'...of the 5,380 men's basketball players in Division I basketball last season, only 15 were Asian-American...'
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thesmithian-blog reblogged
Steve & Erin’s Wedding (x)
”Hey Erin, do you know this guy named Steve?” ”You know, that cool Asian kid? Well, he really likes you”. - Kiara Hall
These words, (unbeknownst to me) would be the prelude to my very own love story. I was 11 years old when my friendnestled up to me in class and whispered this in my ear. I had little idea who Steve was; neither did I care to explore. Provoked by my silence, my friend leaned over and said “Ill give you $5 if you go out with him for a day, just give it a try”.
Five dollars can get an 11-year-old kid just about anything they wanted from the lunch line, so I agreed. Lunch time came around, and my over zealous friend completely instructed every moment our awkward lunch date: “Come on guys, hold hands”, “Smile for the camera”, “you guys should be sitting closer together”. Needless to say, Steve and I swiftly broke things off after lunch.
The years passed. By the time we entered high school our relationship had morphed into a casual friendship scored by our silly decision to date in the 7th grade. Steve would call me for two things only: help with homework or to get his hair braided, and this was the extent of our friendship. No more. No less. Our senior year of high school brought about many changes. A close friend of ours passed, and with his absence a need for fellowship was formed. Friends of ours gathered everyday after school to keep each other uplifted. However as the school year progressed, and after school activities prevailed, Steve and I found ourselves hanging out after school alone. ( I believe this was when God began to move in on Steve and I )
Steve began to behave very strangely during this time. He would gift me flowers and take me ice-skating. I wasn’t sure what was happening to our unspoken rule that we were strictly friends. The rule characterized from our failed attempt at dating in the 7th grade, nevertheless, I continued to spend time with him. Mostly because I felt comfortable in his presence, and partly because…Steve had game. Yes I said it! It took me by complete surprise; Im a sucker for adventure and he was dripping with spontaneity. What girl doesn’t like roses just because or blind folded dates to Build-A-Bear.
One Friday in December of 2005 ,he asked me to date him. I paused. Hmmm…Steve has always been a man of great character, a man that was led by God, and his love for God was amazing even at the age of 17. He was also pretty cute. I had no good reason to say no, so I took the leap of faith and said yes. LOL. I. Said. Yes. There in Steve’s living room, at the age of 16, I made one of the best decisions for my life.
…I’ve said yes to Steve ever since without regret and I can’t wait to say yes to him for the final time on September 7th. God is good.
[look of the hour]
'If you’re a Chinese American child of Chinese American immigrants, then it’s quite likely you spent part of your childhood attending Chinese school. It’s a coming of age ritual of growing up ½ or 1st generation Chinese American. And of course we all hated it when we were going to Chinese school, complained to our parents about it, and if our parents caved we eventually got out of it. It’s also true that once you’re an adult, you realize your parents were right all along, and almost all of us wish we had stuck with it, and learned more in that dreaded Chinese school.'
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Not only is Russell a total do-gooder-over-achiever (model minority), but he's overweight (unattractive), has a speech impediment (forever foreigner), looks nothing like his voice-over talent Jordan Nagai (invisible) AND ultimately is saved by a white man who acts as a surrogate-substitute father (transracial & international adoption) to replace his absent Asian father (Asian men = emasculated). By contrast, consider some of the other film children of Pixar...
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...a group of Filipinos including Filipino-American labor leader Larry Itliong’s son Johnny Itliong joined others in showing their disappointment of the depiction of Filipino labor leaders that stood side by side with Cesar Chavez, Dolores Huerta, Al Rojas and others as the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee (led by Itliong) and National Farm Workers Association would merge to become known as the UFW...“It’s an injustice to my father that he is not at that table (referring to pivotal scene in the new Chavez movie) and that was everything that he fought for was to get the bargaining rights on that piece of paper and in the movie it shows him in the crowd as a spectator and that’s not right in my heart and I don’t think it’s right for our Filipino community to be a spectator to something that he was a major player in.”
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The Chinatown-International District of Seattle, or the "I.D.," is a diverse community of Chinese, Filipino, Japanese and Vietnamese residents and merchants. Immigrating Chinese laborers began to settle in Seattle in the 1860s, and other cultures followed, creating the interesting neighborhood that remains to this day.
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'A tone-deaf inquiry into an Asian-American’s ethnic origin. Cringe-inducing praise for how articulate a black student is. An unwanted conversation about a Latino’s ability to speak English without an accent...'
...not exactly the language of traditional racism, but in an avalanche of blogs, student discourse, campus theater and academic papers, they all reflect the murky terrain of the social justice word du jour—microaggressions—used to describe the subtle ways that racial, ethnic, gender and other stereotypes can play out painfully in an increasingly diverse culture.
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regardless of race, the typical working-age US household is far off-track toward accumulating…savings to meet their basic needs in retirement…we find an even worse situation for blacks, Latinos and Asians…only four out of 10 Latinos and about five out of 10 Asians and blacks work for employers that sponsor retirement plans, compared to six out of 10 white employees…For working-age households, the average retirement savings is only about $20,000 among blacks and $18,000 for Latinos—a small fraction of the $112,000 average among white households…With little else to depend on besides Social Security when they retire, people of color are especially vulnerable to reliance on public assistance and economic hardship in old age.
Nari Rhee, manager of research, National Institute on Retirement Security
...the NYTimes ran a piece celebrating a...milestone in North American Western Hollywood TV; two of the strongest and most interesting female leads are being played by Asian-American actresses...However celebratory this milestone may be, the following quote almost strips it away...
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...more than 1.2 million homeless persons were living in emergency shelters in 2012, including 479,423 whites...469,363 African-Americans...109,905 Hispanics, 8,615 Asians, 46,020 Native Americans, 8,444 native Hawaiians, and 90,135 persons of multiple races...
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+++++
art: photography by Lee Jeffries
...hadn't been the first time someone came in seeking a glimpse at L.A.'s day-to-day ethnic past, and it wouldn't be the last...In this wildly diverse city, why wasn't there photographic record of that growth as well? There was "official" history and then there was "authentic" history...
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I am always Asian-American.
Ann Curry, in response to the question [from MSNBC anchor Richard Lui]: "When are you an Asian American?"
Millennials also get to see Asian American faces in the media, another gain that generations past did not have. While these Millennials might not dismiss racism against Asians out of hand, they do somewhat dismiss the relevance of such racism to their own lives. Tony Lam’s documentary Vincent Who? is a compelling confrontation of how much our community has forgotten between Gen X and Gen Y. Around 2009...college students were asked whether they knew Vincent Chin, to which they responded no. One said, “um, from the riots or something? um, a long time ago?” To another, the interviewer explained that Chin was a Chinese American who was murdered in 1982. The student replied...“That was before I was born, so…”
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