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Book Review: Soledad Brother

I remember years ago when I was a member of ACT-UP, a woman who joined the group reviewed our direct action plans and said something along the lines of, “All this militant stuff must make you feel manly, and I guess that feels good since you’re hated partly because people think gay men are like women. But, um, how’s that supposed to make me feel?”

I got the message, though I still struggle to live up to it. It made me look askance at the texts of the 1960s and 70s that, indirectly but nonetheless effectively, led me to the … Read more “Book Review: Soledad Brother”

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Repost from The New Yorker, “The Origins of ‘Privilege'”

Today on Joshua Rothman’s blog at The New Yorker, there is an interesting interview with Peggy McIntosh, one of the pioneers in the academic discussion of the concept of “privilege.” Here are some excerpts:

The idea of “privilege”—that some people benefit from unearned, and largely unacknowledged, advantages, even when those advantages aren’t discriminatory —has a pretty long history. In the nineteen-thirties, W. E. B. Du Bois wrote about the “psychological wage” that enabled poor whites to feel superior to poor blacks; during the civil-rights era, activists talked about “white-skin privilege.” But the concept really came into its own in

… Read more “Repost from The New Yorker, “The Origins of ‘Privilege'””
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Vijay Iyer on “Complicity with Excess”

If you haven’t seen musician Vijay Iyer‘s speech concerning “complicity with excess” that was delivered to the Yale Asian alumni, you should check out this article on the Asian American Writers’ Workshop site. It is, in a word, fantastic. Here’s a preview,

I’ve found myself right in the middle of conversations about race for most of the past 20 years. Now I’ve managed to maintain a stable and consistent presence in the jazz world; by any measure I’ve been one of jazz’s success stories, and at this point I have no bitterness; I just observe how things unfold. For … Read more “Vijay Iyer on “Complicity with Excess””

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Donald Sterling’s Love of Koreans Ain’t No Kind of Love at All

I was going to write a post about Clippers owner Donald Sterling’s apparent love of Koreans, even to the extent of renaming a housing development “Korean World Towers” in order to attract Korean tenants. Sterling’s preference for Koreans as tenants (and employees) came at the expense of African Americans who he has allegedly said are undesirable because they “smell and attract vermin.” And that makes his particular brand of racist jujitsu a near perfect example of how the model minority myth is so often used to justify racism against “problem minorities.”

But then a Race Files reader linked me to … Read more “Donald Sterling’s Love of Koreans Ain’t No Kind of Love at All”

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We Are All Cyborgs: Being Asian American and Doing Organizing Online

The following originally appeared on Reappropriate (a great site you should check out!)

Guest-post by Cayden Mak (@Cayden), 18MillionRising.

I recently remarked to a longtime Twitter friend that I feel we live in a magical time, and I always wonder if young movement folks in the past felt that way, too. My friend suggested that not every generation gets to feel that way but there are definitely moments that people live through when they know they are in a magical time. I feel confident saying we live in one such time, but there’s still a question of … Read more “We Are All Cyborgs: Being Asian American and Doing Organizing Online”

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Why I’ll Always Apologize for My Privilege

Twitter was abuzz with banter yesterday concerning Time magazine’s re-post of a Princeton Tory diatribe by student Tal Fortgang, entitled Why I’ll Never Apologize For My White Male Privilege.

I checked it out and quickly understood why. Tal begins,

There is a phrase that floats around college campuses, Princeton being no exception, that threatens to strike down opinions without regard for their merits, but rather solely on the basis of the person that voiced them. “Check your privilege,” the saying goes, and I have been reprimanded by it several times this year. The phrase, handed down by my moral … Read more “Why I’ll Always Apologize for My Privilege”

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#WeAreAllMonkeys: Swallowing Racism Can’t Be the Only Way to Beat It

When faced with a spectator who threw a banana at him during a football match, Brazillian soccer star, Dani Alves, merely picked up the banana and ate it.

[youtube_sc url=”http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Zcvvd4llyE”]

Racism is a pervasive stain in European football. During matches, European football spectators frequently make “monkey noises” against black players on the field, and often throw bananas at them. With little action from their football clubs, players are expected to just deal with it on their own. So when Alves actually ate the banana thrown at him during a match, the world rejoiced.

Alves later explained his actions to … Read more “#WeAreAllMonkeys: Swallowing Racism Can’t Be the Only Way to Beat It”

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No Right Turn: The Surprising Truth About Asian Americans and Affirmative Action

In an April 15 Los Angeles Times editorial entitled “An Asian American Turn to the Right?” Lanhee J. Chen, the former policy director of Mitt Romney’s failed 2012 presidential campaign and Hoover Institution Research Fellow, claims that Asian Americans played a critical role in defeating SCA5, a proposal to allow race to be considered among many other factors in college admissions in California.

SCA5 was proposed in order to remedy the precipitous drop in minority college admissions following the passage of Proposition 209, a 1996 ballot measure that banned affirmative action in California. The defeat of SCA5 is … Read more “No Right Turn: The Surprising Truth About Asian Americans and Affirmative Action”

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Why We Should Fight Hard to Uphold Affirmative Action

The Supreme Court of the U.S. delivered a temporary death knell to racial equality in the state of Michigan today by upholding Michigan’s ban on affirmative action policies. In doing so, the Court clarified that the Constitution merely permits, but does not require, the use of the kind of race-conscious programs barred by the Michigan Constitution, and that individual states can choose to ban affirmative action programs. The decision comes on the heels of efforts by the California legislature to revive affirmative action.

I support affirmative action. Contrary to mainstream media claims, Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders are … Read more “Why We Should Fight Hard to Uphold Affirmative Action”

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37 Sikh Men Are Now On A Hunger-Strike at El Paso To Protest Their Detention

The Vaisakhi harvest celebration is a festive occasion of dancing, singing, music, and religious praise for many Sikh men and women, and marks the beginning of the Sikh New Year.

However, 37 Sikh men in El Paso, Texas, celebrated Vaisakhi in a truly unique fashion this year by launching a hunger-strike.

The 37 Indian nationals are detained at an immigration processing center in El Paso, Texas. How did they get there? Many, if not all, of them suffered religious persecution in their home countries, and tried to seek the protection of the U.S. by journeying through Moscow, Havana, Ecuador, … Read more “37 Sikh Men Are Now On A Hunger-Strike at El Paso To Protest Their Detention”