If you love petitions, the initiative process, and direct democracy, you’ll love the latest U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Schuette.
The Supreme Court didn’t negate affirmative action in its 6-2 opinion in Schuette, Attorney General of Michigan v. Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action, Integration a...
First, the good news of Good Friday, at least in terms of Asian American firsts.
In a small town in California, the first Hmong American judge in the nation will be sworn in. Paul Lo will take the bench as a Superior Court judge in Merced County in California’s Central Valley, where more than a thi...
Tired of that old positive stereotype? You know, the “Model Minority”?
If you are, then the FBI sting operation involving California State Senator Leland Yee and 28 others is something of a godsend.
The case is an all-encompassing model minority buster.
Don’t care much for the “good at math” ster...
Here’s when I last saw California State Senator Leland Yee.
I was the emcee of a community event at the Philippine Consulate in San Francisco last October, and Yee was the featured speaker. The event honored the day the U.S. landed on Leyte during World War II, when General Douglas MacArthur and Fi...
Grace Lee Boggs rolls onto the big screen with the aid of her senior hybrid (a walker with wheels!), gazing at an old ruin of a Detroit auto plant–a relic of America’s failed industrial past.
But next to all that historical doom, Grace stands alive and well, a triumph of her humanistic vision.
G...
For a change, there’s a movement to restore affirmative action, and not to end it.
Unfortunately, because of some short-sighted Asian Americans, SCA 5 may die before it can get to the electorate.
SCA 5 is Senate Constitutional Amendment No. 5, which seeks to overturn Proposition 209 in California....
“12 Years a Slave” won an Oscar for Best Picture, but don’t think that we’ve entered some enlightened period of post-racial bliss.
You saw proof of that if you caught the Oscar-worthy performances for “best racist smear campaign, in a supporting or lead role” this week, as the U.S. Senate considere...
Arthur Chu won’t be on “Jeopardy” this weekend. Like most of America, he’ll be watching the Academy Awards.
Just don’t ask him a hypothetical question like “Oscar Nominees for $2000.”
I stumped him. Chu doesn’t know. “’12 Years a Slave’ nominated?” he asked.
The 30-year-old champ has an excuse....
By now, you should know that Asian Americans are the xenophobes’ delight. And if I didn’t have the “Day of Remembrance” to recall the incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II, my binge watching of “House of Cards” confirms it.
It’s our natural condition to be seen as “foreigners.”
A...
I don’t grouse anymore about the lack of diversity in the Winter Olympics and how it’s still essentially a whiteout.
That’s because despite the retirement of nine-team medalist Apolo Anton Ohno, there are still some truly great competitors like Shani Davis, and Asian Americans like J.R. Celski and ...
The start of the Lunar New Year is as good a time as any to consider the real State of Asian America. Judging from some recent events, it’s not nearly as perfect as you Tiger Mom lovers out there might believe.
Oh sure, an Indian American, Satya Nadella, will become the new head of Microsoft.
But ...
I hope my Asian American Journalists Association (AAJA) colleague Randy Gener is well enough to watch the Super Bowl.
This year, the Super Bowl will have an Asian American of Filipino descent headlining the halftime show—pop icon Bruno Mars. Mars, who dutifully thanked his Filipina mother when he r...
Sunday will be a regular community-type day in the Silicon Valley district of Congressman Mike Honda (CA-17), even though he finds himself fighting for his political life.
Honda shares the marquee as “special guest “and internment camp survivor at the Korematsu Institute’s celebration of Fred Korem...
I don’t know whether Justin Bieber, driving his rented yellow Lamborghini, saw himself as a thug, but his arrest for alleged DUI and drag racing in Miami certainly makes him “thug-like,” and with a newly minted record, he is definitely more than a “wannabe.”
Notice how race never comes up in disc...
Pardon me for being late to the party, but I see and hear too much about modern slavery, hate, and injustice in today’s world—toward all beings and species. So when the movie first came out, I was in no rush to see “12 Years a Slave.”
Slavery? I get it. When slavery ended, more than a few Jim Crow ...
I confess I’m probably one of the few in this country ever to own a pair of Dennis Rodman Converse basketball shoes. You know, the ones with the funky sun signs on the ankles. In white. High-tops. (They had to be deep-discounted on sale.)
I’m not ready to have them bronzed quite yet.
But maybe I’l...
I won’t go into what I thought the top news stories were this year. Instead, I want to say goodbye to 2013 by thanking you readers for telling me what matters to you the most.
At the top, by a large margin, was my interview with Ronald Ebens, the killer of Vincent Chin. Conducted in 2012, the inter...
I am not immune. The holidays mean movies, and I thought I’d begin the season by indulging in the massive promotional juggernaut that is Anchorman 2.
I expected it to be silly and stupid. But racist too? That caught me by surprise. And it didn’t make me go har-har-har.
We all know silly and stupid...
On December 17, the 40th day after Super Typhoon Haiyan, the world has moved on.
In the U.S., we debate the race of Santa Claus.
Breaking news is elsewhere.
News of the broken remains in Tacloban and the Central Philippines, where Filipino Catholics are taking note.
Forty is a biblical milestone...
The most revealing thing about Julie Chen on the Letterman show the other night was not her off-the-shoulder black dress, or the high-heeled shoes that give her an awkward waddle, or even the phony “fly-by” wave to the audience that made her more beauty queen than anchor gal.
No, the most reveali...
