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The Movement Will Not Be Twitterized

I haven’t had the heart, energy, or time to read through the #CancelColbert tweets. From the resulting hullabaloo, it seems that on the whole, Suey Park’s intentions were completely missed. Also importantly missed was, you know, the whole genocide/ disenfranchisement/ misrepresentation of Native peoples thing, AND Colbert’s original gross display of anti-Asian racism, not just the “offending” Comedy Central tweet.

That said, I had the same reaction to #CancelColbert as I did last winter when I scanned the #NotYourAsianSidekick tweets. Thousands of young APIA women and allies were connecting virtually. My ambivalence about hashtag activism is that, while it has … Read more “The Movement Will Not Be Twitterized”

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The Model Minority is a Lever of White Supremacy

The Asian American model minority myth has been getting a lot of attention lately. Articles like this one, in Colorlines, and posts here on Race Files like this one and this one are just a few among a growing number of attempts to speak to the origins and meaning of the Asian American model minority. To me, that’s great news. Anti-black racism may be the fulcrum, or pivot point, of white supremacy, but the model minority myth is one of white supremacy’s many levers.

The articles referenced here all make the important point that the model minority is … Read more “The Model Minority is a Lever of White Supremacy”

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Segregation in Education: Reading Between the Lines

According to the national civil rights organization, Asian Americans Advancing Justice, students in the U.S. continue to attend schools organized by race. 69.9% of Asian American students, 85.2% of Black students, and 88.1% of Latino students attend schools that are majority non-white. Meanwhile, 29.7%, or less than a third, of white students attend majority non-white schools. This statistic matters, and not just because of what it tells us about the persistence of racial segregation 60 years after Brown v. Board of Education.

School segregation matters because $733 more will be spent per student at schools that are … Read more “Segregation in Education: Reading Between the Lines”

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MSNBC is Doing Asian Americans No Favors

When it comes to racial diversity among the Sunday political talk shows, MSNBC is the undisputed leader. In two studies conducted by ChangeLab (January-June 2012, and January-June 2013), MSNBC’s anchor weekend talk programs, Up with Chris Hayes/Steve Kornacki and Melissa Harris Perry included more guests of color and hosted more discussion of issues of race than all of the other networks offering similar programming combined. The difference is not just in quantity but in the depth and quality of the discourse. Now, mind you, the standard established by the major networks is set pretty low, but they do at least … Read more “MSNBC is Doing Asian Americans No Favors”

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California Affirmative Action: Fact and Fiction

A lot of virtual ink has been spilled on this site about Affirmative Action, including this recent post. The subject is again fostering a lot of debate as the California State Senate considers SCA5 an amendment to the California Constitution that would allow the State’s post-secondary educational institutions to consider an applicant’s race in making admissions decisions. California outlawed the use of race based criteria in admissions via Proposition 209 which effectively banned affirmative action in California when it was approved by ballot initiative and enacted in 1996. As a result of the passage of proposition 209, minority enrollment … Read more “California Affirmative Action: Fact and Fiction”

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What They’re Saying When They Talk About Us

From January 1 through June 30 of 2013 (26 weeks) ChangeLab, an Asian American-led racial justice laboratory and the publisher of this blog, conducted a study of what are known as the Sunday political shows in order to learn what they’re saying about Asian Americans. The study focused on what are known as the Big Five Sunday shows: Face the Nation (CBS), Fox News Sunday (Fox), Meet the Press (NBC), State of the Union (CNN), and This Week With George Stephanopoulos (ABC).

In addition, we also studied two MSNBC political talk programs, Melissa Harris Perry and Up with Chris Hayes/Steve … Read more “What They’re Saying When They Talk About Us”

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The Origins of the Asian American Model Minority Myth

Historian Ellen Wu’s The Color of Success: Asian Americans and the Origins of the Model Minority just might be the best examination of the roots of the model minority stereotype in print.

More than just a connect-the-dots documentation of the rise of the model minority myth, The Color of Success succeeds at putting the myth in a much broader social and political context, positioning the model minority as a critical, even necessary, lever of white supremacy, resting upon and taking drawing its power from the fulcrum of anti-black racism. What’s more, it succeeds at making this history feel personal and … Read more “The Origins of the Asian American Model Minority Myth”

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On Love, Friendship, and (LOL Reverse) Racism

Over the past few days, I’ve had some really demoralizing experiences with a heterosexual couple that my partner is very close to. The Facebook exchange was prompted by the guy posting an ABC “What Would You Do?” (which needs to be taken off the air for spreading post-racist ideology) segment that staged a scenario in which a black hairstylist “discriminated” against the blonde white girlfriend of a patron of the Harlem barbershop (Read: Reverse racism is real; white people are more oppressed than black people; black women are crazy). And as a side note, in Harlem, where the segment was … Read more “On Love, Friendship, and (LOL Reverse) Racism”

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Asian American Organizing: The Flipside of Conditional Privilege

I’ve had the pleasure of interviewing some impressive people as part of our research at ChangeLab. The breadth and depth of these conversations have revealed how complex Asian American racial identity is, and how few spaces we have to talk about it meaningfully. They’ve also revealed a deep desire to approach the subject with an eye toward resistance and action, to contest white supremacy from diverse and authentic Asian American experiences.

With the recent online debate over Asian American privilege, I’ve been thinking about how the quandary of facing both conditional race privilege and racial subjugation plays out in … Read more “Asian American Organizing: The Flipside of Conditional Privilege”

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In Defense of Affirmative Action

In Slate today, author and journalist, Tanner Colby, wrote the second in a series of articles concerning what he calls The Massive Liberal Failure on Race. In it, he expounds on the failure of affirmative action to correct the problem of structural racism in the U.S., especially as it affects black people. Because of these failures, he suggests liberals eliminate affirmative action in favor of something else.

The article begins with some historical context, and then goes on to list affirmative action’s weaknesses, including these:

1) affirmative action was conceived of as a bribe offered by the Nixon administration … Read more “In Defense of Affirmative Action”