The views and opinions expressed on this site and blog posts (excluding comments on blog posts left by others) are entirely my own and do not represent those of any employer or organization with whom I am currently or previously have been associated.
Academic Version: Applying my personal experiences and academic research as a professor of Sociology and Asian American Studies to provide a more complete understanding of political, economic, and cultural issues and current events related to American race relations, and Asia/Asian America in particular.
Plain English: Trying to put my Ph.D. to good use.
As a follow up to my recent post on the Future of Chinatowns, Inside Higher Education reports that in contrast to the predominant pattern that I mentioned in my earlier article, one development project in San Francisco’s Chinatown actually has broad support among the Chinese American residents there — it’s actually a “rival” corporation that is trying to stop this particular Read More →
As a sociologist who studies immigration and assimilation, I have written before about how, in the context of today’s globalized and transnational 21st century American society, recent immigrants and the children of recent immigrants are blending old and new to create new forms of assimilation that incorporate elements from both mainstream American society and their ancestral culture. With that in Read More →
You may have heard that in July 2007, the U.S. Supreme Court decided two landmark affirmative action cases. In both cases, the Court basically ruled that school desegregation plans that are based on race/ethnicity are unconstitutional. In other words, using the race/ethnicity of students to decide who goes to what school is illegal.
With that in mind, the question becomes, Read More →
One of the basic benefits of being a U.S. citizen is that it gives you the privilege of being able to vote in elections. However, as the Christian Science Monitor reports, in many localities around the country, there is a small but growing movement to extend the right to vote to non-citizen immigrants, which not surprisingly, involves strong opinions on Read More →
In a previous post, I wrote about a new comprehensive report that describes the socioeconomic characteristics and cultural attitudes of Muslim Americans. Of course, the flip side of this topic is, now that we know what Muslim Americans are like and what they think, what do other Americans think about them — how does American society see Muslim Americans? Read More →
When most Americans think about how or why the first Chinatowns appeared in California in the mid-1800s, most assume that it was because the Chinese immigrants who came to the U.S. instinctively wanted to live among each other and to seclude themselves from the rest of American society. In fact, the real reason why Chinatowns first appeared was just the Read More →
This post is to let you, my loyal readers, know that I will be on hiatus for the next week-and-a-half or so — I will be attending a ten-day silent Vipassana Buddhist meditation retreat. I’ve attended this retreat two times already but this time, a couple of buddies are driving in from out-of-town to attend the retreat for the first Read More →
You might recall that next year, the Summer Olympics will be held in Beijing, China. Ever since Beijing was selected as the host city, there have been a storm of outcry and controversy regarding its appropriateness, given international criticism about internal human rights abuses and individual liberty restrictions, its continuing occupation of Tibet, accelerating environmental degradation, and implicit support of Read More →
As American society becomes more culturally diverse, it seems that it would make sense for our colleges and universities to reflect that change (or if anything, be at the forefront of such changes) and have faculty that also is culturally diverse. But as Diverse Education reports, these efforts still have a long way to go in order to become reality:
Hot on the heels of my previous post about the rising popularity of Japanese manga, as a further example of how elements of traditional Asian culture are increasingly becoming incorporated into mainstream American society, the New York Times describes how many elementary schools are increasingly teaching mindfulness meditation to help students reduce stress and concentrate, inside and outside the classroom:
The past several years have seen various forms of Asian popular culture become incorporated into mainstream American culture, including Asian martial arts and horror movies, sudoku, and anime. As AsianWeek Magazine reports, anime’s comic book cousin, manga, is set to become the latest Asian import to make it into the American mainstream:
Manga has gone mainstream, as evidenced by a recent Read More →
I’ve written before that research continues to support the notion that in general, immigrants produce more benefits than drawbacks for American society and its economy. As further reinforcement of this argument, Diverse Education reports on a new study that again demonstrates that immigrants –particularly from Asia — create a disproportionate number of high-tech businesses in American society:
