On June 23, 1982, Vincent Chin died in a Detroit area hospital after efforts to revive him failed. Four days before, on June 19, the night of his bachelor party, Chin suffered a brutal blow to the head with a baseball bat in the hands of Ronald Ebens.
I have tried to get back in touch with Ebens to...
Rachel Dolezal nearly wrecked everyone’s Father’s Day.
You don’t often see a daughter outed so publicly by her white father for passing as an African American, but I guess post-racial filial love isn’t necessarily unconditional.
I admit to being somewhat sympathetic of Rachel D., at first. The Cen...
It’s Loving Day, folks, and we might as well make it a whole darn weekend of happy mixing, because Asian Americans really had more of a role in the legendary Loving case than you think.
It wasn’t just a white/black thing, as I’ll explain in a bit.
For those of you stuck in a Kim and Kanye World, I...
Just when you think we’re safe in 2015, and Asian Americans have a real foothold in American society–living stereotype-free without fear of discrimination–along comes a story like this one involving the Hwang family.
It’s like a brick of firm tofu to the side of the head.
How about being referred ...
China’s recent military change? Bruce Jenner’s sex change got more attention.
But maybe it’s time we all took note.
About China.
Forget the old joke about the Chinese Navy being a bunch of junk.
It’s big and ready to strike in the South China Sea.
According to a new white paper–the first publ...
Maybe retirement in May was really David Letterman’s Asian Pacific American Heritage Month tribute.
On Monday, the kick-off to the last week of the “Late Show,” Sue Hum, Letterman costume designer, got her send-off in the “Top Ten Things I’ll miss working at the Late Show.”
Her epitaph now should ...
What’s better: four As or five?
The four As are those who make up what I call the “Affirmative Action Asian Americans.”
The five As would be those I dub the “Anti-Affirmative Action Asian Americans.”
If you haven’t noticed either group, don’t worry, you will. They’re forming our community’s Mason...
How silly to ask during Asian American Pacific Islander Heritage Month.
But really, do Asian American lives matter? Not just the super-achieving model minority cubs breastfed from Tiger Moms, but the struggling Asian American immigrants who are seldom heard, hardly seen or even recognized?
I won...
I remember seeing Bruce Jenner throwing a javelin at the Olympics in 1976.
It was the same time Renee Richards was challenging the tennis world to allow a trans woman to compete as a pro.
Richards’ fight went all the way to the New York Supreme Court, a victory for what was then called transsexual...
Serap Jangbu Sherpa, 46, was hanging on every bit of communication from the base camp in the Himalayas -by text, online, Facebook–when I called him on Saturday.
It was like he was hanging on the side of the mountain he loved.
Serap is a premier climber who has scaled Mt. Everest three times. But...
We’re coming up quickly to Asian American Pacific Islander Heritage Month in May, and once again, I’m wondering where we are with our umbrella term that expands and becomes inclusive. Or has the term become meaningless?
We know it’s a political term, but shouldn’t we be feeling a little unity in th...
The New York City cop caught on video in a racist rant, wailing on a South Asian driver, has apologized, but to me it just rings hollow.
In an exclusive interview with WNBC-TV, Patrick Cherry tells his side of the story, primarily that we didn’t see the events leading up to the video that more than...
When the verdict in the Ellen Pao discrimination case came down last Friday, I didn’t have a good feeling.
Individual cases of discrimination are so hard to prove. Pao had some evidence that there was an old boy’s club, but the good folks at Kleiner Perkins had the typical defense.
They maligned h...
Patsy Mink was a 12-term member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Hawaii–the first woman of color and first Asian American woman elected to Congress in 1964. She ran for president in 1972. And for all you March Madness fans, she authored Title IX of the Higher Education Act, officially calle...
At face value, Vincent Wu, 73 years young this week, looks like many successfully retired Asian American engineers. At Atari, the company that brought the world “Pong,” Wu led the effort to bring “Donkey Kong” home–to the home PC, that is.
Remember the floppy disk version? That was Vincent.
But as...
A fundamental story pattern on “Fresh off the Boat” has emerged. Eddie’s hip-hop clash is the New American Asian Fusion that sets off the comedic and leads us over the bridge to racial harmony!It all came into focus this week when Eddie gets automatically paired with a new student, an adopted Chines...
There’s something about a march. It’s not a parade. It’s a march. People together. Maybe arm in arm, maybe not. But definitely believing in the same principles, and moving forward in the same direction.
Does anyone doubt that sense of unity is what our country needs more than ever?
So I don’t kn...
By the time you read this, the whole world will have watched the Oscars. And while there’s a great chance of someone on the red carpet “wearing an Asian American,” I am sure of this: There’s absolutely no chance an Asian American will win in any of the major categories. Not Best Picture, Best Direct...
The Lunar New Year is coming, bringing the prospect of good luck and great fortune.
We hope.
After last week, we all need something inside that proverbial big red envelope.
Let’s start with justice.
If you’re NYPD Officer Peter Liang, you have to be wondering about your luck when your case just ...
Eddie Huang, producer, chef, memoirist, former lawyer, all-around bad dude, and self-proclaimed “human panda,” was born in Washington, D.C. on March 1, 1982.
He was in diapers when I was well into my television news career, the first Filipino American on one of the big three network affiliates in S...
