A few weeks ago, the latest radio talk show controversy erupted over racist comments by a pair or DJs on the “Jersey Guys” radio show at NJ 101.5, based in New Jersey. The DJs ridiculed a Korean American policitian seeking local office in New Jersey and as usual, mocked Asian languages and accents. In response, the New Jersey Star-Ledger reports that two prominent advertisers, Hyundai Motors America and Cingular Wireless, has pulled their advertising from their show (and Hyundai has pulled their ads from the entire station):

Asian-American activists, who have been putting pressure on the station’s advertisers, hailed the decisions to pull the advertising, saying it signals a newfound maturity and strength in the community. . . . “Asian-Americans have always been seen as a passive group that won’t speak up too loudly,” said Veronica Jung, executive director of the Korean American League for Civic Action. “This flies in the face of that. The message is that we will no longer be the voiceless model minority. We represent significant buying power and a large consumer base, and we’ll use that weight.”

[NJ 101.5 representative] Santoro said the station has received hundreds of threats and has contacted local and state police and the FBI. The wave of protests caught the radio station off guard, Santoro said. The station has a meeting with Asian-American activists scheduled for May 19. . . .

Asian-American activists have also found support from elected officials. U.S. Rep. Steve Rothman (D-9th Dist.) . . . Lora Fong, an Edison attorney and past president of the Asian Pacific American Lawyers Association of New Jersey, said the response from corporations and politicians shows the Asian-American community is organized and willing to speak out.

Let this once again serve as a lesson to all the racists and bigots out there — we Asian Americans are not going to sit around and let people ridicule us and question our American identity. You may have been able to get away with crap like this in the past, but it’s a whole different ballgame now, boy.

The Boston Herald has an interesting article about the efforts of residents and business owners in Boston’s Chinatown to fight back against a wave of robberies, muggings, and purse snatchings in their neighborhood:

Chinatown residents are vowing to take back the streets with security cameras on crime-plagued corners, a nightly Crime Watch patrol and police details paid for by residents and businesses. In response to robberies, assaults and at least a dozen purse-snatchings in three months, the community is fighting back.

“We don’t want them to take over Chinatown,” said Kay Chin, longtime owner of the Cathay Corner, a Chinese gift shop on Beach Street. . . . Residents just this week formed Chinatown’s first Crime Watch. Each night until 10 p.m. five to 10 residents roam the streets, taking note of shady characters and and possible drug-dealing. The community even hired its own police detail officer with $15,000 they raised. The officer patrols the streets each night on a bike.

I wonder if thugs and criminals are targeting people in Chinatown based on the belief that Asians are powerless or at least less likely to resist or report the crimes to the police . . .hmmm. At any rate, it’s nice to see that Asian Americans, in this case Chinese Americans in Boston, are fighting for their rights and quality of life — just like any other “regular” American would be entitled to do.

The May 9 issue of Newsweek magazine has a feature story entitled “Does the Future Belong to China?” We’ve heard these sorts of proclamations before — that the 21st century will eventually be dominated by Asian countries and economies, most notably in the “Megatrends” series of books back in the early 1990s. But the recent emergence of China has put this question front and center on the international political and cultural stage:

Europeans prefer complexity and nuance, the Japanese revere minuteness and minimalism. But Americans like size, preferably supersize. That’s why China hits the American imagination so hard. It is a country whose scale dwarfs the United States — 1.3 billion people, four times America’s population.

For more than a hundred years it was dreams of this magnitude that fascinated small groups of American missionaries and businessmen—1 billion souls to save; 2 billion armpits to deodorize—but it never amounted to anything. China was very big, but very poor. All that is changing. But now the very size and scale that seemed so alluring is beginning to look ominous. And Americans are wondering whether the “China threat” is nightmarishly real. . .

China’s rise is no longer a prediction. It is a fact. It is already the world’s fastest-growing large economy, and the second largest holder of foreign-exchange reserves, mainly dollars. It has the world’s largest army (2.5 million men) and the fourth largest defense budget, which is rising by more than 10 percent annually. Whether or not it overtakes the United States economically . . . it is the powerful new force on the global scene.

The rest of article talks about China’s economic and industrial emergence, its emphasis on results rather than ideology, some of the problems it still faces, and how China is poised to eventually (i.e., not immediately) challenge the U.S. for cultural and political dominance around the world. For the most part, it’s a balanced article and an interesting summary of how China has been able to achieve its recent success.

As an American, I also have to admire China’s recent successes and emergence as a global superpower. As an Asian American, however, I am a little worried about where this will lead. I do not fear China’s power per se. Rather, I am worried about the consequences of China’s emerging power — how the U.S. and Americans will perceive and react to it.

In other words, as China becomes more powerful and presuming that it eventually challenges the U.S.’s political and cultural dominance around the world, more and more Americans are likely to perceive China not just as a rival, but as a threat. And as sociologists will quickly tell you and has history has consistently shown, when a group of people feel threatened, economic competition can turn into racial/ethnic hostility very quickly.

In this context, I can easily see Asian Americans being “caught in the middle,” not necessarily because many of us might cheer for China’s emergence and support its challenge to the U.S., but instead, many Asian Americans would be perceived by other Americans as being “disloyal” or even worse, “treasonous.” That is, our identity as “real” and “authentic” Americans would once again be called into question and as a result, an anti-Asian backlash is sure to erupt.

Where will all of this lead? We may have an entire century to find out but at the rate we’re going (and the rate China’s power is increasing), we might see signs of American uneasiness sooner rather than later.

The Christian Science Monitor has a story about how many college students complain that they can’t understand their foreign-born instructors (many of whom are Asian-born graduate students). As the article notes, it describes the efforts of one parent in North Dakota to get legislation passed that requires stricter and more formal assessment of foreign instructors’ English fluency. But there are other issues involved:

Yes, some university officials responded, students should be able to understand instructors, but communication is a two-way street. “We live in a global economy … and here in North Dakota, we’ve been doing better [in recent years] at being able to create diversity, and perhaps this is just one of the growing pains,” says R. Craig Schnell, North Dakota State University’s provost and vice president for academic affairs. . .

Today, about one-quarter of the faculty in American universities are foreign-born, and that should be seen as an asset, says Akbar Marvasti, an economics professor at the University of Houston. “Communication skills are important, there’s no question about it, [but] one also needs to acknowledge [their] contributions,” he says, especially in science and math. A longtime US citizen who was born in Iran, he says the increasingly diverse student body will benefit from international role models.

At OSU all potential international TAs are evaluated, and many of them are placed in the Spoken English Program (SEP) for a year before they teach. Some need help with pronunciation and idioms, while others need cultural tips, says SEP director Susan Sarwark. Many are used to an authoritarian classroom, she says, so they find the interaction in America surprising. One new Korean TA commented that his students were lazy because they were always raising their hands. In his country, it would have been selfish to waste a professor’s time with questions in class, he told Ms. Sarwark.

As with most issues, there can certainly be a middle ground herre. On the one hand, it’s true that students should be able to understand their instructors because the quality of their education depends on it. Further, foreign-born instructors would definitely benefit from learning how the styles of teaching can differ between the U.S. and their home countries.

On the other hand, my impression is that many students are quick to complain or at least get frustrated at any type of foreign accent. Perhaps they were socialized to think that because American culture and influence are everywhere, that everybody should be fluent in English. As Prof. Marvasti point out, we live in global and multicultural world and that means that we need to accept and indeed, welcome non-Americans because they have a lot to offer us.

With a little respect and two-way communication, many differences can be overcome rather easily.

CNN.com and others report that Microsoft Chairman and richest man in the world Bill Gates made a rare trip to the nation’s capital to lobby legislators to end current restrictions on H1-B visas that are given to temporary foreign skilled workers. In this case, Gates wants to expand his ability to hire more foreign computer programmers and engineers from countries such as India, China, Taiwan, and Korea. As the article explains,

Gates and other leading technology executives have pressed Congress aggressively to let them hire more foreign employees by raising visa limits, but Gates hasn’t previously campaigned to abolish the immigration law entirely. Technology executives have argued they are unable to find qualified American workers, a contention disputed by U.S. labor groups and unemployed computer engineers. . .

The Commerce Department undersecretary for technology, Phil Bond, cautioned Gates during his talk that unemployment among U.S. computer engineers regularly exceeds unemployment in other industries. “The politics of that are real,” Bond said. Government figures showed 5.7 percent of information technology employees were out of work last year versus 5.5 percent of all workers.

I am personally torn about this particular issue. On the one hand, I support Gate’s proposal to raise the number of skilled Asian workers who are allowed to work in the U.S. They should be given the opportunity to utilize their skills to the fullest extent possible and to contribute to America’s economic and multicultural strength.

On the other hand, I remain a strong union supporter and part of that stance involves making sure that American workers are given fair opportunities to compete for jobs, rather than automatically giving jobs to workers who are willing to work for lower wages. I also think that the U.S. should not become overly dependent on foreign labor, especially when there seems to be plenty of American high-tech workers who are unemployed.

I don’t know what the best solution is, but I hope that there is some middle ground where both categories of workers are able to part of what they want, so that they all contribute to the same goal — keeping the U.S. economy and culture strong and vibrant.

Here’s one from the “Here We Go Again” files: a group of minority customers has brought suit against a Denny’s restaurant for racial discrimination. This time, as reported by CBS News, it was a group of seven Arab Americans who alleged that they were verbally abused and denied service at a Denny’s restaurant near Miami, FL. As the article describes,

The seven men say they went to Fernandez’s restaurant in Florida City, on the southern tip of the Florida peninsula, about 2 a.m. Jan. 11, 2004. They say they were seated, given menus and received their drink orders. But an hour later, their food hadn’t arrived. One of the men — Ehab Albaradi — approached Ascano and inquired about the group’s order, the lawsuit says.

Ascano allegedly said: “Bin Laden is the manager of the kitchen” and “Bin Laden is in charge.” Albaradi and a second man, Usama El-A-Baidy, decided to speak to Ascano again about their order. Angered, Ascano told the short order cooks in the kitchen to cancel the group’s order, the suit claims. El-A-Baidy then asked Ascano why he had used the name bin Laden.

“We don’t serve bin Ladens here! You guys, out!” Ascano allegedly said. A group of officers from the Miami-Dade County and Homestead police departments eating at the Denny’s also told the seven men to leave and threatened to arrest them if they didn’t, the lawsuit said. The officers have not been identified, Kauffman said. . .

The 1,600-restaurant chain, which has annual sales that exceed $2 billion, settled a 1994 lawsuit for $54.4 million that accused the chain of asking blacks to prepay for meals. Since then, it has faced at least six more discrimination lawsuits filed by African-Americans and Hispanics and has been investigated in at least two cases involving discrimination against people of Middle Eastern descent.

Do we see a pattern of discriminatory behavior here? Do we really need any more proof that for whatever reasons, Denny’s restaurants systematically discriminates against people of color? Absolutely unbelievable . . .

CNNSI.com has an article about the prospects of Tim Chang (senior quarterback at the University of Hawai’i) becoming the first Asian American quarterback in the National Football League. The article notes that although Chang has set numerous NCAA passing records, he has not received a lot of positive attention from scouts, and his ethnicity may have something to do with it:

[Don] Yee makes it clear he is not suggesting NFL personnel evaluators have practiced any overt or intentional form of discrimination in assessing Chang’s prospects. But as the league’s only Asian-American agent, he can draw on his experience and the well-meaning perceptions he sometimes ran up against in becoming a pioneer in his field.

“I do think [Chang’s] ethnicity to some degree plays a part,” Yee said. “But there’s no malice intended. It’s almost a subconscious perception problem. There is kind of a perception that people have of Asians. There are still stereotypes that well-intending people still buy into. When I got into this business, it took a couple years before I was able to not have to listen to any jokes any more about being Asian. It wasn’t malice. It was more ignorance.”

The article goes on to say that at least on the surface, most the suspicions against Chang center on him playing in a wide-open “run and shoot” offensive system that usually doesn’t translate well into a stricter, more balanced and controlled NFL system. In this past weekend’s NFL draft, Chang went undrafted, but he did sign a free agent offer with the Arizona Cardinals shortly thereafter.

If Chang ends up playing professional football somewhere (either in the NFL, the Canadian Football League, the NFL Europe, or Arena Football), Chang may find himself in the role of “trailblazer” — forging the way and eventually getting trampled in the process, but hopefully clearing the path for others to follow after him. I wish him the very best of luck.

April 30, 2005 will mark the 30th anniversary of the fall of Saigon, the end of the Viet Nam War, and the beginning of the Vietnamese American experience. There are sure to be many stories in the media over the next week or so about this commenoration. I have reprinted an article published just today by Associated Press reporter Erin Texeira entitled “Vietnamese in U.S. Take Stock of Community,” in which she interviewed and quoted yours truly in her article.

Another nice collection of articles comes from the Orange County Register, home to Little Saigon and the largest Vietnamese American community in the country. They will have a different story each day this week, so be sure to check their site every day for the latest article. The Register also has an excellent multimedia presentation of the events surrounding the fall of Saigon and ensuing evacuation and resettlement of hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese into the U.S.

For most Vietnamese Americans and me personally, this is a time to reflect back on how far we’ve come in overcoming the obstacles in our path, and to look forward to what the future holds for us as a collective community. As I’ve said before, as the Vietnamese American community continues to develop, flourish, and become integrated into the American mainstream, I hope that collectively, we will recognize, respect, and embrace the diverse elements that make up our community, in terms of socioeconomic position, age/generation, Vietnamese and English fluency, and most importantly, political/ideological.

In contrast to the escalating tensions and turmoil between China and Japan, CNN and others report that in their recent summit, the leaders of India and Pakistan have declared that the peace process is irreversible between their two nations. As the article describes,

In their statement on Monday the two said they would boost business ties and cross-border travel, set up a joint economic commission and open consulates in Mumbai (formerly Bombay) and Karachi by the end of the year. Among the most concrete moves, the nuclear-armed neighbors agreed to open up the heavily militarized frontier dividing Kashmir, setting up meeting points for divided families and cultural exchanges.

Of course, we should not get ahead of ourselves since many differences remain unresolved between the two nations. But similar to the encouraging progress towards peace between Israel and the Palestineans, this improvement in relations between India and Pakistan is certain welcome news for Asians all around the world.

Salon.com has an article by MiHi Ahn about pop singer Gwen Stefani’s version of Asian fashion: an entourage of four Japanese American dancers whose jobs is to, in essence, be media props — a 21st century version of the geisha. As the author writes,

Stefani has taken the idea of Japanese street fashion and turned these women into modern-day geisha, contractually obligated to speak only Japanese in public, even though it’s rumored they’re just plain old Americans and their English is just fine. . .

Stefani fawns over harajuku style in her lyrics, but her appropriation of this subculture makes about as much sense as the Gap selling Anarchy T-shirts; she’s swallowed a subversive youth culture in Japan and barfed up another image of submissive giggling Asian women. While aping a style that’s suppose to be about individuality and personal expression, Stefani ends up being the only one who stands out.

It’s not only Stefani whose big kiss to the East ends up feeling more like a big Pacific Rim job.

You can make up your own mind about what exactly the “Harajuku Four” represent to you, but like others, I see this as another unfortunate example of Asian culture being fetishized, dehumanized, and commercialized for the consumption of Americans who want a taste of Asian-ness, but not too authentic — made mild enough for their own Americanized tastes.

Newsday reports that several Asian American police officers at the New York Port Authority have filed a lawsuit alleging racial discrimination and a racially hostile work environment. As the article states,

The lawsuit said that since 1996, Asian police officers have faced racial slurs by non-Asian officers, who called them “chink,” “gook,” “slant-eye” or “fish-head.” It said non-Asian officers, including Port Authority management employees, also made derogatory references to Asian food and mocked Asian accents over the Port Authority police radio. . .

It said officers who complained about the derogatory remarks, racial slurs or discriminatory treatment were either ignored or subject to retaliatory action including false disciplinary charges, denial of promotions, social ostracism and public ridicule. . . In particular, the lawsuit cited the difficulty Asian officers have had gaining promotions in the Port Authority police force, which has more than 1,000 officers.

Racism at a police agency against their workers of color? Absolutely shocking! Yeah right. More like the tip of the iceberg. Unfortunately, it looks like another example of the “old White boys network” feeling that their Asian American coworkers were unworthy of being treated with respect. The Port Authority apparently also felt that their Asian American coworkers were powerless in standing up and fighting for their rights. Wrong!

I hope the Asian American police officers take the Port Authority for everything that it’s worth. Organizations need to learn that racism has financial, along with cultural and political, consequences.

As reported by the New York Times, over the weekend, there were a series of often violent anti-Japan protests in China over the recent approval of textbooks in Japan that once again minimized and downplayed Japan’s atrocities committed during World War II against China, South Korea, and other Asian countries. As the article notes,

The marches have set off a steep decline in the already troubled diplomatic relations between Asia’s big powers and threatened to harm their important economic relationship. Japan has recently adopted a more assertive foreign policy, and its relations with South Korea have deteriorated as well, so the dispute with China could leave Japan isolated in Asia. . .

But the fight over the past has also crystallized into a fight over the future, as South Korea and China have each moved to oppose Japan’s effort to win a permanent seat on an expanded United Nations Security Council. South Korea’s ambassador to the United Nations, Kim Sam Hoon, recently said that “a country that does not have the trust of its neighboring countries because of its lack of reflection on the past” could not play the “role of a world leader.”

International criticisms and protests against Japan’s collective denial of their brutal actions during World War II is nothing new, but it appears that in combination with Japan’s efforts to get a permanent seat in the U.N. Security Council, these tensions between Japan and its Asian neighbors have escalated dramatically as these issues have come to the forefront. Interestingly, Salon.com has this article about a new strategic alliance between China and India:

The agreement, signed by both premiers, eases decades of mutual distrust between the nations, which share a mountainous, 2,500-mile border and fought a war in 1962. Parts of the border still are not demarcated. . . The agreement outlined steps to demarcate the disputed boundary through a “fair, reasonable and mutually acceptable solution, through equal and friendly consultations,” a statement announcing the partnership said. . .

The statement, while giving few details, said the agreement would promote diplomatic relations, economic ties and contribute to the nations “jointly addressing global challenges and threats.” . . The two countries also signed cooperation agreement in areas such as civil aviation, finance, education, science and technology, tourism and cultural exchanges.

For various reasons, Japan has become rather conservative and reactionary in recent years and has been increasingly rubbing its neighbors the wrong way. Perhaps as a result, what is also becoming clear is that despite Japan’s best efforts, its political and economic dominance over the region appears to be waning. As the South Korean official notes, it also does not help Japan’s credibility when it continues to bury its head in the sand over its actions against its neighbors during WWII.

In other words, we may be witnessing the end of Japan as Asia’s primary superpower, replaced by the emergence of China (and its allies India and South Korea).