I received the following item about the courageous actions of a group of NYU students opposing racism in the New York City music scene:

Greenwich Village, NYC – Last night, 20 New York University students held an educational rally to demonstrate against “Ching Chong Song,” a Brooklyn indie-folk band. (Both band members are Caucasian). The NYU students stood outside the band’s performance to pass out flyers educating attendees of the offensiveness of the phrase “ching chong.”

“Words like that contain a painful history loaded with intolerance, hatred, and belittlement,” said NYU sophomore Chi-Ser Tran, a demonstrator. When the band learned of the impending rally, it agreed to change its name and to make an apology during its performance. Band pianist and singer Dan Gower said the name wasn’t changed until now because of “all the action people have taken.”

The band formerly known as “Ching Chong Song” experienced similar protests in December at Bryn Mawr College. The protests there successfully got the band’s scheduled performance to be cancelled. Julia LaMendola, the other band member, wrote an open letter in the Bryn Mawr’s student newspaper in response: “Growing up a child of a gay parent in a tiny town, a poor second-generation Italian girl, I also have experience with the nuances of language. And give me a break you stupid twats…By the way, ‘ching chang chong’ is what people in Germany call the game rock paper scissors, and stupid petty retards is what I’m calling you.”

“While I am heartened that the band has agreed to change its name, I hope that we focus on the issue at hand: racism,” said NYU junior Frederick Loo Wong, a lead demonstrator. “We cannot hold pejorative epithets to differing standards. I am offended when someone uses the word ‘gay’ inappropriately. It is breath-taking when someone uses the ‘n-word.’ Why can’t the same apply to ‘ching chong’?”

NYU senior Lily Yuan expressed concern about the sincerity of the band’s apology. “But, even though the band changed their name, they announced it with sarcasm and pride and few words that meant nothing and left us standing in humiliation and shock.” Yuan was brought to tears during the band public apology when band member LaMendola said, “The college banned me from performing and then I wrote them a letter calling them retarded twats [the audience laughed]…Yea I thought it was pretty funny too…”

“However we may feel about the band’s apology, what we have done here tonight is show New York City that Asians are not to be belittled. We can organize and will not tolerate insults. But first, we need to all understand each other for a better society,” said Wong.

The band has agreed to change its name; however, it has yet to reflect those changes on its website. Also lacking is an apology on the website. The band’s website is: http://chingchongsong.com/. An article in NYU’s campus paper may be found here.

Lily Yuan and Tiffany Yu (not mentioned in article) are Senior Advisors for the NYU student group Asian Heritage Month. Frederick Loo Wong is a member of the group and a leader in the organization of the rally. The group plans to hold programs and workshops on stopping hate for all identity groups on campus. For more information or pictures you can contact them below.

Lily Yuan
Senior Advisor
Asian Heritage Month
New York University
ginlee.yuan@gmail.com
917.270.8324

Tiffany Yu
Senior Advisor
Asian Heritage Month
New York University
tiffanyt.yu@gmail.com
201.650.8223

Frederick Loo Wong
Member and rally leader
Fred.wong@nyu.edu
248.930.0805

Kudos to Lily, Tiffany, Frederick, and all those who helped in the protest. It certainly can be hard to stand up to every single incident of ignorance and outright racism that we as Asian Americans encounter on a daily basis, so whenever members of our community step up and proclaim that enough is enough, we owe them our gratitude and appreciation.

Keep up the good work and the good fight, everyone.

Today is Sunday, February 18, 2007 — Lunar New Year (as known to many as Chinese New Year), the Year of the Pig. In my article about Tet, a Celebration of Rebirth, I describe how Lunar New Year is celebrated among the Vietnamese. But for a more detailed description of how the Year of the Pig is likely to play out on an international scale, the Associated Press/Salon.com reports that unfortunately, it’s not likely to be a banner year for most people:

Sunday marks the start of the Chinese New Year and it’s a lucky one for those starting out in life. But the rest of us are in for a rough ride. Expect epidemics, disasters and violence in much of the world. “The Year of the Pig will not be very peaceful,” said Hong Kong feng shui master Raymond Lo. . . . Pig years can be turbulent because they are dominated by fire and water, conflicting elements that tend to cause havoc, Lo said.

“Fire sitting on water is a symbol of conflict and skirmish,” he said. “We’ll also see more fire disasters and bombings.” . . . It’s an occasion to have family feasts, buy new clothes and exchange red envelopes stuffed with gift money. Not everything about the future looks bleak. Most soothsayers said the world economy will continue to boom, though they advise people to be cautious about their investments. . . . Ronald Reagan was a pig. So are Arnold Schwarzenegger, Woody Allen and Elton John. Not to mention Hillary Rodham Clinton.

So it appears that on a worldwide scale, while financial matters seem relatively secure, people may need to be especially diligent in preparing for health epidemics, natural disasters, and violence. While that may or may not be true, I hope everyone has a happy and prosperous new Lunar Year!

As I’ve written about before, for centuries now, there has been tension and even hostility between Japan and Korea over Japan’s history of colonial rule over the Korean peninsula and in particular, its actions against Koreans during World War II. Sixty years later, as the Boston Globe reports, these same tensions are now being played out in a controversy regarding a children’s book:

The South Korean Consulate has asked the state Department of Education to rethink its use of “So Far From the Bamboo Grove,” an award-winning memoir of an 11-year-old Japanese girl fleeing Japanese-occupied Korea with her family at the end of World War II. The book is part of the curriculum in a number of Massachusetts middle schools but became a source of controversy last fall when a group of Dover-Sherborn parents, including Korean-Americans, objected to it, calling it propaganda that glosses over brutality inflicted on Koreans by their Japanese occupiers. . . .

The South Korean consulate, based in Newton, further complained that the book depicts Koreans as “evil predators” and asked the state to “seriously reevaluate the appropriateness of this book for reading at the middle school level.” The consulate wrote the state on Jan. 16, but the letter is surfacing just as the book’s author, Cape Cod resident Yoko Kawashima Watkins, prepares for a press conference tomorrow to defend herself against the complaints about her book. Watkins has said that she didn’t intend to avoid the history of Japanese-Korean relations but was trying to focus on her story of survival.

I have not read the book in question, so obviously I cannot definitively comment on its contents. However, I have two initial observations. The first is, with most children’s books, it is generally not very realistic to expect authors to provide a comprehensive overview of the historical context in which their story is told. By definition, children’s books can only do so much and only provide one of many narratives that can be applied toward any situation or event.

Having said that however, if in fact the book portrays Koreans as “evil predators,” then we have a problem here. It would be one thing to portray the Japanese military as predatory because as history shows, that is largely true. However, history also shows that in almost all cases, Koreans in fact were the victims of Japanese aggression and brutality, not the other way around.

Upon further research, New American Media has a very enlightening article that describes in more detail some of the book’s depictions of Koreans:

In the novel, Watkins writes about Japanese women who were raped by Koreans and other atrocities following the surrender of Japan to Allied forces. Koreans in the United States and in Korea have challenged the authenticity of these and other accounts in the novel, however, arguing that the rape of Japanese women by Koreans could never have occurred as the Japanese military presence remained throughout the country until well after American and Russian forces arrived in the area.

They also contend that Watkins’ accounts of U.S.-led bombing in Korea never occurred during the period covered in the novel, and, for example, her descriptions of removing the uniform of a dead Communist soldier are false since the Communist army did not exist until 1948, years after the events in Watkins’ tale.

Admirers of the novel include Linda Sue Park, a Korean American and author of “When My Name Was Keoko,” an account of her family’s experiences living under Japanese colonial rule in Korea. Watkins’s supporters say her tale speaks from an anti-war perspective, and that it is not presented in class as a historical work but as historical fiction.

So from what it sounds like and from what critics charge, the author has taken liberties with historical accuracy and in doing so, has disproportionately portrayed Koreans in a much more negative light than the Japanese. If that is the case, ultimately I have to side with the critics on this one.

Freedom of expression certainly gives authors like Kawashima Watkins the license to write fictionalized accounts of history. However, when such fictionalized accounts are so distorted that they are seen as biased, prejudicial, and ethnocentric, then the same freedom of expression she enjoys should be used by critics to denounce her work as such.

Finally, as the New American Media article also points out, let this whole episode be a lesson to all those who foolishly assume that any work by an Asian American author is good and is likely to receive praise from all Asian Americans. As you can plainly see, ethnic differences do exist and do produce tensions between different Asian groups.

Is it a sign that the Vietnamese American community is increasingly entering mainstream American society, or that it remains an unusual curiosity? You can judge for yourself — a new exhibit at the Smithsonian Museum entitled “Exit Saigon, Enter Little Saigon” captures the multifaceted immigration and resettlement experiences of Vietnamese Americans around the country:

It is the first exhibit at the museum and in the nation to highlight the journey of Vietnamese who fled to the U.S. after communists took control of the country. In March, it will leave the S. Dillon Ripley Gallery and head out on a three-year tour across the United States. . . . A sense of this Vietnamese-American community is laid out on the walls of the quiet gallery that is part of the Smithsonian Institution.

There are photos of immigrants being loaded onto helicopters – eyes filled with fear and uncertainty. In grainy film footage, emaciated immigrants wave for help from ships in rough seas – adrift and seeking a home. Next to images of struggle are pictures of happier times in a new land. They show immigrants in well-known American settings: boys in Cub Scout uniforms, families marching in Fourth of July parades and a man in a cowboy hat waving an American flag.

It also highlights the sense of tension that can exist as younger generations are raised in a culture distinctly different from that of those who came before them. The exhibit showcases barriers such as language and the outside influences of a foreign culture.

Kudos to Prof. Vu Pham, professor and research fellow at UC Irvine, for curating the piece, and to all those who helped to support and sponsor its creation. However the exhibit is framed, I think it’s great that people now have the opportunity to learn more about our community, history, and experiences, which is always a positive step for Vietnamese Americans and American society in general.

Similar to the U.S., Japan has apparently been experiencing a rise in bullying by schoolchildren against each other. As BBC News reports, many feel that the way to cut down on such bullying incidents is to reinstate corporal punishment:

Japanese schools should rethink their decades-old ban on corporal punishment, a government-appointed panel has urged. The report, submitted amid growing concern over bullying, stopped short of overtly backing beating, but suggested an end to a policy of leniency. Bullying was found to be involved in 14 of 40 youth suicides from 1999 to 2005 in a country where pupils are also under great pressure to perform well. . . .

Alarmed by the trend of bullying deaths, the panel, chaired by the Nobel laureate Ryoji Noyori, urged schools last November to punish classroom bullies and crack down on teachers who ignored the problem. . . . Japan’s education minister had previously denied bullying was a factor in the youth suicide rate.

As an educator and parent of an elementary school student myself, I consider bullying to be a very real problem whose consequences Americans are only beginning to understand. To me, education is not just about learning to read, write, and do math — it’s also about the larger social environment that can either encourage and facilitate a love of learning, or lead to alienation and despair. Clearly, a large part of that social environment is a student’s peers and how they treat each other.

Back to Japan’s proposals, I’m not sure if direct physical punishment is the most constructive way to address the bullying problem (it may teach offending children to just use violence to solve their problems), but I do agree that schools and teachers need to do a better job at cracking down on bullies, and to be held accountable if they fail to do so.

I also think some forms of corporal punishment, outside of beating a student, may be appropriate if they send the message that certain behavior will not be tolerated and that there will be real consequences for such behavior. Schools and teachers need to know where encouragement and understanding end, and coddling destructive behavior begins.

These days, television has the ability to give us detailed images of what war is like. But what about images of what devastation caused by an atomic bomb looks like? After the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were destroyed on August 6 and August 9, 1945 respectively, and after some 250,000 people had died in their immediate aftermath, the U.S. government imposed strict restrictions on any photos that had the potential to “disturb public tranquility.”

However, a few photographs that portray the true devastation of what happened eventually surfaced and this blog has gathered them together in one collection of images. Although many of the pictures are very hard to look at (the picture above is one of the milder examples), I hope you’ll take a moment to have a look for yourself — it puts life in a much more clear perspective.

Now that Viet Nam has officially been admitted to the World Trade Organization, how will this change the country, if at all? As BBC News reports, this question was the heart of recent meetings of Viet Nam’s central government:

Vietnam’s Communist Party is now facing up to the political consequences of its decision to integrate the country with global capitalism. Vietnam formally joined the World Trade Organization this month, and now it has to change many of its laws and practices to comply with WTO rules. In many areas the old ways of doing business and politics no longer work.

The economy is more complex, growth is creating winners and losers, and the country needs more sophisticated policies to address the problems. In response, the party is trying to give more power to the formal structures of the government and the National Assembly. In the past these bodies were mainly rubber stamps for decisions taken by the party, but they are starting to assume greater control of the setting and implementation of policy.

These are tough questions indeed. How will Viet Nam manage opening up their country and economy while at the same time retaining their tight grip on power and control? However the process, as I’ve said in the past, I think it is a positive step to continue integrating Viet Nam into the international community, rather than trying to isolate them as many rabid anti-communist Vietnamese Americans have vehemently argued for.

Viet Nam’s government is not going to be overthrown by a revolution anytime soon. But given enough time and capitalist pressures, its society is likely to become more open, slowly but surely.

As I’ve written about before, Toyota is preparing to compete in NASCAR’s premier series, the Sprint Nextel Cup. This year, as a reflection of the recent success of Japanese automakers and the difficulties of U.S. automakers in general, Toyota also expects to surpass General Motors to become the #1 global automaker in sales. Within this context, as the New York Times reports, the chorus of anti-Toyota critics is rising:

While Toyota scrambles to prepare its Camrys and build its race shops for the Nextel Cup circuit, competitors are accusing the company of raiding teams for talent and raising the costs of operation by offering drastically higher salaries. It is a departure from the universal welcome bestowed upon Dodge when it announced it was re-entering the Cup series in 2001 after a 16-year absence. Its parent company, DaimlerChrysler, was based in Germany, but Dodge was viewed as an American-born brand. . . .

Since announcing a year ago that it would join the Nextel Cup competition, the company has seen a debate escalate in this insular sport over what is considered American-made in today’s global economy. As Toyota drivers are quick to point out, Camrys are built in the United States, the Ford Fusion is produced in Mexico and the Chevrolet Monte Carlo comes from Canada. . . . Toyota has yet to compete in its first points race, and it is already on the defensive.

In my earlier post to which I linked at the top of this entry, I mentioned that while U.S. automakers are laying off workers and closing factories, many Japanese automakers, particularly Toyota, are instead, opening up more factories and hiring more American workers. So the question comes back to, who qualifies as being American? Are you American just because you were born here? Are you automatically American just because you’re White?

Or can you also be a “legitimate” American if you contribute to the success and strength of American society and in Toyota’s case, employ tens of thousands of American workers, but your original ancestry happens to be Asian?

Ultimately, this anti-Toyota backlash is based not just on racial prejudice, but also on a concept that is very familiar to sociologists like myself — economic competition. That is, when people (or in this case companies) feel economically threatened, their anger will almost always lead to ethnic hostility. History shows time and time again that when White workers feel economically insecure, the first people they blame are “minorities” for driving down wages, taking “their” jobs, or forcing companies to move factories or outsource overseas.

The same thing is happening here, folks. American automakers are reeling from their own failures and difficulties so they’re blaming anybody they can think of. Just like they did in the early 1980s with the first wave of “Japan-Bashing,” so too are they doing that now with the backlash against Toyota’s involvement in NASCAR. It’s almost like clockwork . . .

In recent years, it’s no surprise that American culture and American-style capitalism have pervaded many areas of Chinese society. Has this “invasion” gone too far? This is the question being asked right now as many Chinese are pressuring managers of the Forbidden City in Beijing to close a Starbucks cafe that’s located inside its walls because of complaints that it tramples on Chinese tradition and culture:

The Forbidden City, built in 1420, is a 178-acre complex of villas, chapels and gardens that was home to 24 emperors before the end of imperial rule in 1911. It is China’s top tourist attraction, drawing some 7 million visitors a year. . . . A news anchor for China Central Television has led an online campaign to remove Starbucks, which opened in the palace in 2000 at the invitation of its managers, who are under pressure to raise money to maintain the vast complex.

The anchorman, Rui Chenggang, wrote in a CCTV blog that Starbucks’ presence “undermined the Forbidden City’s solemnity and trampled over Chinese culture.” Starbucks defended the operation of its palace outlet. “Starbucks appreciates the deep history and culture of the Forbidden City and has operated in a respectful manner that fits within the environment,” the company said in a written statement. . . .

Feng said the decision will be made as part of a palace renovation that already has seen one-third of its shops removed. . . . The renovation, due to last through 2020, is meant to restore the palace to its imperial-era appearance. Plans call for tearing down a five-story museum and other modern buildings that disrupt the original layout.

I suppose this sort of reaction was inevitable — the march of American capitalism into the Middle Kingdom was not going to be without conflicts. Change never occurs without resistance. In fact, this most recent development fits within an emerging movement in China that increasingly emphasizes traditional elements of Chinese history and culture. We’ll just have to wait and see to what extent this nascent movement succeeds in beating back, or at least slowing, the irresistible march of capitalism.

In this day and age, we all need a little bit more understanding of Muslims, and in particular, of Muslim Americans. Ever since 9-11, it’s no secret that they have been targets of suspicion, prejudice, paranoia, government surveillance, and misunderstanding. Salon.com reviews a book that tries to educate us on the many facets of Muslim American lives — American Islam: The Struggle for the Soul of a Religion by Paul Barrett:

Few of the American Muslims that Barrett profiles match any stereotype that Westerners are likely to harbor about Islam’s faithful. In truth, he leans a little toward the unconventional and even progressive members of the religion, but he aims to give all sides their due. What he gets across is the remarkable diversity of Islam in America, pointing out that Muslims are no more all alike than Christians are. . . .

He explains that “most American Muslims are not Arab, and most Americans of Arab descent are Christian, not Muslim. People of South Asian descent — those with roots in Pakistan, India, Bangladesh and Afghanistan — make up 34 percent of American Muslims … Arab-Americans constitute only 26 percent, while another 20 percent are native-born American blacks, most of whom are converts. The remaining 20 percent come from Africa, Iran, Turkey and elsewhere.”

As a group, Muslims are “more prosperous and better educated than other Americans.” Almost 60 percent of them have college degrees, compared to 27 percent of American adults overall. The median family income among Muslims is $60,000; the national median is $50,000. Eighty percent of them are registered to vote. Compared to the larger, and largely poor, Muslim populations of Western Europe . . . American Muslims show, in Barrett’s words, the traits of “a minority population successfully integrating into a larger society.”

In fact, I did not even know that most Muslim Americans are not Arab, nor that most Arab Americans are Christian, rather than Muslim. Not only that, but I’m a little embarrassed to say it’s only recently that I’ve sought to learn about the historical, cultural, and political differences between Shiite and Sunni Muslims. That just goes to show that just like we can’t assume all Asian Americans or all Latino Americans are the same, nor should we assume that about Arab Americans or Muslim Americans.

At a time when so many people are making all kinds of “authoritative” pronouncements about Muslims or Arabs, I have to wonder how many of them actually know about the wide diversity that exists among such groups. For more information, here are some other recent books about Arab- and Muslim-Americans:
Taking Back Islam: American Muslims Reclaim Their Faith
American Islam: Growing up Muslim in America
Arab Voices Speak to American Hearts
American Muslims: The New Generation
Progressive Muslims: On Justice, Gender, and Pluralism

Recent news about stricter measures in foreign adoptions is worrying adoption agencies who seek Chinese babies for their Western clientele. Those who are homosexual, obese, older than 50, and worth less than $80,000 are no longer suitable to be adoptive parents according to the new criteria. Such restrictions are criticized in the New York Times (NYT) Op-Ed contributed by Beth Nonte Russell, a therapist and advocate of international adoptions, and former staffer of Indiana Senator Richard Luger (Republican).

She critiques three areas:

1. She blames China’s one-child policy for the abandonment of baby girls.
2. Accuses the Chinese government of placing national pride before the welfare of orphans.
3. Criticizes Chinese data on adoptions and orphanages as “unreliable.”

Embedded in these three points are accusations of callousness, breach of international treaty, and human rights violation.

The issue of abandoned and institutionalized children remains a taboo subject in China, a problem the government does not even acknowledge exists. The impulse to hide it seems to stem partly from embarrassment and partly from fear of revealing the grave human rights abuse the one-child policy has produced; surely, watching a parade of well-off foreigners cart off thousands of babies would make the Chinese authorities understandably uncomfortable.

But the answer is not to stop foreigners from adopting; it is to put an end to their reasons for doing so. My fondest hope, and the hope of thousands of parents who have adopted from China, is for all the orphanages there to close because there are no more abandoned children to put in them. This will only be accomplished when China decides that there is no economic or political justification for the magnitude of suffering that has resulted from the one-child policy. The government must openly acknowledge the problem, in part by publishing verifiable information about the status of its orphaned children, and take real steps to correct it.

Ms. Nonte Russell has a point about the cultural preference for boys in rural China, and the government’s reluctance to expose its problems. However, her understanding of the one-child policy or the causes of child abandonment are questionable.

The one child-policy is not strictly applied to all Chinese citizens; there are provisions that exempt certain individuals if they qualify. Ethnic minorities (e.g., Mongolians, Tibetans, Miao, etc) are basically exempt; even the Han are allowed to have more than one child under certain circumstances.

Given the international ubiquity of child abandonment, poverty rather than policy, seems to be a more logical explanation. Impoverished parents are more likely to abandon baby girls because of the Chinese cultural preference for boys. However distasteful this aspect of Chinese culture, this regrettable truth predates the one-child policy and establishes poverty and cultural bias as a more credible supposition.

What is especially perplexing about Nonte Russell’s piece is that she mentions the gender imbalance crisis in China, but fails see the connection with the reason why fewer foreigners are being allowed to adopt. The acute bride shortage will leave many Chinese men without partners, and that will lead to social upheaval and higher crime rate. Considering these problems, a moratorium on foreign adoptions is not an unreasonable measure in trying to restore gender balance.

There is a hollow ring to American criticism, when convoluted adoption policies in the United States are often cited as the main reason why so many parents seek babies in China. The omission of African-American children from this Op-Ed and from the general discussion on trans-racial adoptions is duly noted, when so many black children are in need of loving families and homes.

Perhaps part of the problem is that some Americans have an attitude of entitlement when it comes to adopting children in China. Adopting a Chinese baby is a privilege, not right. These babies are citizens of the People’s Republic of China, and the government has every right to set the criteria. China’s priority is to its own people, collectively.

Noteworthy:
Ms. Nonte Russell is also the author of Offspring of a Deathless Soul (2004); a work of fiction that appears to take its cue from an adoption trip to China. Based on the book’s dustcover preview, this work seems to engage in some sort of dream fantasy of an infanticidal Chinese emperor and a messiah-like baby. It appears to be a work that indulges an Orientalist fantasy of rescue and romanticizes the adoption of Chinese girls.

Most people have probably heard of the European Union (EU) or the North American Free Trade Zone (NAFTZ), but I’d guess that most have not heard of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). Up to now, it’s a loose confederation of countries in Southeast Asia that has done little more than talk and make pledges of cooperation. At their latest meeting however, ASEAN countries seem poised to take their group to the next level and to more closely emulate the EU and NAFTZ:

Facing economic pressure from heavyweights China and India, and the twin shadows of terrorism and poverty, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations adopted an ambitious agenda it hopes can transform the region. Following a day of talks at a summit that was postponed last month amid fears of a terror attack, it set a goal of 2015 for a free-trade zone that would cover almost 570 million people, more than the population of Europe. . . .

Perhaps the biggest change is a plan to revamp how this disparate group of nations — run by everything from sultans to old-school communist ideologues — will handle its internal diplomacy. The group signed a commitment to create ASEAN’s first-ever charter, aimed at turning it into a European Union-style entity with binding rules and regulations. . . . ASEAN [includes] Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.

Although there’s still debate how a closer union of countries is good or bad on certain issues, in general, I see this as a positive step for these countries. Closer cooperation will allow them to begin cultivating a more united front, which will hopefully mean a more powerful collective voice in world affairs, rather than being singular, isolated states in the international community. We’ll have to see what the details of such a union look like, but I like what I hear so far.

The question becomes, how will the U.S. like such an arrangement? Will they see a closer and more powerful ASEAN as a useful counterbalance to the power of China, Indian, Japan, and South Korea, or will they see it as another emerging economic and political threat to their waning international hegemony? That question too remains to be seen.