It’s been a big summer for Simon Tam, musician and founder of the Slants, now trademarked, reappropriated, and unanimously affirmed by the Supreme Court.
He also got married recently in his native state of California, so there’s been much to celebrate.
And yet it seems there still some who aren’...
When I first heard about Daniel Dae Kim and Grace Park leaving “Hawaii Five-0,” I couldn’t believe it.
The stars of the long-running TV crime procedural based in the 50th state simply asked for pay equity. They got the cold shoulder instead. Their exit leaves CBS with what it deserves. Hawaii Five-...
NPR - On a Monday morning in June, Simon Tam woke up at his home in Portland, Ore., to 753 notifications blowing up his phone. “At that point, I knew something had happened,” Tam said. The Supreme Court had finally resolved his nearly eight year fight. . .
Boston Globe - Asian-Americans don’t expect much coverage in the mainstream media, but recent Globe stories from its poll on politics and race relations left me scratching my head. In reporting the results, the Globe left the impression…
Tonight, Thursday, June 29 at 10:30 pm PT, is the last night of “Amok Monologues” at the San Diego International Fringe Festival. The one-man show got a great review in San Diego Story, a local arts publication.
Coming next week after the San Diego Fringe Festival: podcast interviews with Asian A...
New York Times - On Monday, the Supreme Court ruled that a law denying federal trademark protection to names that are deemed disparaging is unconstitutional. “It offends a bedrock First Amendment principle: Speech may not be banned. . .
We have now arrived at the 35th year of these essential Asian American facts:
On June 19, 1982, Chinese American Vincent Chin, 27, who was with friends at his own bachelor party, was mistaken for being Japanese by two white auto workers, Ronald Ebens and his stepson Michael Nitz, at a Detroit strip...
Frontera News - Affirmative action used to be about black and white. But new Chinese immigrants have “scrambled that traditional thinking,” and clashed with the so-called Chinatown Chinese. . .
Say Asian or Asian American, and people think “Chinese.”
Most people know that’s not the case, but that tends to be the prevailing stereotype. And not just among whites, blacks, and Latinos.
It’s harder when even Asian Americans believe in the stereotype.
“East Asians need to recognize that South...
On the fifth anniversary of the announcement of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program in June 2012, DACA continues to improve and transform the lives of undocumented immigrants who were brought to the U.S. as children and qualify for temporary protection from deportation and empl...
Houston Chronicle - This happens today. Amid last-minute efforts to overhaul the state’s voter identification law in light of an ongoing legal fight, the Texas Legislature gaveled out without addressing another embattled election law. . .
AALDEF will conduct the next three presentations on its new report, “The Asian American Vote 2016,” which includes information from our multilingual exit poll of 13,846 Asian American voters in the 2016 elections, the largest nonpartisan survey of its kind in the nation. Learn about which candidat...
Morning Consult - Even as Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders celebrated Heritage Month throughout the month of May, we received reminders that AAPIs are under siege by President Donald Trump’s agenda…
Too much terror, too much news. And the really important event of last week–Trump’s nose- thumbing at world unity on climate change by pulling out of the Paris Accord– is practically forgotten.
Not that Trump would like us to dwell on that.
That was a classic Trump communication boner.
The Washin...
Memorial Day always winds up the annual observation of Asian Pacific American Heritage Month.
And what better way to remember the one story (along with the Japanese American Internment) that lingers as the moral compass of the community.
For that reason, this Memorial Day will be a special one for...
On Emil Amok’s Takeout, I corner Randall Park at the gala dinner of the Asian Pacific American Institute for Congressional Studies (APAICS). a/k/a Asian Prom.
Listen to my short conversation with the “Fresh Off the Boat” star, as well as an excerpt from his speech accepting the 2017 APAICS Vision A...
Among Filipinos, “Lola” is used out of respect for an older person, regardless of relation.
It is a term of endearment, not a term of enslavement.
Still, I was more surprised that Alex Tizon had died in March than that he had a family slave.
May he rest in peace–though he has left many of us in a...
During the 2016 Presidential Elections, 13,846 Asian American voters participated in the nation’s largest nonpartisan multilingual exit poll. AALDEF’s Asian American Exit Poll was conducted in 11 Asian languages and English in 55 cities across 14 states – NY, NJ, MA, PA, VA, MD, MI, GA, LA, FL, TX...
I wrote an essay about my mother that was in my collection of Emil Amok columns in my book Amok back in 2000.
I read it here, along with a preamble on the podcast, because I’ve too often given short shrift to my mom’s story, in favor of my dad’s.
But my mother’s story was pretty incredible too. Sh...
President Trump today signed an executive order establishing a commission to investigate tenuous charges of voter fraud in the 2016 presidential election. Despite Trump’s repeated assertions that millions of “illegals” voted in the 2016 elections, no credible evidence has been presented to support t...
