Many of you know that in the Gulf Coast, particular around the Houston and New Orleans metropolitan areas, there are numbers of Vietnamese Americans, many of whom work in the fishing and shrimping industries (continuing their long legacy of working in those trades from back in Viet Nam). Not surprisingly, many had their livelihoods devastated by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. The Houston Chronicle describes their current situation:

As Port Arthur’s Vietnamese residents come back to clean up after Rita, some worry the storm may have dealt their community a devastating blow. Local Vietnamese have always depended on shrimping, an industry that was in decline long before the storm wrecked a few boats and drove up fuel costs for those that remain. “Even before the storm, business was down, down, down every year,” said Nick Tran, the owner of Nick’s Market, a Vietnamese grocery on 9th Avenue, the traditional business area for local Vietnamese. . . .

Some locals say the devastation from Rita might not have been as bad as first thought, even to the shrimping industry. JBS Packing Inc., the major shrimp processing plant in Port Arthur, escaped without significant damage. Many Vietnamese work at the plant. . . .{Owner Jack] Hemmenway estimated that “eight to 10” of the shrimp boats in the Port Arthur fleet were damaged, out of a total of about 150 boats.

But the rising price of fuel in the past year, combined with the plummeting price for shrimp, had already hurt the industry. . . . Without shrimping, it’s not clear what will keep the Vietnamese in Port Arthur. “People my age go to school in Houston or Dallas and don’t come back,” said Jim Pham, a University of Houston student who came back after the storm to help his parents clean up their Port Arthur home. “Other than shrimping, there’s not a lot to do here.”

It’s unfortunate that the mainstream media did not cover the plight of the Vietnamese Americans in the Gulf Coast even a fraction of the time they devoted to other groups caught in the aftermath of Katrina and Rita. It is especially unfortunate that Vietnamese Americans are the one group that sought to revitalize communities and businesses in areas such as Port Arthur but are now being left on their own.

But as the article notes in the end, Vietnamese are legendary for facing adversity and rebuilding their lives, whether that was when they were in Viet Nam or fleeing the country at the end of the Viet Nam War. Unfortunately it looks like they will have to do it once again.

As I’ve mentioned before, I am a fan and frequent visitor to Angry Asian Man, a website/blog maintained by Korean American Phil Yu, who posts about news items, current events, and cultural/media examples that relate to Asian Americans and more specifically, to how they affect our image in society. Phil’s site is already pretty popular but he has apparently hit the mainstream, now that he’s being profiled by the Washington Post:

The refrain “That’s racist!” also appears regularly — sometimes half-jokingly, oftentimes not, when Yu stumbles upon what he views as stereotypical depictions of Asian Americans. But no, he’s not actually that angry. He’s just like a lot of other bloggers in the URL-littered landscape, a man who has something to say that he thinks other people aren’t saying. Latinos have a right to be angry, blacks have a right to be angry — why can’t Asians be angry, too?

“I wanted to play with this idea of being ‘angry,’ to take on this persona of an Angry Asian Man, because we as Asians are not usually seen as an angry, militant, conscious group,” Yu, a graduate student in the University of Southern California’s cinema and television school, says by phone from his home in west Los Angeles. “That’s the stereotype that’s been attributed to us — you know, the model minority — so much so that we start to believe it ourselves.”

Keep up the great work, Phil, and keep being angry!

The New York Post has an article profiling a new restaurant in New York City whose claim to “uniqueness” is that it is centered around a ninja theme and where the wait staff dress and act like ninjas:

With some 3,800 new food- service establishments bombarding New York yearly (and about the same number closing), a restaurant has to do something to grab the spotlight, whether it’s providing a Ninja waiter or a chair for a teddy bear. . . . From the cuisine that gave us tableside theatrics and conveyor-belt sushi comes Ninja, a Japanese import new to TriBeCa, with waiters who dress and act like Ninjas. Or at least they’re trying to.

The “magic” bridge its publicists promised would “descend across a fog-covered river leading guests to their tables” wasn’t working last weekend. Nor did Ninja warriors “spring up from hidden corners to surprise guests,” which may have saved unsuspecting diners from spewing their sake. . . . Kinks aside, Ninja is undeniably unique.

The dimly lit labyrinth of stone-and-wood passages with private dining alcoves set behind dark lattice doors must be the only place in town where a server genuflects before your table. There’s also enough head-bowing to please the pickiest emperor, and enough piped-in sounds of trickling water to inspire a trip to the loo – to which a Ninja merrily leads the way in crouching, spinning spurts.

Apparently, some elements of American society are so desparate to be different that they will recycle just about any cultural image available, if they think it will lead to profits. As I’ve said before, this sort of “Asianization” can be a double-edged sword. On the one hand, it does attest to the popularity of Asian culture and forms of Asian tradition.

On the other hand, if it is not done right, it can easily reinforce and perpetuate age-old cultural stereotypes and lead to intense protests from the Asian American community. A perfect example were those stupid t-shirts formerly sold by Abercrombie & Fitch that supposedly had “cute” Asian-themed sayings like “Asian Laundry Shop: Two Wongs Make it White.”

Another goliath-sized mainstream attempt to cash in on the “Asian mystique” is the impending release of Steven Spielberg’s movie Memoirs of a Geisha. We’ll have to wait and see how that one turns out . . .

The Associated Press has an article that describes the growing political power and influence of Asian Americans in New York City:

Mayor Michael Bloomberg quietly slipped away from City Hall one morning last week to meet with York Chan, the powerful community leader known as the “mayor of Chinatown.” A day earlier, Chan sat down with Fernando Ferrer, the Democrat challenging Bloomberg in November.

“Two candidates in 24 hours — that never happened before,” Chan said during an interview in his office above bustling Mott Street in the heart of the Chinese neighborhood. “They used to ignore us.” A lot of things are happening for the first time in New York’s Asian communities, where an explosion of new voters is thrusting the campaign trail into unfamiliar territory.

Until recently, candidates did not put much energy into wooing Asians, but that is changing. Asians as a group are becoming an influential force, joining the established blocs of black and Hispanic voters already crucial to winning office in New York City. “The numbers of Asian-Americans on the voter rolls are increasing by leaps and bounds, and the actual turnout rates are increasing correspondingly, so ignore this group at your own peril,” said John Liu, the only Asian on the 51-member City Council.

The article goes on to explain that due to increased immigration leading to citizenship and a high birth rate, the number of Asian American voters has increased significantly in recent years and decades. This in turn has led to politicians paying much more attention to Asian American voters than in years past.

This is obviously a very encouraging sign and it shows that numbers do bring attention and power. However, as other research has shown, although about two-thirds of all Asian Americans consider themselves Democrats, that number may not be enough to constitute a truly powerful bloc vote, especially in comparison to the bloc voting power of Blacks, about 90% of whom are Democrats.

In other words, while it is nice to see Asian Americans getting more attention and being courted by politicians, until we vote as a relatively united and cohesive bloc, our power will remain fragmented.

The San Francisco Chronicle has an article and commentary by Jeff Yang about the current state of Asian Americans trying to achieve stardom on television:

The CBS sitcom “King of Queens” takes place in a region of New York where one out of five people is Asian, yet none of the regular or recurring characters is Asian American. You won’t find any of Orange County’s half a million Asians on Fox’s “The OC.” And though the WB’s “Charmed” is set in San Francisco, the three witchy Halliwell sisters seem mysteriously oblivious to the fact that a third of the city’s population — the Asian third — has magically vanished.

In fact, although Asian Americans make up about five percent of the U.S. population, we represent just 2.7 percent of all regularly appearing characters on prime-time TV and have only a handful of the starring or recurring roles in television’s traditional staple commodities: dramas and situation comedies. Oddly enough, hope has come from an unlikely source: reality TV, which has offered a backdoor means for some of Asian America’s most dynamic talents and, uh, colorful personalities to finally find a spotlight on the world’s biggest stage.

On ABC’s breakout reality hit “Dancing with the Stars,” Carrie Ann Inaba was showcased as one of three professional judges evaluating the fancy footwork of celebs like Evander Holyfield, “Seinfeld”‘s John O’Hurley and “General Hospital”‘s Kelly Monaco. And NBC’s much-buzzed-about new reality program “Three Wishes” features Diane Mizota as one of its three “angels,” who travel across small-town America, making dreams come true.

Yang notes that ironically, the one Asian American personality who’s been able to achieve the most fame and stardom is actually the dreaded William Hung — a pretty depressing thought. Yang’s article also gives a nice breakdown of some of the most notable Asian Americans who have appeared on reality TV in recent years and what they’re doing now. So I guess we’ll just have to keep doing what we’ve been doing — doing the best we can given the opportunities we have, and at the same time, trying our best to open our own doors.

ABC News reports that Filipino American Leandro Aragoncillo, a U.S. Marine formerly assigned to Vice President Cheney’s staff, has been arrested and charged with passing sensitive information and documents to operatives in the Philippines:

Officials say the classified material, which Aragoncillo stole from the vice president’s office, included damaging dossiers on the president of the Philippines. He then passed those on to opposition politicians planning a coup in the Pacific nation. . . .

According to a criminal complaint, Aragoncillo was arrested last month and accused of downloading more than 100 classified documents from FBI computers. Since that arrest, officials say Aragoncillo has started to cooperate. He has admitted to spying while working on the staff of Vice President Cheney’s office.

First, we need to remember that people are (theoretically) presumed innocent until proven guilty. We should also remember that there are several documented cases where Asian Americans were accused of spying for a foreign country but in the end, virtually all charges were dropped against them (Wen Ho Lee, Katrina Leung, James Yee), with many of these cases involving the prosecution being chastised by the judge for misconduct and being overzealous.

Having said that, if in fact Aragoncillo has admitted to the charges brought against him, it strikes me that he was not actually spying against the U.S. Instead, it sound like he is accused of only passing information about Philippine President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo to her critics and opposition leaders. In other words, the information does not seem to be of vital national importance or sensitive to national security.

Yes, what he allegedly did was in fact illegal, but it did not involve passing along names of American secret agents to our enemies, or technical information on building weapons, or any other type of sensitive information that could be used to harm Americans.

Nonetheless, it is almost inevitable that the same kind of anti-Asian hysteria that accompanied these previous accusations of spying will once again surface against us Asian Americans, and that our loyalty and status as “true” Americans will once again be called into question, based on the alleged acts of one individual.

Many of you have probably heard of Michelle Wie, a Korean American from Hawai’i who has set the golf world on fire and is being described as the female equivalent of Tiger Woods. She is getting ready to turn 16 (still just a teenager!) and to turn professional. She has already played in a few professional men’s PGA tour events as an amateur but as she gets ready to turn pro, as this article by Reuters describes, the debate about whether to allow her to play against men on a regular basis is intensifying:

The Hawaiian-born teenager should concentrate on smashing records in the women’s game rather than joining the men’s tour, according to [former European Tour executive director Ken] Schofield. “The history of golf is of men playing men and women playing against women. That has stood the test of time so why should we change it? “Are we talking about a civil liberty issue here, a restraint of trade? I don’t think so,” Schofield said. . . .

In Schofield’s opinion, it is not Wie’s ability that is in question, rather the direction the sport should take. “There is the great history of the women’s game to consider,” he told Britain’s Guardian newspaper. “The U.S. Women’s Open dates back to 1946 and its roll call of champions includes the likes of Babe Zaharias, Mickey Wright and of course Annika (Sorenstam). “Attempting to add their names to that list is where all aspiring women’s golfers — Wie included — should focus efforts. “The structure of golf is not best served by mixing up the issues of men versus women.”

I suppose there is something to be said for having separate tours for each gender, as is done with virtually all other professional sports, including tennis, soccer, basketball, etc. But this rationale that women athletes should only strive to outdo other female athletes strikes me as a little sexist and patriarchal. I tend to agree with what Jim Rome, a nationally popular sports radio host and commentator, has already said regarding this situation — if Michelle has game, let her play with the men. Ultimately, to be the best, you have to compete with and beat the best, regardless of what gender they are.

Up to this point, there has not been any talk of what effect, if any, Michelle’s status as an Asian American has to do with it the talk surrounding her. Let’s hope it stays that way. Michelle should be judged on her talent and her performance, not by her status as a woman or an Asian American.

Having said that, I think it would be a huge morale boost to the Asian American community to see her succeed, although it is a little unfair to put that kind of pressure on one person (especially when she’s not even 16 yet).

The Hartford Courant has a story that describes how a group of Buddhist monks in China are taking business management courses to help them better manage their temples:

Proving that in China’s booming commercial hub of Shanghai, even Buddhism is big business, a group of 18 Buddhist monks and lay people are taking MBA classes to better manage their temple, the official Xinhua News Agency reported Wednesday.

The course, specially designed by Shanghai’s Jiaotong University, teaches temple management and corporate strategy, along with marketing religious articles. Monks also will gain some tips on how to get ahead in business from Sun Tzu’s “The Art of War,” the report said.

What’s next, a Buddhist version of “The Apprentice” where instead of saying “You’re fired,” Donald Trump says, “You’re unenlightened!“? Who says tradition and modernity can’t mix?

Despite the college admissions scandal of the late 1980s and early 1990s, statistics these days show that Asian Americans are disproportionately overrepresented as students in many of the country’s top universities, especially in California, the state with the largest Asian American population. An article at Inside Higher Education highlights how Asian Americans are approaching 50% of the student population at U.C. Berkeley and how this has led to changes in the racial politics on campus:

When Fred Chang, a senior and president of Pi Alpha Phi, came to the University of California at Berkeley five years ago, he saw not one, but two Asian American fraternities — Pi Alpha Phi and Lambda Phi Epsilon — representing the only two nationally recognized Asian American fraternities in the nation. Only a handful of colleges in the nation outside of California have both. . . .

[Chang] said membership [at Pi Alpha Phi] has been cut in half in his time at Berkeley, and now there are only 16 brothers, all Asian American. He said he doesn’t “really see the point” of having clubs that are exclusively Asian, and does not think Pi Alpha Phi can survive unless non-Asian students are recruited.

Chang thinks that the increasing number of Asians will actually doom some exclusively Asian groups because students don’t feel the need to join a club to fit in. “Everyone tries to assimilate,” he said. “I don’t think there’s a future here in trying to hold on to [exclusively Asian] tradition.” . . .

Chang said there’s even some backlash over Asian organizations. Lambda Phi Epsilon, the other Asian fraternity, no longer attends Interfraternity Council meetings because members didn’t feel welcome. “A lot of the mainstream fraternities throw events together,” he said, but “we’re not as welcome.

In other words, in an environment where being Asian meant that you were in the minority, it would be natural for Asian American students to want to unite around their similar status and situations. However, in this case, as Asian Americans are increasingly becoming the norm — or at least make up a numerical majority — on many campuses around the country, the pressure now is to assimilate and disperse so that other racial groups are not threatened.

Interesting, isn’t it? It seems that the tables have been turned — Whites who used to be the majority and the norm and increasingly feeling resentful of no longer being the majority and the norm around campus these days. It’s actually quite similar to what happened when many suburbs in CA shifted from predominantly White to predominantly Asian — many longtime White residents resented the “takeover” of “their” neighborhood.

The reality is that this demographic shift toward larger numbers of Asians on campuses and in American society in general is not going to stop any time soon. But change always brings resistance and conflict. This article illustrates one example of what that conflict might look like. Needless to say, there are sure to be more to come . . .

Reuters has an article that describes that two young ethnic Chinese men in Singapore were recently charged with with violating the country’s strict rules about disseminating Internet postings that are intolerant of racial, ethnic, or religious groups:

The two ethnic Chinese men, aged 25 and 27, face charges for promoting ill-will and hostility between ethnic communities on their personal websites, or “blogs,” in June. The police said both men were accused of posting racist remarks aimed at Singapore’s mostly-Muslim ethnic Malay community. If convicted, they may be jailed for up to three years or fined up to S$5,000, or both.

Singapore has one of the highest Internet penetration rates in the world, but also some of the toughest media laws. Singapore police have wide powers to intercept online messages, and Internet service providers are required to block websites containing material that may be a threat to public security, national defense, racial and religious harmony and public morality.

I’m not sure how I feel about this particular practice. On the one hand, I believe in freedom of expression, even when it’s speech that I strongly disagree with. I’ve said before and I still believe that freedom of expression belongs to everyone, not just for those with whom you agree. Based on that, punishing people for their thoughts is not right.

On the other hand, as a sociologist and a person of color, I am also aware that certain kinds of speech are more dangerous than others. That is, when speech promotes violence or virulent intolerance of minority groups, that is where I draw the line. This is also consistent with hate crimes statutes that prohibit such speech, even if it does not eventually lead to violence. On those grounds, if the postings of these citizens in Singapore promoted this sort of blatant intolerance, that might be a reasonable justification to punish them.

However, as news organizations such as CNN report, a new publication by the organization Reporters Without Borders seeks to help dissidents disseminate and promote their views by giving them tips on bypassing repressive censors in their countries:

In a bid to inspire budding Web diarists around the world, the 87-page booklet gives advice on setting up and running blogs, and on using pseudonyms and anonymous proxies, which can be used to replace easily traceable home computer addresses. . . . The advice varies depending on the user’s level of paranoia — from changing cyber cafes to sending cryptographically signed messages via specially formatted e-mail.

The guide explains circumvention technologies that can break through government filters but warns bloggers to check how severe the penalty will be if they are caught using them. The freely available handbook advises bloggers to be ethical and warns that the tips are not intended for terrorists, racketeers or pedophiles who use the Internet to commit crimes.

Although the line that separates freedom of expression from criminal activity may be a little blurry at times, I think this kind of publication can be a useful method to ensure freedom of speech and political dissension in an otherwise oppressive country, while at the same time, maintaining a set of ethics and responsibility so that minority groups are not threatened with hate and violence.

There are certain stereotypes applied to young college-aged White men — that they can be loud, obnoxious, frequently drunk, and at times, racist. Here’s an instance in which all of the above seem to be true: as reported by the Michigan Daily, two college students are suspected of committing a hate crime against young Asian students by, among other things, shouting racial epitaphs at them and urinating on them:

The incident began when one of the suspects, a 21-year-old, allegedly urinated from a second-floor balcony on two Asian students walking [by]. . . . After the couple asked why they were being urinated on, the suspect and another student reportedly began to use racial slurs disparaging the couple’s Asian heritage.

The situation escalated, according to a police report, when at least one student began throwing items, which the couple suspected were eggs, at the couple. One of the students was immediately taken into custody. The other student who urinated on the couple, barricaded himself in the apartment, which the police could not enter without a warrant.

However, the AAPD knows the identity of the student, who could face jail time if prosecuted. AAPD Lt. Michael Logghe classified the crime as ethnic intimidation, or verbal or physical attack against a person of another race or gender. Logghe said ethnic intimidation is a felony and carries a maximum penalty of four years in jail.

The suspects could also be charged with assault, and one of the suspects could face a charge of indecent exposure, which would require him to register as a sex offender.

Not surprisingly, the suspects have a different version of what occurred.

Forgive me if I’m a little biased, but at this point, I believe the Asian American students more than the accused suspects. Even if the suspects did not actually urinate on the students, I can almost guarantee that some sort of racially-motivated provocation happened, with racial slurs being used profusely.

Isn’t it nice to see these young White male college students doing everything they can to dispel and contradict these stereotypes about them? I can also already see their parents trying to make excuses for them: “Oh, they were just trying to have fun” or “It was just a small incident that got blown out of proportion.”

If their parents say something like that, will it be any wonder where they learned that such behavior was acceptable?

The Boston Herald has a story about how Boston police and working together with several small businesses, many of them owned by Asian Americans — particularly Vietnamese Americans, on preventing unruly teenagers from shoplifting, vandalizing, and even assaulting store owners, as was the case last year:

Vietnamese merchants in Fields Corner who were terrorized by unruly middle school students last school year are back on edge with the start of classes even as police crack down on the young punks. The after-school rush turned violent for many shop owners along Dorchester Avenue during the past year as crowds of students harassed store clerks, shoplifted and even assaulted merchants. . . .

Boston police Capt. Frank Armstrong assigned two beat cops to cover Fields Corner full time in response to the after-school violence. During the day, three patrol cars roam the neighborhood, and two extra uniformed police officers work from 12 to 4 p.m. Armstrong said helping the store owners has become a priority.

It is nice to see examples of local police working with Asian Americans, rather than ignoring them or even working against them. Many times, police and other government agencies are too quick to buy into the image of Asian Americans as the “model minority” who don’t experience any discrimination. Hopefully this cooperation ends up being an example of cultural understanding and community unity.