One hundred twenty years ago, in the latter part of August, the U.S. picked a fight with Wong Kim Ark, who then took his case all the way to the Supreme Court. Wong was simply coming back from a vacation to China, when he was denied re-entry in San Francisco.
His Chinese parents weren’t citizens,...
AALDEF has filed an amicus brief in support of a petition for review by the U.S. Supreme Court of a case involving Miranda warnings and the knowing and intelligent waiver of the right to remain silent by a young immigrant, Naif Al-Yousif.
In 2001, the Denver police arrested Naif Al-Yousif, a Saudi ...
August 15 is the third anniversary of the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services’ (USCIS) implementation of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program. DACA continues to transform the lives of undocumented immigrants who were brought to the U.S. as children and qualify for protecti...
I’m at the Asian American Journalists Association’s annual convention this week, a time for personal reflection.
Why didn’t I become a doctor or lawyer?
Just kidding.
From Orwell’s “Why I Write:” “From a very early age, perhaps the age of five or six, I knew that when I grew up I should be a wr...
At the first GOP debate, as Republicans flooded the stage with presidential candidates on both the varsity and JV level, I didn’t hear a thing about one very important topic.
Did anyone even mention the 50th anniversary of the Voting Rights Act?
This, of course, is what often is referred to as t...
Today, on the 50th anniversary of the signing of the Voting Rights Act, the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund (AALDEF) sued the State of Texas, the Williamson County Elections Department, and the city of Round Rock for denying Asian American voters with limited English proficiency the ...
New York Law Journal - Fifty years ago today, President Lyndon Johnson signed the historic Voting Rights Act of 1965 (VRA), often referred to as the “crown jewel” of the civil rights legislation passed by Congress in the 1960s. The VRA prohibits discrimination…
Simon Tam isn’t giving up.
But he admits he was taken aback when an unnecessarily harsh amicus brief by the National Asian Pacific American Bar Association was filed this week against his efforts to trademark his rock band’s name, “The Slants.”
“I was completely surprised, especially since NAPAB...
If we want a new race conversation, we’d better start with a better approach to race polling.
Earth to everyone. It’s not a black and white world anymore. Especially not in the U.S. So why are polls on race, in their execution and their findings, still mired in a polarizing black/white paradigm?
T...
Fusion - The ornate, colorful welcome gate at the entrance to Washington D.C.’s Chinatown once marked a thriving immigrant neighborhood. Like Chinatowns in big cities around the U.S., the neighborhood helped working-class Chinese immigrants…
Randall Park has had such a big year as the star of “The Interview” and as the comedic anchor of “Fresh Off the Boat.” He even won a V3con award from the Asian American Journalists Association in Los Angeles this year for representing.
But if he wants a shot at an Emmy, he’d better talk to Easter X...
India West - Bringing an end to one of the largest-ever human trafficking cases in U.S. history, shipping giant Signal International LLC agreed July 12 to settle 11 lawsuits for a total of $20 million on behalf of 200 Indian guest workers who were brought to the U.S….
Alabama Media Group - The Southern Poverty Law Center confirmed Tuesday Signal International has agreed to a $20 million settlement to resolve 11 outstanding lawsuits representing 200 guest workers who alleged the Mobile-based marine services…
This may be the best time ever for Asian Americans to realize what’s really in their best interest.
And though it may surprise you, it could actually be this thing called “affirmative action.”
It sure isn’t suing Harvard for discrimination.
In fact, the U.S. Education Department has done that coa...
Nonprofit Quarterly - If you need yet another reason to remember the crucial importance of nonprofit advocacy, consider the Museum Square battle going on right now in Washington, D.C. Washington’s Chinatown is one of the most unbelievably…
Korean American Ryan Garner-Carpenter, 27, walked down Market Street at SF Pride, a new man of options.
Ask him what he’s into and he’ll say leather and whips.
But if he was into all things bondage before last week, now he can add something new–the right to marry.
For gay Asian Americans like R...
“I’m doing fine,” Ronald Ebens told me on Wednesday, a day after the June 23 anniversary of Vincent Chin’s brutal murder, when I asked how he was doing.
He was quick to add, “I had a good Father’s Day with my kids.”
And when I asked if he did anything special on Tuesday, the actual day Chin’s life...
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...
