If you have something to say...
Say it on the Huffington Post
If you have something to say...
Say it on the Huffington Post
The Blog
During this commemorative month to raise awareness of Asian/Pacific Island peoples, I draw hope from my students who are leading the way to unlearn the past and imagine a more just world for all people.
As a Korean-American, it is automatically assumed that I am a pharmacy student due to my ethnicity. Sometimes I do get offended when someone asks, "So how's pharmacy going?"
The number of Asians in the country is on the rise. Will this group of voters be courted by candidates to the same extent as other constituencies?
Marion Barry once brought minority groups together. He now seems intent on setting them apart.
When people attack Asian Americans -- whether physically or verbally -- or any minority group, or that matter, the entire community suffers.
The 1800s were of course a time of blatant racism, and many authors reflected that by depicting fictional characters of color in horribly stereotyped ways. Or they omitted those characters entirely, as if the world was populated by whites only.
It is almost a truism that the model minority paradigm is harmful to Asian-Pacific Americans.
We can easily conclude that a brand's strongest, and perhaps fastest, domestic route to cash-in on Jeremy Lin's power as an icon lies with the consumers in the U.S. who identify the most with him: Asian Americans.
"We can't live out our own dreams by following our parent's passions."
The measure, dubbed the Irish immigration bill, would qualify Ireland for the E-3 visa program increasing the number of work visas allocated to the Irish by 10,500 per year. But why should the Irish get a special bill?
One of the novelties of Lin's story is that he went to Harvard as a basketball player and then, despite his diploma, persevered as a basketball player after graduating. He represents the ultimate victory of the jock over the nerd.
What can one possibly add to the hill of hype that now surrounds the glorious Jeremy Lin, New York Knickerbocker? We are fascinated by his rise, but instead of focusing on his talent, which is raw and untested, we fixate upon his race and his biography.
Jeremy Lin stands outside the three-point line in life and scores more than straight wins. He scores recognition. He's living his dream. And ours.
The stereotype of the socially inept, meek Asian-American is one that needs changing. That ultimately requires Asian-Americans to challenge themselves --- and society at large -- to rethink the place of Asian-Americans in our society.
For every one of us eager to claim Lin in our racial draft, there's Lin himself, shrugging off the portentous hype because he's too busy making love to pressure to tangle with Asian American identity politics.
In the wake of Lin's rise in popularity, the first person that the media wants to compare him to is, naturally, the hottest athlete at the moment: Tim Tebow. But for many reasons such a comparison is lazy.
In every economic crisis there comes a moment of clarity....
