Today, the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund (AALDEF) and 44 Asian American groups and higher education faculty filed an amicus brief urging the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit in Boston to reject the claims that Harvard’s admissions policies intentionally discriminate agai...
When the Class of 2020 was admitted to Harvard, I had just finished a visit to my alma mater.
The most memorable thing I saw at Harvard Yard was a very young Chinese girl who, at the insistence of her parents, was looking through the lens and taking their picture on the steps of Widener Library. Pe...
The White House doesn’t know which end is up when it comes to Covid.
Mask or no mask? Test or no test? Social distancing? Only, apparently, from common sense.
Trump is leading everyone to rush back in and open up, even as the U.S. death toll rises to over 80,000, more deaths than the Vietnam War.
...
Courthouse News Service – Out of all major racial and ethnic groups in the U.S., Asian Americans have become the fastest-growing demographic of eligible voters.
According to the Pew Research Center study, Asian Americans make up 4.7% of the U.S. electorate this year –a record high for that group. ....
It’s easy to be annoyed with Asian Pacific American Heritage Month, a/k/a the yearly excuse for non-APAs to pay attention to us.
As a group, we are notoriously “unstatisticized” (coinage mine). There never seems to be a large enough sample size of Asian Americans to be statistically meaningful.
It...
This year, the man who puts the “P” in Asian Pacific American Heritage Month, or the “NHPI” in Asian American Native Hawaiian Pacific Islander, a/k/a AANHPI Month, is Dr. Raynald Samoa.
When Dr. Samoa tells you how to pronounce his name, he says it’s like “rainbow” with no “b.” So it’s “Ray-no," a ...
Gotham Gazette - At a hearing Monday, the New York City Council’s Committee on Governmental Operations approved the latest drafts of two bills that enhance the responsibility of city agencies to conduct voter registration and a resolution calling for the State Legislature to pass similar legislation...
In 2020, we’re all practically Covid Americans caught in a crisis that could last two years and infect up to 70 percent of America, according to media reports.
That’s why the key guest on my APA Heritage Month special of Emil Amok’s Takeout, is the person I’ve dubbed one of the country’s “Most Esse...
Asian Pacific American Heritage Month is around the corner, and from all appearances, most of us will be sheltering in place.
But as I mused a few weeks ago, APA Heritage Month doesn’t have to be cancelled.
Not when we have the technology to overcome it all!
I urge you all to participate in my li...
Gem Scorp is positive. But he’s feeling better and going back to work. He should be getting a thank you for his courage.
Instead, he’s getting a right-handed slap from the commander-in-chief.
Enabled by the virus, President Trump’s move to “pause” legal immigration is a way to sneak a major policy...
Rafu Shimpo: President Trump’s criticism of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco) over her recent visit to San Francisco Chinatown has angered Asian American leaders already dealing with anti-Asian hate crimes connected to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Pelosi’s visit to Chinatown came three weeks b...
Huffington Post - As his stint on ABC’s “How to Get Away with Murder” comes to a close, Conrad Ricamora is getting back to his musical theater roots.
Last fall, the actor returned to the stage in “Soft Power” at New York’s Public Theater. Written by playwright David Henry Hwang and composer Jeanine...
You’ve zoomed, right? It’s the latest way to reach out and not touch someone in these times of social distancing. If you want an Asian American perspective on the news, here’s my conversation with longtime civil rights activist Phil Tajitsu Nash. A professor in Asian American Studies at University o...
Next on Emil Amok’s Takeout:
I talk with Gem Scorp, a registered nurse at Elmhurst Hospital in Queens, who thinks we may have turned a corner in the fight against the pandemic.
He tells me things have calmed down a bit. On a scale of 1-10, 10 being normal, things were at a 2 four weeks ago. They’r...
Salon - President Donald Trump’s re-election campaign released a misleading ad Thursday that attempts to portray former Vice President Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic nominee, as cozy with China. The ad was promptly criticized by an advocacy group as dangerous for suggesting that a former gove...
TheaterMania - Ghostlight Records will release the original cast recording of David Henry Hwang and Jeanine Tesori’s Soft Power on digital and streaming platforms on Friday, April 17. The Public Theater, which produced the musical off-Broadway last fall, will present a virtual listening party that d...
LAist - At a Trader Joe’s in Culver City last month, Jeff Yang stood in the checkout line six feet apart from the other customers, lost in his phone. That’s when an F-bomb came flying in his direction.
He glanced up to see another customer pass by, pull down her mask and cough towards him — the onl...
If we’re at war with the virus, why does President Trump seem so eager to relax his trigger finger? So he can point his finger at something else–like the World Health Organization? China? Or Asian Americans?
Now that he’s finally realized Covid-19 is no hoax, he’s all about playing the “not me” gam...
Broadway World - Ghostlight Records has announced that Soft Power - Original Cast Recording will be available on digital and streaming formats on Friday, April 17. The album is based on the new musical’s recent New York premiere production at The Public Theater (Artistic Director, Oskar Eustis; Exec...
Indypendent - Chinese Americans as well as those who look Chinese, are having to bear a double dose of the national anxiety amid the COVID-19 pandemic. They are anxious like the rest of us about venturing outside and getting infected, but they are also increasingly anxious about venturing outside an...
