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.
Following up on my earlier post about how the proposed immigration reforms would significantly hurt Asian Americans and their families by sharply reducing the number of visas given to family members and relatives, the Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus has issued the following statement on ways to amend the current proposals that would ensure fairness to Asian Americans:
I recently received an email from a White police officer from Michigan. He said that as a reflection of how Asian Americans now comprise close to 10% of his city’s population, he asked me for tips on how to attract more Asian American candidates to join his department. I commended him and his department on their efforts to try Read More →
As I’ve written about before, assimilation can come in many different forms these days. In the past, assimilation usually meant the immigrant or “newcomer” group had to conform to virtually all aspects of the majority culture in order to be accepted. However, as American society and the world in general becomes increasingly globalized and transnational, the rules have changed. Read More →
I’ve posted before about the huge pressure on Asian Americans — particularly young people — to achieve material success in American society. Too often, those pressures to live up the “model minority” image lead Asian Americans to commit suicide or harm others. But as the Contra Costa Times reports, such pressures may have led an 18 year old Korean Read More →
As reflected in the numerous discussion threads across various message boards on the Internet, the topic of interracial relationships and marriages is a very popular and hotly debated topic among Asian Americans. As printed in Nha Magazine and New American Media, commentator Paulette Chu Miniter encapsulates many of the sentiments on both sides:
91 percent of Generation Y-ers say interracial dating Read More →
Last month, officials at the Duke University Fuqua Business School announced that dozens of students were caught cheating on a take-home final exam and have received various degrees of punishment, ranging from expulsion, suspension, and/or a falling grade in the class. However, as Diverse Education reports, attorneys for some of the students claim that Asian students are being punished more Read More →
You might remember that when pet food was found to be killing hundreds, if not thousands, of dogs and cats a few months ago, most analyses traced the contamination back to China. Since then, other poisoning episodes here and abroad have cast the spotlight upon Chinese food and household imports. As the Washington Post reports, tainted imports from China Read More →
As you may have heard by now, earlier this week, a bipartisan group of Senators introduced an immigration reform proposal that would significantly overhaul the current immigration guidelines. Much of the media’ attention on this proposal has focused on how the new guidelines would affect the estimated 12 million illegal immigrants in the U.S. Unfortunately, much less attention has Read More →
In my writings and my classes that I teach, however paradoxically it may sound, I’ve always felt that the more that we unite under the collective identity of “Asian Americans,” the more power and authority we will have in asserting the specific needs of unique subgroups within our community, whether they relate to different ethnic groups, or to those among us Read More →
I’ve written before about how pressures on young Asian Americans to conform to the “model minority” expectations of American society in general and their parents in particular, can become overwhelming and lead to suicide. As we commemorate May as Asian Pacific American Heritage Month, CNN has an article that reminds us that this is an issue that continues to be Read More →
Historically and continuing today, a popular issue among Asian Americans is assimilation, otherwise described as the process of combining their traditional Asian ancestry and heritage with their modern lives as young Americans. In fact, this process of negotiating new vs. old, traditional vs. contemporary happens all over the world. As the Christian Science Monitor reports, a very interesting example Read More →
In commemoration of May as Asian Pacific American Heritage Month, CNN has an online special presentation about the Asian American community. They seem to do a good job at presenting basic demographic and historical data, along with contemporary pieces about what it means to be Asian America today, including personal reflections from several of their Asian American anchors and correspondents. Read More →