chief executive of Yahoo, is loyal to his and his wife’s alma mater and enthusiastic in its aid. The fact that the beneficiary is a university is emblematic of what Chinese-Americans have accomplished as they have moved into the realm of multimillionaires and billionaires. Influenced by the Confucian respect for the importance of study, they have viewed American universities as the way up the ladder to success. And now second- and third-generation Chinese, and even some of the newer immigrants, are broadening their reach beyond education and the arts to social services. Or they try to wrap both agendas together — like helping poor Chinese get a better education in the United States….In Ms. Cheng’s view, the traditional Chinese in America have not been too philanthropic. “There is no tradition of philanthropy, and many people are helping family members or saving money,” she said. “But that is beginning to change.” “

This was interesting to read, since I had posted in “WSJ: The Revolution of Chairman Li” about Li Ka-shing, Asia’s richest man, trying to build a tradition of philanthropy. I can see why Chinese-Americans (as well as Taiwanese-Americans: note: Jerry Yang was born in Taiwan) would donate money to educational institutions, as a lot of their professional success is rooted in their education. It’ll be interesting to see the broadening of philanthropic efforts by the Asian-American community.

70 years ago today, December 13th, 1937, the Nationalist China capital city Nanking fell to the Japanese. What ensued over the next few months is known as “The Rape of Nanking.” In today’s New York Times, the newspaper reviews the documentary, “Nanking” in the article titled “Giving Testimony on the Horror That Was Nanking“:

” “Nanking” is a swift, incisive documentary about one of the lesser-known horrors of the 20th century: the 1937 Japanese invasion of the Chinese city now called Nanjing, where more than 200,000 civilians and prisoners of war were slaughtered in a matter of weeks. The capital of the Republic of China at the start of World War II and the headquarters of the Chiang Kai-shek government, this attractive, cosmopolitan city of parks and thoroughfares was largely destroyed in what is known as the rape of Nanking. Though some Japanese scholars dispute the statistics determined after the war by the International Military Tribunal for the Far East, it is widely agreed that during the occupation in 1937 and 1938, more than 20,000 rapes were also committed by the rampaging Japanese Army. In its concentrated savagery, the catastrophe was comparable to the even more numerous mass murders in Rwanda in 1994.”

The definitive book, at least in English in the United States, was authored by Iris Chang, titled “The Rape of Nanking – The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II.” To understand the post-World War II underlying animosity between China and Japan, one has to understand that Japan has never fully acknowledged publicly, and especially in their school textbooks, the atrocities it committed to the Chinese, especially The Rape of Nanking. Unfortunately, mankind has not learned the lessons of history and has repeatedly waged war and genocide against each other many times over since Nanking.

New American Media, the nations first and largest collaboration of ethnic news media, released the results of the first multilingual poll examining how the US’ largest ethnic groups feel about each other, as well as their attitudes on key elements of American society.  The goal of the poll is to create a basis to improve relationships between minority groups and spur better media coverage of ethnic communities.   

“We need to know what’s being whispered in our own backyards,” says Jeong. “We need a get-to-know-each-other campaign.” The first national poll of race relations among Asian Americans, African Americans and Hispanics from New America Media is a “starting point” in that campaign, says Jeong.The Korea Times, along with eight other major ethnic newspapers, signed on as a co-sponsor of the poll because ethnic media are increasingly becoming aware that it’s not enough just to cover their own communities.

“This is an extraordinary piece of information that can hopefully help our three communities to have a better understanding of each other,” said Pedro Rojas, La Opinión’s executive editor.“Wherever you live and work in the states today, and especially for us in California, learning from communities near us and around us is vital to growing,” says Anh Do, vice president of Nguoi Viet Daily News in Westminster, Calif., one of the oldest Vietnamese newspapers in the country and a sponsor of the survey.

Anyone who keeps abreast of race politics in America will not be suprised by the results from the poll.  Here are some quick highlights:

• Predominantly immigrant communities – Hispanic and Asian – are more optimistic about their lives in America.  By contrast, 60% of African-Americans believe the American Dream does not work for them.
• Racial tension between minority groups is rooted in a mistrust of each other.  44% of polled Hispanics and 47% of Asians are “generally afraid of African-Americans because they are responsible for most crimes.”  Meanwhile, 46% of Hispanics and 52% of African-Americans believe “most Asian business owners do not treat them with respect.”
• Meanwhile, all three minority groups seem more trusting of whites than each other.  61% of Hispanics, 54% of Asians, and 47% of African-Americans would rather do business with whites than members of the other two groups.

Whooo!  If these poll results are an accurate reflection of race relations in the US, we minorities have a lot of work to do to build ties with other groups!  

You can read an executive summary, including more poll results, here.

On a slightly different note, I also found the polling methodolgy for this survey to be quite intriguing. 

The poll of 1,105 African American, Asian American and Hispanic adults was conducted by telephone during the months of August and September 2007. The sample was designed to be representative of the adult population of the three major racial and ethnic minorities in the United States. Hispanic respondents were interviewed in English or Spanish, and Asian American respondents were interviewed in English, Mandarin, Cantonese, Korean, Vietnamese or Tagalog. RDD (Random Digit Dialing) methodology was employed in areas of the country that have significant (10 percent or more) African American, Asian American and Hispanic populations.

It’s really exciting to see that the poll was offered in multiple languages.  It’s nice to include communities of people who typically get overlooked by pollsters due to language barriers.