Updates

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

In 1977, I was too late for Vietnam. The war’s end made my draft lottery number obsolete. It was also too early to talk about the shortcomings of civil rights in America. But there was one moral eyesore in the world all good people could agree on: It was right–and necessary—to rail out against Sou

I just came back from Asia, so I have Asia on the mind. What do you know–on Monday night football, there was the NY Giants’ Justin Tuck doing the prayer-bow Thai move after sacking RGIII. It was the wai, the Thai gesture of appreciation. I know the move well. I saw Ronald McDonald doing the move i

I’ve played basketball at the Chinese Rec Center in San Francisco’s Chinatown as a kid, but this was a one-on-one game no one would have expected. An undocumented Asian student in America, Ju Hong, 24, a DREAM activist from San Francisco State, was one of those with an invite to the special preside

I just came back from Asia, where I felt like a white guy. And I am not. I’m an Asian American of Filipino descent, but when I was over there, it was clear I was the foreigner. Most of the people were in Western business dress, so on one level there was a “We Are The World” sameness. But a line was

Called Yolanda in the Philippines, Haiyan internationally, by any name, the super typhoon has heaped on a sense of despair and helplessness. Though we all knew it was coming from the warnings in both old and new media, there was still such an overwhelming sense that nothing could be done to help th

Lorne Michaels is a comedic genius, sure. But from what I know from people who have worked at “Saturday Night Live,” Michaels rules his comic fiefdom with an iron hand. So what’s he got against a little diversity? The lack of African American females on SNL is like a blackhead on the face of a ski

On the weekend of his 100th birthday, it was the next best thing to having Larry Itliong there. We didn’t have a special Ouija board, just a cassette tape with his voice. At a symposium in his hometown of Stockton, California, the Filipino American National Historical Society unveiled excerpts of

Asian Americans, dutifully trying to meet early decision college deadlines last week, may have found themselves–like my daughter—on the Common App website. After the experience, I’m not sure if any of the apps got to the colleges to which she applied. But she did get this notice: “Congratulations

“You go to the United States where they pick money on trees,” Larry Itliong, the Filipino American labor leader and the equal to Cesar Chavez, says on a special tape recording of a classroom talk at Debra Panganiban Louie’s Asian American class at UC Santa Cruz in 1976. “Did that happen? Hell, no,”