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.
Many of you know that in the Gulf Coast, particular around the Houston and New Orleans metropolitan areas, there are numbers of Vietnamese Americans, many of whom work in the fishing and shrimping industries (continuing their long legacy of working in those trades from back in Viet Nam). Not surprisingly, many had their livelihoods devastated by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. Read More →
As I’ve mentioned before, I am a fan and frequent visitor to Angry Asian Man, a website/blog maintained by Korean American Phil Yu, who posts about news items, current events, and cultural/media examples that relate to Asian Americans and more specifically, to how they affect our image in society. Phil’s site is already pretty popular but he has apparently hit Read More →
The New York Post has an article profiling a new restaurant in New York City whose claim to “uniqueness” is that it is centered around a ninja theme and where the wait staff dress and act like ninjas:
With some 3,800 new food- service establishments bombarding New York yearly (and about the same number closing), a restaurant has to do something to Read More →
The Associated Press has an article that describes the growing political power and influence of Asian Americans in New York City:
Mayor Michael Bloomberg quietly slipped away from City Hall one morning last week to meet with York Chan, the powerful community leader known as the “mayor of Chinatown.” A day earlier, Chan sat down with Fernando Ferrer, the Democrat challenging Read More →
The San Francisco Chronicle has an article and commentary by Jeff Yang about the current state of Asian Americans trying to achieve stardom on television:
The CBS sitcom “King of Queens” takes place in a region of New York where one out of five people is Asian, yet none of the regular or recurring characters is Asian American. You won’t find any Read More →
ABC News reports that Filipino American Leandro Aragoncillo, a U.S. Marine formerly assigned to Vice President Cheney’s staff, has been arrested and charged with passing sensitive information and documents to operatives in the Philippines:
Officials say the classified material, which Aragoncillo stole from the vice president’s office, included damaging dossiers on the president of the Philippines. He then passed those on to Read More →
Many of you have probably heard of Michelle Wie, a Korean American from Hawai’i who has set the golf world on fire and is being described as the female equivalent of Tiger Woods. She is getting ready to turn 16 (still just a teenager!) and to turn professional. She has already played in a few professional men’s PGA tour Read More →
The Hartford Courant has a story that describes how a group of Buddhist monks in China are taking business management courses to help them better manage their temples:
Proving that in China’s booming commercial hub of Shanghai, even Buddhism is big business, a group of 18 Buddhist monks and lay people are taking MBA classes to better manage their temple, the official Read More →
Despite the college admissions scandal of the late 1980s and early 1990s, statistics these days show that Asian Americans are disproportionately overrepresented as students in many of the country’s top universities, especially in California, the state with the largest Asian American population. An article at Inside Higher Education highlights how Asian Americans are approaching 50% of the student population at Read More →
Reuters has an article that describes that two young ethnic Chinese men in Singapore were recently charged with with violating the country’s strict rules about disseminating Internet postings that are intolerant of racial, ethnic, or religious groups:
The two ethnic Chinese men, aged 25 and 27, face charges for promoting ill-will and hostility between ethnic communities on their personal websites, or “blogs,” Read More →
There are certain stereotypes applied to young college-aged White men — that they can be loud, obnoxious, frequently drunk, and at times, racist. Here’s an instance in which all of the above seem to be true: as reported by the Michigan Daily, two college students are suspected of committing a hate crime against young Asian students by, among other Read More →
The Boston Herald has a story about how Boston police and working together with several small businesses, many of them owned by Asian Americans — particularly Vietnamese Americans, on preventing unruly teenagers from shoplifting, vandalizing, and even assaulting store owners, as was the case last year:
Vietnamese merchants in Fields Corner who were terrorized by unruly middle school students last school year Read More →
