I have a confession to make: I am a lousy model minority. In fact, I'm pretty sure that the majority isn't going to want me as the model for any minority, let alone my own people.

Unlike the mythical model minority, I am not quiet and polite. I am often loud, sometimes abrasive and I use the F-word a lot. (My mother doesn't read anything on the Internet, so I don't have to worry about repercussions from that last confession.) My math skills are only average. I do not own a calculator with a graphing function.

If I'm a lousy model minority, I'm an even lousier stereotypical Asian woman. The geisha and the "China doll" are deferential, obedient and demure. Me? I don’t own a kimono. I can’t bat my eyes. I cut off all my silky, ink-black hair because I got sick of people touching it. (Don’t touch my HAIR!) I even enjoy drinking beer out of the bottle and listening to loud rock music.

Though Crash has been nominated for six Academy Awards, including Best Motion Picture, it is difficult to say how the film advances racial tolerance given its vilifying portrayal of Asians. Hailed as an honest and provocative depiction of post-9/11 racism in America, Paul Haggis's directorial debut dares to blatantly display common racial stereotypes, in order to deconstruct them through the reality of race. The film deals with society's perceptions of blacks, whites, Middle Easterners, Latinos, and Asians by depicting racial interactions that boil over, exposing the latent ethnic discrimination within the supposed melting pot of Los Angeles. Yet the film attempts to bridge these ethnic divides through unsettling sequences that dispel preconceived notions about race, advance universal tolerance, and promote understanding of people whose lives are ruled circumstance.

Crash brazenly shows skewed prejudices against minorities. Latinos become cheating Mexican gang bangers. Middle Easterners become stubborn and incoherent convenience store owners. Blacks become gun-toting criminals. Asians become greedy smugglers. And whites oversee this chaos with condescending bigotry. The film boldly takes the perspective of intolerant and quick to anger white Los Angelinos, a perspective filled with racial slurs, injustices, and narrow-mindedness, leaving viewers in disbelief.

One of the more delicate areas I dealt with while running a dating service for more than two decades was the issue of race, and more specifically racial stereotyping by prospective members.

Stereotyping in itself is a volatile issue, and at some point during intake interviews, I often repeated the phrase “While there is some truth to all stereotypes, there are certainly many exceptions to every single one.”

However, when one is dealing with a sample of more than 20,000 single, divorced, and widowed men and women, I feel confident and comfortable making certain statements in a column titled The Truth about Dating.

Yet I was still hesitant to write this column, until a reader sent me an article from The New York Times, in which the author, John Tierney, published a story about racial preferences in the dating world.

Moreover, the article cited a study titled Racial Preferences in Dating that documented the preferences of more than 400 participants in speed dating sessions at Columbia University. A quick reading of both the Times article and the Columbia study seemed to support my own anecdotal findings.

RESTON, Virginia -- William Kim still calls the cell phone of his son, a 21-year-old senior at Virginia Tech, just to hear his voice. He feels cheated out of a chance to save his only boy.

Daniel Kim, 21, was a senior at Virginia Tech who had fallen into a deep depression after last year's massacre.

His son, Daniel Kim, wasn't a victim of last year's massacre that left 32 students and professors dead. His son committed suicide eight months later, after falling into a deep depression.

A Korean-American, Kim feared that classmates might mistake him for shooter Seung-Hui Cho.

Imagine for a minute if student leaders at elite college campuses devoted themselves to mocking black people or Jewish people or gay people. I’m not talking about drunk students posting pictures of their offensive parties on Facebook, but student newspaper editors – thought of as being both smart and progressive – giving space over for the sole purpose of making fun of people because of their background. It’s hard to imagine. And yet recently this phenomenon of racial caricatures as “satire” has emerged with Asian Americans as the object of the jokes.

Why Asian Americans? After all, Asian American college students tend to make headlines as super students, attending prestigious private and public colleges at rates way above their state demographics (hence they are “over-represented") and as excelling academically above and beyond any other racial group, whites included. This “model minority” image is not new and has been around since at least the late 1960s, with Asian Americans often embraced as symbols of the merits of hard work and individual effort, all undertaken without complaint or political agitation. So ... shouldn’t that mean that Asian Americans would be seen as well integrated — academic and otherwise — with white students?

By Sarah Wolper
© 2007 BoUNCe Magazine
September 2007

The 9th annual Multicultural Awareness Fair, held last week in the Student Union, was deemed a great success by all in attendance, despite the fact that next to no multicultural awareness actually resulted from the event. Much delicious food, however, was consumed.

“Mmph. Oh god, these are soooo good,” said sophomore Janice Corrigan, as she devoured a samosa at the Indian Student Association table. “I don’t know what’s in these or how you people make them, but wow.”

Corrigan did not take a pamphlet on the upcoming Indian cultural festivals on campus, although she did take a fourth samosa and a plate of saffron rice.

©2007 By Jane Junn and Natalie Masuoka
To appear, Perspectives on Politics

Given our contention that Asian American racial identity may be constructed differently than that for African Americans, we first began our study by conducting semi-structured interviews with Asian American youth in California. We selected a number of racial group consciousness and political participation questions that have been asked in previous public opinion surveys. Through these interviews we observed how Asian American respondents answered these questions, which informed the development of survey items and analysis in the following section. We also used the in-depth interviews to provide a sense of the words and ways in which respondents describe their racial identities and how they feel their identities are related to politics. While the data are exploratory inasmuch as they do not emanate from a randomly selected sample of the populations in the locales in question, the responses from these Asian Americans provide a clear window into the power of that identity. Despite the complexities and the hesitations respondents often express in claiming a racial group identity as Asian American, a sense of racial consciousness clearly exists.

Carl Bell was waiting his turn to check in at his hotel. A well-regarded psychiatrist and academic, he was traveling for a television appearance. The TV station had flown him first-class and sent a chauffeur-driven car to pick him up at the airport. But just before he stepped up to speak with the hotel clerk, a white man marched in and cut him off. Bell, who is black, was indignant.

“Do you think I’m waiting for a bus?” He demanded. “I’m standing right here!”

The man claimed he simply hadn’t seen him.

VANCOUVER — Allegations of racism are being levelled at a member of Jennifer Aniston's staff while she shoots a film in Vancouver. A photographer trying to snap the Hollywood star's photo says the staffer repeatedly called his girlfriend, who is Asian, a "chink."

Rik Fedyck says the incident happened Monday after he tried to shoot photos of Ms. Aniston arriving on the set of the film Traveling, which began production in Vancouver this week.

It appears unlikely, though, that Mr. Fedyck, who has made paparazzi-related headlines before for an incident involving Denise Richards and Pamela Anderson, will be able to persuade police to lay charges.

Mr. Fedyck says his initial run-in with Ms. Aniston's staff happened Monday morning, when Mr. Fedyck was in his car with his girlfriend, who is Thai.

SPOKANE — Attorney Mark D. Kamitomo is asking for a new trial in a medical malpractice case after learning that some jurors allegedly mocked his Japanese heritage during closed-door deliberations.

The Spokane County jury ruled against Kamitomo's client, clearing a doctor accused of negligence in a cancer diagnosis.

But juror Jack Marchant sought out Kamitomo after the trial and told him five jurors — three women and two men — had disparaged Kamitomo in jury proceedings, calling him "Mr. Kamikaze," "Mr. Miyashi" and "Mr. Miyagi," a character in the movie "The Karate Kid."

Washington -- Authorities at the Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge, where two Indian students were murdered on Thursday night, swiftly moved to set up a “Komma and Allam Support Fund” to assist the families of the dead students.

The fund is named after the murdered students, Komma Chandrasekhar Reddy, 31, and Allam Kiran Kumar, 33.

Stung by criticism about neglecting security at the campus, authorities yesterday belatedly moved in to ensure visible vigilance at the Edward Gay Apartments, the scene of the murders, and other housing units on the notoriously insecure campus.

The LSU police department, working with the Baton Rouge police department, the East Baton Rouge parish sheriff’s office, and the Louisiana State Police, with assistance from the FBI, has launched an intense manhunt for three men, said to be African Americans, who were seen leaving the scene of the murders shortly before the bodies were discovered.

Despite the growing number of immigrant students in schools throughout the country, many schools lack the expertise to adequately serve second language students. In fact, many school districts face a shortage of certified bilingual and English language learner (ELL) teachers. Although there is a significant body of research that suggests that bilingual education programs are most effective, most Asian American students who are English language learners are placed in English as a second language (ESL) classes or other English-only environments (Hakuta & Pease-Alvarez, 1992; Ramirez, 1991). ESL classes have been criticized for focusing on oral communication at the expense of academic skills, offering low academic standards, and segregating students (Olsen, 1997; Valdes, 2001). ESL classes have also been criticized for its assimilative nature. Valenzuela writes:

The very rationale of English as a Second Language (ESL)—the predominant language program at the high school level—is subtractive. As ESL programs are designed to transition youth into an English only curriculum, they neither reinforce their native language skills nor their cultural identities. (Valenzuela, 1999, p. 26)

Authorities aren't calling the drowning of a Vietnamese fisherman a hate crime, but members of the Asian-American community who gathered at a vigil on Saturday said they believe he was targeted because of his race.

"There were a lot of people out at the harbor early that morning from different backgrounds. Why did the alleged perpetrator pick on those individuals?" said Ben Lumicao, an adviser on the city's Commission on Human Relations. "Everyone in the Asian-American community had the same reaction: That could have been me or my uncle or my grandfather."

Friends and colleagues of slain attorney Robert Wone crowded into a meeting room at the law firm of Covington & Burling in Washington, D.C. for a press conference on Monday, Aug. 6. Wone, 32, was stabbed to death in a college friend’s townhome northeast of Dupont Circle last year, and no arrests have been made.

Attorney Benjamin Razi, a former colleague of Wone who now represents his widow Katherine Wone, said of the press conference, “I hope that the passion of this group will get the city’s attention and motivate people to action.”

“Everybody we’d been able to talk to now has a lawyer, so there hasn’t been a lot of keeping in contact,” said Capt. C.V. Morris, head of the D.C. Metropolitan Police Department’s violent crime section, of the men present in the home when Wone was stabbed. “That’s the card we were dealt. There’s no reason to try [to contact] them at this point.”

The event took place in a large meeting room where Robert Wone had organized an attorney development seminar in April 2006. After brief introductory remarks from Covington & Burling attorney Benjamin Razi, Kathy Wone was the first to speak. She thanked everyone for attending.

Assemblyman Ted Lieu is taking an increasingly prominent role on issues affecting Asian-Americans as he prepares to assume the chairmanship of the Asian Pacific Islander Legislative Caucus.

Lieu, D-Torrance, has taken the lead in pressuring the administration of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to appoint more Asian-American judges.

The issue has pushed Lieu, typically a moderate consensus-builder, into pointed conflict with the Republican administration. He has allied with the Legislature's Latino and black caucuses in threatening to cut off funding for judges if Schwarzenegger's appointments do not become more diverse.

"One person in California gets to shape the entire judicial branch," Lieu said in a recent interview. "He has wielded this tremendous power in a way that is insensitive to the rich diversity of California."

It has become required viewing in Asian American Studies and Ethnic Studies classes nationwide: “Who Killed Vincent Chin,” a documentary produced by Renee Tajima and Christine Choi, chronicles the June 19, 1982 Detroit hate crime that took the life of a young man a day before his wedding and left a community reeling from the leniency afforded to the murderers.

For those who have not seen this film yet, a very brief synopsis of this chapter in Asian American history follows:

On June 19, 1982, Vincent Chin and his friends were at his bachelor party in Detroit, when they got into an argument with two white autoworkers, Ronald Ebens and Michael Nitz. The two stated, “It’s because of you little motherfuckers that we’re out of work!” Ebens and Nitz later followed Chin to a McDonald's parking lot. They beat Chin with a baseball bat, cracking his skull. Chin died a few days later, the day before his wedding. Ebens and Nitz did not even spend a night in jail, instead getting three years of probation and a $3000.00 fine, because Judge Charles Kaufman thought they were otherwise upstanding citizens. Interestingly enough, Judge Kaufman, who died in 2004, had been a navigator for the Army Air Force in World War II; after 27 missions, his plane was shot down and he was held by the Japanese as a prisoner of war. Perhaps his experience in Japan led him to view Asians, as well as Asian Americans, as the enemy.

Today is a solemn day for many across the United States, as it is the 25th anniversary of the hate-crime murder of Vincent Chin. His murder signifies the beginning of the contemporary Asian Pacific American, or APA, civil rights movement.

In 1982, 27-year-old Vincent Chin, a Chinese-American draftsman and engineer, got into a confrontation with two white men, Ronald Ebens and his stepson Michael Nitz, at a strip club in Detroit, Mich. where Chin was having his bachelor party. During the early 1980s, the U.S. auto industry in Detroit faced tough competition from Japanese automakers, and many workers were laid off as a result. Mistaking him to be Japanese, Ebens yelled at Chin, "It's because of you little motherfuckers that we're out of work," according to a 2002 article from www.tolerance.org.

The verbal confrontation escalated into a physical scuffle between Ebens, Nitz and Chin, taking the fight from throwing punches to grabbing chairs and culminating in the three being kicked out of the club. In the parking lot, Nitz took a Louisville Slugger baseball bat out of his car, and Chin told the two men, "I'll fight you guys more if you want, but put the baseball bat down." When Nitz refused, Chin and his friends left.

WASHINGTON -- Seeking to limit damage within the Indian-American Democratic community, White House hopeful Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) said Monday it was a "screw-up" and "stupid" and a "mistake" for his campaign to issue a memo slamming ties rival Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) and her husband, Bill, have to India and Indian-Americans.

"In sum, our campaign made a mistake," Obama said in a statement released through a group of Indian-American supporters called South Asians for Obama '08.

"Although I was not aware of the contents of the memo prior to its distribution, I consider the entire campaign -- and in particular myself -- responsible for the mistake."

In Iowa campaigning, Obama told the Des Moines Register on Monday, "It was a screw-up on the part of our research team." He added, "I thought it was stupid and caustic."

Routine, even subtle, racial discrimination places significant mental stress on minorities that may provoke the development of chronic illness, new research suggests.

The finding is based on perceptions of discrimination and health histories elicited from Asian-Americans across the United States.

"Post-civil rights, most people think of discrimination as the commitment of a hate crime. But I think it's important to realize that discrimination occurs on a daily basis," said study lead author Gilbert C. Gee, an assistant professor at the University of Michigan School of Public Health. "And what the research is showing is that everyday slights can turn into long-term health effects."

Yuri Kochiyama with her late husband Bill. Mr. Kochiyama dedicated his life to supporting his family and his wife's activist efforts.

First, I wish to thank Steve Kim of the Asian Caucus and Don Brown of AHANA for inviting me to your school, and encouraging students to come out today. I am really heartwarmed that Asian Pacific American students are interested in learning about their history, their culture, their language, and that of other people's history, culture, language. I have chosen the topic - "Expanding Our Horizons, Decolonizing Our Minds and Crossing over borders." I feel this is the task for Asian American students today. Those in power and society itself, want us to have a limited outlook, cocoon ourselves from others, withdraw within ourselves, not interact with nor trust others, and narrow our perspective. A polarization has been taking place, dividing us from one another. How do we challenge this? Why must we challenge this?

Actually, American history has been one continuous narrative of events that have divided us - by race, color, class, gender, religion, politics, culture, region, and even accents. Americans are a divided people because America wants us divided. Americans do not look at one another as equals, or consider one another as brothers, sisters, neighbors. And I feel the basis for this is because of racism and slavery that began with America's birth. Racism has contaminated life in these United States, has tainted its institutions, deprived and denied its people who have been targeted and marginalized, stigmatized and looked down upon, most often because of color/race/national origin. History has shown this over and over again. Sadly, we Asian/PacificIslanders, while having been victims, have also been influenced by negative aspects of Euro-American ideas and thoughts. At the same time, we cannot blame everything with an American tag on the ills of society. Oftimes it could be our own frailties. But we must change the course of American history. And we are changing it, little by little. All of you are changing it, thankfully, because you are aware and concerned. You would not be organizing these wonderful events called Asian Pacific American Heritage Months, except for the fact that you want to bring APA people together and discuss the issues that pertain to you. APAs back in the 60's were the pioneers in this movement. I am glad that your generation is continuing the legacy.

One month after the firing of radio host Don Imus, a pair of suspended New York shock jocks have been permanently pulled from the air by CBS Radio for a prank phone call rife with Asian stereotypes.

“The Dog House with JV and Elvis,” featuring Jeff Vandergrift and Dan Lay, “will no longer be broadcast,” CBS Radio spokeswoman Karen Mateo said yesterday.

CBS Radio dismissed Mr. Imus in April for a comment he made about the Rutgers women’s basketball team. He plans a $120 million breach of contract lawsuit.

The cancellation of the other show yesterday, nearly three weeks after Mr. Vandergrift and Mr. Lay were suspended, was another indication of the increased scrutiny on radio hosts and the heightened sensitivity of management to complaints in the wake of Mr. Imus’s firing.

“This is a victory not only for the Asian-American community, but for all communities who find themselves constant targets of racist and sexist programming,” said Jeanette Wang, an executive with the Organization of Chinese Americans.

Being Asian and American is often a complex balancing act.

The challenge for millions of people is managing to assimilate into American society while maintaining the principles of cultural heritage.

About 13.5 million U.S. residents say they are Asian or a combination of another race and Asian, according to a 2004 census report. The number represents 4.7 percent of American households.

The 1990 census counted 6.9 million Asians.

The demographic includes dozens of ethnic groups, languages, religions, customs and origins from across the globe, stretching from Japan and China to Pakistan and India. Academic observers and community members say the diversity within the group is so rich and disparate, it seems folly to treat it as a single bloc.

Japan's abhorrent practice of enslaving women to provide sex for its troops in World War II has a little-known sequel: After its surrender -- with tacit approval from the U.S. occupation authorities -- Japan set up a similar "comfort women" system for American GIs.

An Associated Press review of historical documents and records shows American authorities permitted the official brothel system to operate despite internal reports that women were being coerced into prostitution. The Americans also had full knowledge by then of Japan's atrocious treatment of women in countries across Asia that it conquered during the war.

Tens of thousands of women were employed to provide cheap sex to U.S. troops until the spring of 1946, when Gen. Douglas MacArthur shut the brothels down.

The documents show the brothels were rushed into operation as American forces poured into Japan beginning in August 1945.

Auburn police are investigating a campus assault last week that targeted an 18-year-old Auburn University student because he is Asian, according to the police report.

The man was standing outside Lane Residence Hall about 11:30 p.m. Thursday when he was attacked by four men, according to the report. The assault lasted for about two minutes and the victim suffered cuts to his lips, a swollen right cheek and a knot on the right side of his head.

The victim's cousin, a part-time graduate at Auburn, said he believes the attack was a reaction to last week's massacre at Virginia Tech which left 33 people dead. The gunman, Seung-Hui Cho, was Korean-American.

Yesterday, I checked some foreign newspaper Web sites to see how they were covering events at Virginia Tech. A headline in the British daily, The Times, said: “Korean Student Named As Massacre Gunman.” Today’s Guardian says: “Gunman Was South Korean Student.” A headline in Liberation, the French daily, also identified the gunman as Korean, as did headlines in the Bangkok Post and the Middle East Times.

That usage struck me as evidence of yet another way in which people who don’t know this country don’t get this country.

Pastors aren't being prepared to handle congregational conflicts over cultural and generational issues, experts say

Asian American churches are going through a "crisis of leadership" because seminaries are not preparing a new generation of pastors to work in multi-generational and multicultural settings, Asian American Christian leaders say.

The problem, the leaders say, affects churches throughout the country but is particularly pronounced in California.

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's presidential campaign excluded reporters for the Bay Area's two largest ethnic newspapers from a fundraiser Friday at the Sheraton Palace Hotel -- a perceived snub that led to days of harsh coverage.

"Our main concern is open access for Chinese media and other ethnic media in this presidential campaign," said Joyce Chen, news editor for Sing Tao, a daily published in Chinese. "We stand by our commitment to serve our readers and our community, which often lack access from government and exposure from mainstream English (language) media."

Readers in the Chinese community have an intense loyalty to Sing Tao and the World Journal, said Sandy Close, head of New America Media, a national ethnic media coalition based in San Francisco.

"If they're disrespected by a candidate, no matter what the security conditions, space requirements and pressures they were under, (campaign officials) should move to remedy it immediately," said Close, who counseled the Clinton campaign when it sought her advice this weekend. "If they move quickly, they can use it to build a bridge, not burn a bridge."

Reporters from Sing Tao and Chinese-language daily World Journal, as well as the smaller China Press were denied entry to the noon fundraiser.

[Editor's Note: A recent study by five Columbia University researchers led by Professor Derald Wing Sue identified the following eight common themes that arose in Asian Americans' lived experiences of race.]

Theme 1: Alien in Own Land

This theme emerges from both focus groups and can be described as a microaggression which embodies the assumption that all Asian Americans are foreigners or foreign-born. An example of this theme was universally voiced by Asian Americans of all ethnicities and manifested in questions or remarks like “Where are you from?” “Where were you born?” or “You speak good English.”

I spent about 3 months in Gainesville, Florida for a student internship. Gainesville is a little town in north-central Florida and it is best known for being the home of the Gators of the University of Florida. I worked at the Veteran Affairs hospital, and after work my co-interns and I would usually head out into town and schmooze with the college kids and hit up the local bars and get drunk and stupid and partake in all types of debauchery that was probably unbecoming of future health care professionals. Needless to say, Gainesville was a great college town, and my time there was probably the most fun 3-month stretch of my life.