6
2012
Reblogged from fascinasians :
OC Company Boss To Asian Employee: You Can't Speak Vietnamese Even On Private Time
A veteran Orange County lab assistant who claims that his boss banned him from speaking Vietnamese anytime on the job—even on breaks or at off-duty functions—has agreed to settle his employment discrimination lawsuit prior to a scheduled 2013 trial.
This story is fucked up. You know what else is fucked up? The image they chose to pair with this article.
28
2012
27
2012
Reblogged from gaobibaituo :
"
UC-Berkeley professor Elaine Kim’s documentary “Slaying the Dragon: Reloaded” details the frictionless path by which pop fantasy transitions into real-world perception, with troubling real-world consequences. And, as the documentary points out, the same slippage that conflates media fictions with flesh-and-blood people also imposes imagery emerging out of the “exotic East” on Asian women in the West.
“Asian women as prostitutes – the oversexualization of our image – we have to live with that history,” DeAnza College Asian-American studies professor Christine Chai says in the film, which goes on to point out that virtually every Asian-American woman, regardless of how independent, educated, successful and strong she might be, has at one point or another found herself uncomfortably boxed into a stereotype by those whose primary exposure to “Asian” culture comes from cinematic blockbusters and pulp bestsellers.
The price can go far beyond discomfort. DePaul law professor Sumi K. Cho has linked the Asian-woman-as-prostitute stereotype to what she calls “racialized sexual harassment,” professional exploitation rooted in the expectation that Asian women are culturally amenable to sexual advances.
"
3
2012
Reblogged from herocountry :
20th anniversary of Yoshiro Hattori’s murder
On the evening of October 17th, 1992, (18th in Asia) a 16-year-old Japanese exchange student named Yoshiro Hattori went with his homestay brother, Webb Haymaker, to a Halloween party organized for Japanese exchange students. With a love for classic American movies, Hattori was dressed up as John Travolta from Saturday Night Fever. The boys arrived at the wrong house just a few doors down. Hattori rang the doorbell as the wife Mrs. Peairs saw them from the side door and called her husband to get a gun. Rodney Peairs opened the front door holding a gun with a laser sight and told the boys to freeze. While Haymaker ran, Hattori turned around and said, “We’re here for the party.”
Right out of The Terminator, Rodney Peairs, a six-foot-two armed man, shot the 130-pound Japanese teenager dressed up as John Travolta. If Hattori had dressed up as Olivia Newton John instead, would he have met the same fate?
I seem to recall I had read somewhere that one of the Paeirs made a comment about “a Jap at the door” before picking up the gun. For years, I contemplated about the possible racist motivation behind the murder that has fascinated me since I first heard about it. Perhaps it was because I too was a “foreign student.” Imagine me being in Baton Rouge dressed up as a witch knocking on the Paeirs’ door. Would I have met the same fate?
That Halloween of 1992, I had just arrived at Yale and was completely buried in poststructuralist theory and frozen yogurt and I didn’t hear about the story until months later. That Halloween I dressed up in drag and went out with some English graduate students. Harvey, a queer PhD student, was also in drag. That night, we might have been presenting an academic paper somewhere on campus. I remember that Harvey was accosted by some New Haven locals for being in drag before getting back to our dorm.
When I went to Hong Kong for Christmas break, everyone was telling me about the story of this Japanese boy who got shot in America.
“I didn’t hear a thing about it!” I exclaimed. “All I knew was Clinton got elected and we stayed up in the dorms glued to the television screen until Bush congratulated Clinton.”
“You aren’t scared in America?” asked my friends.
“I do love horror movies, you know,” I flippantly replied, half-believing in the story they told me.
Hattori’s story stayed with me until years later when I got on-line and was able to research about the murder. In the age of microfiche and lack of internet literature, it was very difficult to research into expired news on top of all the research and reading I had to do as a graduate student.
Of course, the grave injustice was that Rodney Paeirs was acquitted after a seven-day trial. In a civil action, Rodney Peairs was found liable to Hattori’s parents for over half-a-million dollar damages that they used to fund two charities in Hattori’s name—one for American high school students wishing to visit Japan, and the second to lobby for gun control.
To the world, the real American horror story comes from a good old shot of mundane ignorance in America.
(Note: The correct name is actually Yoshihiro.)
My mother told me this story when I was young (it must have been around the time of the actual murder or only a few years after now that I think about it) as a warning not to trust white people.
17
2012
Reblogged from nomoretexasgovernorsforpresident :
![racebending:
[IMAGE: In a promotional still from Cloud Altas, Asian actress Bae Doona cries as she is snuggled by Jim Sturgess in yellowface]
If you don’t understand the controversy around Cloud Atlas, then in all likelihood, you are focused on the film in terms of its artistic quality. What you appreciate about the film is its grand vision: the sweeping soundtrack, grand special effects, universal concepts of reincarnation and rebirth, adventure on the scale of centuries or millennia.
So I’d like to make something perfectly clear: our concerns are not about the quality of the writing, the story, the special effects, makeup artistry, or cinematography.
Our discussion will be about social impact, culture, and politics. The nature of a multimillion dollar venture like Cloud Atlas is that it is shaped by culture and society. It is designed for the consumption of moviegoers. Millions of consumers will pay to see this film. The act of payment will encourage other films of similar cloth and make. The act of viewing will refine the viewer’s sense of pop culture, if only in a small way.
…
In watching the Cloud Atlas trailer, the parallels are clear. As with these other films, we see that white creators and performers are permitted to determine what it means to be Asian. It’s frustrating, because the trailer suggests a story that comfortably meshes with preconceptions and stereotypes of Asians: of a futuristic world of high technology and little soul, where the “all-look-same” vision of Asianness is directly translated into racks of identical, interchangeable Asian “fabricant” clones. It suggests a world where white actors (in yellowface) and Asian actresses enter into romantic trysts–while excluding the voices and faces of Asian American actors.
…
All too often in conversations about race in the 2010s, it seems that the racial conversation is all about performing the same racist actions but justifying them with new words. The use of yellowface, or even blackface, can be justified if the director uses the term “post-racial” or “colorblind.” But an honest look at statistics and demographics reveals that our society is anything but. We cannot enter a “post-racial” world by pretending problems do not exist, by pretending that lopsided representation is justified.
Acting as an apologist preserves the status quo in favor of those who already have the lion’s share of representation, who “don’t care” about race issues because they are fundamentally content with the system. If you can see your race and gender reflected in 80% of the faces that dominate movie posters, then it becomes meaningless to you. It’s worth nothing. It doesn’t damage your self-esteem, as it does for American children of any demographic other than “white male.”
For the rest of us, Cloud Atlas represents simply another film in the long tradition of Hollywood exclusion. It has been a very, very long road. We can only keep the discussion alive, despite how much further yet we need to go.
An excerpt from Racebending.com’s latest article: The Cloud Atlas Conversation: Yellowface, Prejudice, and Artistic License.](http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m8x74nH9oz1rqqwj4o1_500.jpg)
[IMAGE: In a promotional still from Cloud Altas, Asian actress Bae Doona cries as she is snuggled by Jim Sturgess in yellowface]
If you don’t understand the controversy around Cloud Atlas, then in all likelihood, you are focused on the film in terms of its artistic quality. What you appreciate about the film is its grand vision: the sweeping soundtrack, grand special effects, universal concepts of reincarnation and rebirth, adventure on the scale of centuries or millennia.
So I’d like to make something perfectly clear: our concerns are not about the quality of the writing, the story, the special effects, makeup artistry, or cinematography.
Our discussion will be about social impact, culture, and politics. The nature of a multimillion dollar venture like Cloud Atlas is that it is shaped by culture and society. It is designed for the consumption of moviegoers. Millions of consumers will pay to see this film. The act of payment will encourage other films of similar cloth and make. The act of viewing will refine the viewer’s sense of pop culture, if only in a small way.
…
In watching the Cloud Atlas trailer, the parallels are clear. As with these other films, we see that white creators and performers are permitted to determine what it means to be Asian. It’s frustrating, because the trailer suggests a story that comfortably meshes with preconceptions and stereotypes of Asians: of a futuristic world of high technology and little soul, where the “all-look-same” vision of Asianness is directly translated into racks of identical, interchangeable Asian “fabricant” clones. It suggests a world where white actors (in yellowface) and Asian actresses enter into romantic trysts–while excluding the voices and faces of Asian American actors.
…
All too often in conversations about race in the 2010s, it seems that the racial conversation is all about performing the same racist actions but justifying them with new words. The use of yellowface, or even blackface, can be justified if the director uses the term “post-racial” or “colorblind.” But an honest look at statistics and demographics reveals that our society is anything but. We cannot enter a “post-racial” world by pretending problems do not exist, by pretending that lopsided representation is justified.
Acting as an apologist preserves the status quo in favor of those who already have the lion’s share of representation, who “don’t care” about race issues because they are fundamentally content with the system. If you can see your race and gender reflected in 80% of the faces that dominate movie posters, then it becomes meaningless to you. It’s worth nothing. It doesn’t damage your self-esteem, as it does for American children of any demographic other than “white male.”
For the rest of us, Cloud Atlas represents simply another film in the long tradition of Hollywood exclusion. It has been a very, very long road. We can only keep the discussion alive, despite how much further yet we need to go.
An excerpt from Racebending.com’s latest article: The Cloud Atlas Conversation: Yellowface, Prejudice, and Artistic License.
17
2012
Reblogged from asiansnotstudying :
What’s it like to grow up with a turban in New York City?
I asked Naunihal Singh, a professor of political science at Notre Dame, whose much-circulated essay at the New Yorker examines why the mass killings in Aurora, Colorado received so much more coverage than the shootings at the Sikh gurudwara in Wisconsin.
Singh is Sikh, and grew up on the Upper West Side in the 70s.
“I got hassled so often,” he told me over burgers at Big Nicks, on Broadway, “that when I would be walking down the street with friends of mine from high school, they would hear things that people would yell at me that I would completely screen out.”
Such as?
“‘Raghead’ sort of stuff. Or ‘sand nigger.’”
Occasionally, he had stuff thrown at him, or guys on Central Park West trying to pick fights, as their girlfriends stood nearby.
Singh learned to walk away. “It hurt my pride,” he said. “You also flip people off.”
In one sense, he said the city was just generally more “aggro” back then, recalling the Jewish friend who “had his face kicked in” on the way to CBGBs. His old Jewish neighbors counseled him to “always be careful about Gentiles.”
9/11 changed some things: he said he’s been much less likely to get harassed by black people than by whites. He reasons that African Americans are simply more skeptical of the war on terror. It’s invariably white people, he said, who call him a terrorist (Chicago) or threaten to pull his turban off (South Bend, Indiana).
What is it about the turban?
“It’s not about thinking I’m a Muslim. It’s this sense about someone being an outsider.” A “visceral effect,” he said.
“It’s one of the reasons why I applaud every time I see a bearded hipster get on the L train out in Williamsburg. I figure the more people there are with beards in society, the less the beard is a mark of difference.”
5
2012
Reblogged from le-kif-kif :
nomoretexasgovernorsforpresident:
Sgt. Adam Holcomb, who was found guilty of maltreatment and assault — but acquitted on charges of negligent homicide, reckless endangerment, communicating a threat and hazing — in the death of Pvt. Danny Chen, was sentenced to just 30 days in military jail: Jury Recommends 30-Day Sentence for Sergeant in Army Hazing Case.
But he will remain in the service. A military jury recommended Holcomb should be reduced one rank, to specialist, and be fined $1,181.55. This is apparently the monetary cost of driving a Chinese American soldier to his death.The U.S. military, overall, doesn’t acknowledge that sexual assaults take place within their ranks. So I’m not surprised they won’t acknowledge racism, either. Even if it leads to repeated violations ultimately causing a soldier’s death.
Fuck this shit.
This is down from $3,000 for Vincent Chin’s murder. I guess our lives are worth less and less each year.
5
2012
Reblogged from le-kif-kif :
![arielnietzsche:
thedailywhat:
Breaking News: Sikh Temple Shooting: At least four people are dead and many more are wounded in a shooting at a Sikh temple in Oak Creek, Wisconsin. Police have released little information regarding victims or the number of shooters, but scanner reports indicate at least 20 people are wounded while one of the suspects was “put down.” Witnesses inside described as many as four gunmen, one of them being a white male with a heavy build and wearing a sleeveless t-shirt.
The first officer on the scene was shot multiple times, and was transported to a nearby hospital. He is expected to survive.
[cnn]
Jesus fucking christ.](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m8ap1fmr8R1qzpwi0o1_500.jpg)
Breaking News: Sikh Temple Shooting: At least four people are dead and many more are wounded in a shooting at a Sikh temple in Oak Creek, Wisconsin. Police have released little information regarding victims or the number of shooters, but scanner reports indicate at least 20 people are wounded while one of the suspects was “put down.” Witnesses inside described as many as four gunmen, one of them being a white male with a heavy build and wearing a sleeveless t-shirt.
The first officer on the scene was shot multiple times, and was transported to a nearby hospital. He is expected to survive.
[cnn]
Jesus fucking christ.
(Source: thedailywhat)
26
2012
25
2012
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