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The Colorblind Racism of Michael Bloomberg

The September 7 issue of New York Magazine featured an interview with outgoing New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg that I’m guessing you’ve heard about. In it, Bloomberg accused Bill de Blasio, the Democratic frontrunner in the current mayoral primary, of running a racist campaign because some of his ads feature his black wife and bi-racial children…seriously.

It’s a case of the salt calling the pepper white that would be funny is it wasn’t an example of colorblind racism, the prevailing racist logic of our supposedly post-racial age. Here’s what I mean.

Bloomberg’s accusation imposes a double standard on de Blasio … Read more “The Colorblind Racism of Michael Bloomberg”

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Racism and the Threat to American Civil Liberties

Whatever you think of Edward Snowden, we have him to thank for revealing the shocking fact that our federal government is collecting data on millions of us in the name of national security. Worse, it turns out, private contractors like Booz Allen Hamilton, the firm that employed Snowden, have been doing a bunch of that spying, especially post 9/11. So, to state what is probably already obvious to most of you, private companies outside of any kind of real accountability to the public have access to our personal information, not just the government.

It seems unbelievable that a country … Read more “Racism and the Threat to American Civil Liberties”

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The NYPD: A “New Low” That’s Not So New

Recently news broke of the New York Police Department’s (NYPD) unbridled, secret surveillance of Muslim communities and organizations, monitoring intimate aspects of people’s lives and designating entire mosques as terrorist organizations without evidence. I reacted to this with a familiar combination of rage and fatigue.

In an interview on Huffington Post, Linda Sarsour of the Arab American Association of New York expressed a similar lack of surprise, while calling these police practices a “new low.”

The NYPD’s approach to counterterrorism policing seems to start from a place that all Muslims are inherently suspect, raising serious civil rights and safety … Read more “The NYPD: A “New Low” That’s Not So New”

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Amy Schumer: America’s Answer to Dave Chappelle

I can be notoriously out of the loop. I’ve “discovered” life-changing songs and excitedly shared them with my friends who respond, “Um, isn’t that from like 4 years ago?” That said, have you all heard about Amy Schumer? Apparently she’s been hot sh*t for at least a year now. There’s an ad for her Comedy Central show Inside Amy Schumer with a pixelated boob hanging out of her dress all over the NYC subway system, so I thought I’d check it out. I watched two episodes shortly after reading Lesli-Ann Lewis’ excellent opinion piece on Dave Chappelle’s shrug-off of White … Read more “Amy Schumer: America’s Answer to Dave Chappelle”

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Race Beyond Black and White: Four Reasons to Move Beyond the Racial Binary

I was recently featured as a guest on the National Public Radio program Tell Me More in the week leading up to the 50th Anniversary March on Washington, The interview was a discussion of a piece I wrote called Three Things Asian Americans Owe to the Civil Rights Movement. Close on the heels of that broadcast was the release of a video interview I did with GritTV’s Laura Flanders about the unique place of Asian Americans in our national civil rights history.

Too often, the history of race and rights in this country is a story told only in … Read more “Race Beyond Black and White: Four Reasons to Move Beyond the Racial Binary”

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My Racial Trigger: Raising Brown Babies

I’ve twice had the most profound and awe-inspiring life experience: giving birth to a child. Now ages 3 and 5, my bizarre, amusing, remarkable daughters have spent their entire lives teaching me innumerable lessons on patience, love, deep breathing, and truth-telling. Their father and I do our best to speak honestly with our girls about life (in developmentally appropriate ways, of course), believing our task is not simply to nurture children but also to raise adults whose personal and social compasses will serve them well in the world.

More than a decade of anti-racism activism combined with a nearly 4 … Read more “My Racial Trigger: Raising Brown Babies”

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After Miley, Remembering Hottentot Venus and Ah Fong Moy

Many excellent perspectives have emerged among the media pandemonium following Miley Cyrus’ performance at the VMAs this week. Before I get to the main point of this blog, I just want to say Robin Thicke is gross. In the world I want to live in, an artist 16 years Cyrus’ senior would have wanted to mentor her, not just attend rehearsals where she grinds on him (an apparent fetishizer of black women) and a foam finger in preparation for an international stage. I also find the “Is Miley racist or not?” debate ridiculous. Of course she is. Cyrus is descended … Read more “After Miley, Remembering Hottentot Venus and Ah Fong Moy”

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Asian America’s Overlooked Diversity: A Video Interview with Scot Nakagawa

[youtube_sc url=”http://youtu.be/r9TpomsIj50″]

The above interview was conducted by Laura Flanders of Grit TV and The Nation on the occasion of the release of the Pew Research Center’s report, The Rise of Asian Americans and my response, here, on Race Files.

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Real Rights Require Real Resources: An Interview with Scot Nakagawa on Grit TV

[youtube_sc url=”http://youtu.be/FLmldH6Y7no”]

Above is an excerpt of an interview with me conducted by Laura Flanders of The Nation and Grit TV about how Real Rights Require Real Resources. The complete interview can be found here. Transcript on Truth Out to follow.

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More on What Asian Americans Owe to the Civil Rights Movement

Thursday I taped a short interview with Tell Me More, a program that airs on National Public Radio. The segment aired last Friday. Give it a listen by clicking here. Tell me what you think. Be kind, these things are edited so I did actually say it (occasional cringe), but I also said a lot more.