You don’t have to go back to the 19th century to feel an animus in America toward Asians. This week, there’s a disturbing anti-Filipino streak at of all places, the University of California, Berkeley. And just as October and Filipino American History Month ends.
After students protested last week a...
Since this is Filipino American History Month, I want to honor an Asian American Filipino of note, Larry Itliong, and add a few words to my last column on Colin Powell.
October 25 is Itliong’s birthday, and an official “day” in California. Not a holiday–you still have to work. But then again, Itlio...
General Colin Powell died on the most important day of Filipino American History Month, Oct. 18, a day when the Filipinos are documented as first to step foot on American soil in 1587.
First has to count for something.
Powell was a first too. He was the epitome of what I call “Firsterism,” that dr...
I celebrated Filipino American History Month last night by cooking the Filipino vegetable stew, pinakbet–my amok vegan version anchored with that gorgeous furrowed gourd, a/k/a ampalaya in Tagalog. You might know it as bitter melon.
It’s not a melon, really; it’s the opposite of honeydew. Nor is it...
All I needed to see was the headline “New Jersey Nurse killed in Times Square,” and I just reacted.
Had to be a Filipino American, I said to myself.
She was.
Last Friday night, Maria Ambrocio, 58, was pushed by a perp who had just snatched another woman’s phone and was trying to get away. He didn...
After the Facebook meltdown at the beginning of the week, the good news came at the end of the week: Maria Ressa.
To Maria Ressa, hearty congratulations are in order.
Ressa’s the Asian American Filipina journalist, the CNN reporter turned media entrepreneur as CEO of the website Rappler, based in ...
History usually stays in the past because much of it is hurtful, bad stuff. Society is all too willing to let it stay buried, the deeper the better. That is, until someone decides it’s just too immoral to continue to ignore it all. And then the history comes alive, and makes news.
That’s happening ...
My essay on “South Pacific” in “Bigotry on Broadway,” an anthology edited by the noted author Ishmael Reed and his wife Carla Blank, officially launches this week. “South Pacific” was how Asians appeared on Broadway in the 1940s and 1950s, but it wasn’t nearly the condemnation of bigotry people like...
It’s Shang-Chi’s world. So why don’t I feel better, especially after seeing the Emmys?
This is the year Asian Americans got the Marvel superhero treatment, and from all accounts, the spell is working at the box-office. In its third weekend, “Shang-Chi” is the top movie in the nation bringing in $21...
“Recall Repulsed Convincingly in California.” That would have been my election night headline.
Gov. Gavin Newsom, elected three years ago by the largest margin in nearly 70 years, can now stay in office to lead the state with the most Asian Americans in the nation.
Out of 17 percent of eligible As...
“Get vaccinated,” President Joe Biden said in a kind of tough love, aggressive whisper, as he ended his speech on Thursday.
It’s the speech that could get us over this nasty Covid surge gripping the nation. All the numbers from new cases, to hospitalizations, to deaths, show America still hasn’t le...
On the weekend that Asian Americans are given the full Hollywood treatment–not just “Crazy Rich Asians,” but crazy super-empowered Asians, Marvel style–America could really use an Asian American hero. When I feel comfortable in a movie theater again, I’ll catch “Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten R...
There are times when being Asian American matters. And then there are times when we are just plain Americans.
This is one of those times. When our country loses a war, we become “we.”
We weren’t going to get a countdown. Or a ball drop.
Surely, there would be no crowds cheering at Time Square to ...
If you’re thinking about making remarks about an Asian American with a dash of that secret sauce—racism—I’m going to give you a way to think about the apology you will undoubtedly be forced to give.
Think of it as a model apology.
I realize society needs one of those after listening to the b.s. ap...
Javed Rezayee is what I’d call an Asian American Afghan. An AAA. A triple-A.
So, he’s one of us. An Asian American brother. He came to the U.S. more than a dozen years ago as a student, and now he’s an American citizen. He voted for Biden. But he told me the president was wrong to abandon Afghanist...
I have been waiting for this moment since I first heard of the phrase “diversity,” or the idea of “minorities becoming the majority” in the 1980s.
And now according to the Census, we are here about eight years sooner than demographers expected. Our population is up by 24 million people, to more tha...
In this column, I shall talk one last time about the Olympics, and then declare the post-Olympic Suni Lee the most watchable Asian American in the world.
But first things first.
If you’ve seen the word “Cuomosexual” in print suddenly, or showing up on women’s T-shirts protesting Governor Andrew Cu...
Teenage phenom Suni Lee, the first Asian American, first Hmong American to win an Olympic gold medal in the marquee gymnastics event—the all-around–was sitting on the Today Show couch in Tokyo on Tuesday this week.
Simone Biles had just finished her comeback performance and won bronze in the indivi...
What did Suni Lee really do last week at the 2020 in 2021 Summer Olympics? She just smashed the biggest stereotypes that have burdened Asian Americans for generations.
But first she had to jump around in a Tokyo arena. And that was something special too.
The eighteen-year-old Lee made every Asian ...
Here’s the takeaway message to all Asian Americans when violent acts against us aren’t treated as hate crimes.
We don’t count.
Justice doesn’t apply to us. We’re not seen, again.
You just need to remember Vincent Chin (I explain later) to understand the difficulty in getting justice for the six A...
