Michelle Locke
Associated Press
5/5/07 San Diego Union Tribune: “ University of California marks decade of race-blind admissions,”
by Michelle Locke, Associated Press
. . . . . . . . . . Interestingly, Asians, who did not benefit under affirmative action, now make up 36 percent of admissions, up from 33 percent in 1997. At Berkeley , Asians are the biggest ethnic group, making up 39 percent of last fall's freshman class. That makes Asians overrepresented since California is roughly 44 percent white, 35 percent Hispanic, 12 percent Asian and nearly 7 percent black.
    [WARNING: Liberal bias: Bigots for the Left would never write: That makes Jews overrepresented since California is roughly roughly 44 percent white, 35 percent Hispanic, 3 percent Jewish and nearly 7 percent black.]

Joel Rubin
Los Angeles Times
4/2/07 Los Angeles Times: “Diversity program mostly benefits Asians: Beverly Hills High looks to L.A. Unified to increase minority enrollment but can't ask applicants about race or ethnicity,”
By Joel Rubin
. . . . . . . . . . Those numbers do nothing to balance diversity at Beverly Hills High, where — excluding those with permits — minority students are also mostly Asian.
    About 17% of the 2,362 students at the school are of Asian extraction, about 4% are Latino and about 5% are African American. Nearly 70% of the students are white, a category that includes 450 students of Persian descent.
    [Warning liberal bias!  Joel Rubin of The Los Angeles Times would never write: The disproportionate number of Jews who receive the permits also stands in stark contrast to the breakdown of the 12 L.A. Unified middle schools that participate in the permit program. More than half of the students at those schools are Latino, one-quarter are African American and fewer than 2% are Jews.]
  The disproportionate number of Asians who receive the permits also stands in stark contrast to the racial breakdown of the 12 L.A. Unified middle schools that participate in the permit program. More than half of the students at those schools are Latino, one-quarter are African American and fewer than 8% are Asian.


Sahil Mahtani
columnist for The Harvard Crimson, criticized Jian Li for filing a discrimination complaint against Princeton and defended the Daily Princetonian for publishing a racist parody of Li: “It was not the Daily Princetonian which turned an everyday admissions issue into a racial issue,” wrote Mahtani. “Rather, it was Jian Li who did that.”



Timothy Egan
Reports for The New York Times from the West Coast.
1/7/07 The New York Times: “Little Asia on the Hill.”
by Timothy Egan

. . . . . . . . . . Spend a few days at Berkeley , on the classically manicured slope overlooking San Francisco Bay and the distant Pacific, and soon enough the sound of foreign languages becomes less distinct. This is a global campus in a global age. And more than any time in its history, it looks toward the setting sun for its identity.
    The revolution at Berkeley is a quiet one, a slow turning of the forces of immigration and demographics.  Warning!  Liberal bias: What is troubling to some is that the big public school on the hill certainly does not look like the ethnic face of California , which is 12 percent Asian, more than twice the national average.  The New York Times would never write: What is troubling to some is that the big public school on the hill certainly does not look like the ethnic face of America, which is only 1.4% percent Jewish, more than 10 times the national average.   But it is the new face of the state’s vaunted public university system. Asians make up the largest single ethnic group, 37 percent, at its nine undergraduate campuses.
    The oft-cited goal of a public university is to be a microcosm — in this case, of the nation’s most populous, most demographically dynamic state — and to enrich the educational experience with a variety of cultures, economic backgrounds and viewpoints.
    But 10 years after California passed Proposition 209, voting to eliminate racial preferences in the public sector, university administrators find such balance harder to attain. At the same time, affirmative action is being challenged on a number of new fronts, in court and at state ballot boxes. And elite colleges have recently come under attack for practicing it — specifically, for bypassing highly credentialed Asian applicants in favor of students of color with less stellar test scores and grades.
   Warning!  Liberal bias: In California, the rise of the Asian campus, of the strict meritocracy, has come at the expense of historically underrepresented blacks and Hispanics.  The New York Times would never write:  In New York , the rise of the Jewish campus, of the strict meritocracy, has come at the expense of historically underrepresented blacks and Hispanics.  This year, in a class of 4809, there are only 100 black freshmen at the University of California at Los Angeles — the lowest number in 33 years. At Berkeley , 3.6 percent of freshmen are black, barely half the statewide proportion. (In 1997, just before the full force of Proposition 209 went into effect, the proportion of black freshmen matched the state population, 7 percent.) The percentage of Hispanic freshmen at Berkeley (11 percent) is not even a third of the state proportion (35 percent). White freshmen (29 percent) are also below the state average (44 percent).  Warning!  Liberal bias: The New York Times would never write:  We want to increase the number of blacks and Hispanics to match their percentages in the statewide population, but we do not want to reduce the number of Jews to match their percentage in the statewide population.

. . . . . . . . . . . . .
    Admissions officials have long denied that they apply quotas. Nonetheless, race is important “to ensure a diverse student body,” says Cass Cliatt, a Princeton spokeswoman. But, she adds, “Looking at the merits of race is not the same as the opposite” — discrimination.  Warning!  Liberal bias: The New York Times would never write: We want to increase the number of blacks, Hispanics and Jews and reduce the number of Asian Americans.
    Elite colleges like Princeton review the “total package,” in her words, looking at special talents, extracurricular interests and socioeconomics — factors like whether the applicant is the first in the family to go to college or was raised by a single mother. “There’s no set formula or standard for how we evaluate students,” she says. High grades and test scores would seem to be merely a baseline. “We turned away approximately half of applicants with maximum scores on the SAT, all three sections,” Ms. Cliatt says of the class Mr. Li would have joined.  Warning!  Liberal bias: The New York Times would never write: Asian Americans score the highest so we use these non-numerical factors to discriminate against Asian Americans, but not Jews.

. . . . . . . . . . .
    Chancellor Birgeneau says he finds the low proportion of blacks and Hispanics appalling, and two years into his tenure, he has not found a remedy. To broaden the pool, the U.C. system promises to admit the top 4 percent at each high school in the state and uses “comprehensive review” — considering an applicant’s less quantifiable attributes. But the net results for a campus like Berkeley are disappointing. His university, Dr. Birgeneau says, loses talented black applicants to private universities like Stanford, where African-American enrollment was 10 percent last year — nearly three times that at Berkeley.  Warning!  Liberals ignore reality:  Stanford is increasing its enrollment of African Americans by discriminating against Asian Americans!

. . . . . . . . . . .

    IF Berkeley is now a pure meritocracy, what does that say about the future of great American universities in the post-affirmative action age? Are we headed toward a day when all elite colleges will look something like Berkeley : relatively wealthy whites (about 60 percent of white freshmen’s families make $100,000 or more) and a large Asian plurality and everyone else underrepresented?  Warning!  Liberal bias: The New York Times would never write:  We want to increase the number of blacks and Hispanics to match their percentages in the statewide population, but we do not want to reduce the number of Jews to match their percentage in the statewide population.  Is that the inevitable result of color-blind admissions?
    Eric Liu, author of “The Accidental Asian: Notes of a Native Speaker” and a domestic policy adviser to former President Bill Clinton, is troubled by the assertion that the high Asian makeup of elite campuses reflects a post-racial age where merit prevails.
    “I really challenge this idea of a pure meritocracy,” says Mr. Liu, who runs mentoring programs that grew out of his book “Guiding Lights: How to Mentor and Find Life’s Purpose.” Until all students — from rural outposts to impoverished urban settings — are given equal access to the Advanced Placement classes that have proved to be a ticket to the best colleges, then the idea of pure meritocracy is bunk, he says. “They’re measuring in a fair way the results of an unfair system.”  Warning!  Liberal bias: the majority of blacks favor the use of educational vouchers but liberals oppose them.  With friends like liberals, who needs enemies?

Marisa Meltzer
reporter, New York Magazine
"The Swarm of the College Super Applicants," 
11/27/06 New York Magazine
If Meltzer had written about a Jewish applicant with a perfect SAT score but wrote the applicant was not a shoo-in because she would be competing against other Jews, the Bigots for the Left at the New York Times would feature a front-page story accusing Meltzer of Anti-Semitism.
Liming Luo
Hunter College High School, Manhattan
GPA: 97.2
SAT: 2400 (800 reading, 800 math, 800 writing)
AP scores: Chemistry (5), U.S. history (5)
Academic honors: Vice-president and co-founder of her school’s chapter of Mu Alpha Theta (a national math honors society). Scored 122.5 (fewer than 5 percent of all students score over 100) on the American Mathematics Contest 12, a national math competition.
Extracurricular activities: Member, Hunter’s math A-Team, ranked second in New York City. Published “The Mathematics of Tic Tac Toe” in Hunter’s math magazine, Radicals. Co-champion at the 2005 Vassar Invitational Forensics Tournament (approximately 70 schools entered). Volunteered at a Chinese prep school teaching math to eighth-graders for one summer. Writes sci-fi and fantasy in her spare time.
Applying to: MIT (early), Harvard, Harvey Mudd, Columbia, Stanford, Suny–Stony Brook, Cornell, and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.
Her chances: “Her perfect SAT score is truly outstanding but not a free ticket. She is applying to many technical colleges, so she will be competing against a lot of other high-achieving math/science kids (and a lot of other Asian students in particular). While she may be admitted to MIT early, I am not convinced she’s a shoo-in—I’d want to see more evidence that she’s giving back to the community.”

Imagine what they would have done if an Asian American writer published racial slurs against Jews.  All animals are equal but some animals are more equal than others.
Molly Clark-Barol (Publisher: Yale Rumpus)
Sam Penziner (Publisher: Yale Rumpus)
Sam Heller (Yale '08) (Co-Editor-in-Chief: Yale Rumpus) samuel.heller@yale.edu
Miriam Lacey Gattis  (Co-Editor-in-Chief: Yale Rumpus) miriam.gattis@yale.edu
Brian Hauss (Managing Editor, author of racist article: "Me Love You Long Time")  brian.hauss@yale.edu
Kai Thaler (author of racist article: “Miscegenation Station”)
Tamara Micner (Yale '07) (Editor in Chief, Yale Herald) yh-editor@yaleherald.com
Richard Levin, President of Yale
Peter Salovey, Dean of Yale College
4/21/06 Yale Daily News: Several University officials, including President Richard Levin and Yale College Dean Peter Salovey, have condemned the articles publicly, but said they do not plan to take any punitive action against the publications.
4/18/06 Yale Daily News: “AASA accuses publications of racism: Group sends letter to Admissions Office about allegedly offensive content in Rumpus, Herald,"
by Cullen MacBeth
    Members of the Asian American Students Alliance sent a letter to Dean of Undergraduate Admissions Jeffrey Brenzel on Saturday expressing concern regarding allegedly racist content in the most recent issues of the Yale Herald and the Rumpus humor magazine.
    AASA members registered offense regarding articles in the April issue of the Rumpus portraying Asian women as promiscuous and Asian men as emasculate, as well as a cartoon in last Friday's Herald suggesting that students might vote against Yale College Council presidential candidate Emery Choi '07 because he is Asian, AASA co-coordinator Priya Prasad '08 said. Prasad, who is also the treasurer-elect of the YCC, said the letter was deemed necessary in light of the impression such pieces could give potential students during Bulldog Days this week.
    "We sent it to Dean Brenzel because we thought it was particularly alarming that the Rumpus issue was the prefrosh issue," she said. "If I had picked up this issue when I was a prefrosh, I probably would have thought twice about coming to Yale. I think it undermines a lot of the diversity recruitment."
    Prasad said the article in the Rumpus -- which ran under the headline "Me Love You Long Time" -- was hurtful and promoted misleading stereotypes.
    "We don't expect everybody to be offended by everything, [and] some of things my peers are offended by I'm not really offended by," Prasad said. "We just feel that because it's so prevalent, something is wrong with the climate on campus."
    Rumpus co-Editor in Chief Sam Heller '08, who spoke with Prasad this weekend, said he thinks AASA's response was overblown.
    "We weren't necessarily [politically correct] about it, but I think that you have to have a sense of humor," he said. "You shouldn't take it so seriously. We're not trying to tear down the Asian community here."
    Although a decision about whether to publish an apology or a retraction will be left to the incoming Rumpus editorial board, Heller said he stands by his decision to print the article. He said Rumpus did not intend to target Asians as a racial group and that the publication could have just as easily focused on other stereotypes about groups on campus, such as what he called the "insularity" of the Afro-American Cultural Center.
    The Herald cartoon features two students talking about which candidate they will vote for in the YCC presidential runoff between Choi and Larry Wise '08. To one of the student's remarks that "it doesn't matter, 'cause YCC doesn't do jack s--," the other responds by asking, "And plus, isn't Emery Asian?"
    Herald Editor in Chief Tamara Micner '07 said the cartoon was not intended to be racist; it was merely meant to raise awareness of some of the characteristics students take into account when voting in YCC elections, she said.
    "I think the comic was provocative with a point behind it," she said. "The comic was parodying the absurd choices that students sometimes make when they're voting in the YCC elections. … I can understand the comic can be viewed as racist, but it's really supposed to parody racist thoughts that people have."
    But Prasad said that regardless of the way views like those in the cartoon are presented, she thinks they are offensive and insensitive.
    "I think that's a very common view people have -- that 'we're not espousing these values, we are pointing out their existence' -- but I don't think it comes off like that," Prasad said.
    Although she said she understands some students' reaction to the comic, Micner said she was not expecting such a strong response and that several Asian students on the Herald staff told her before she decided to publish it that they did not find it offensive.
    "I would reconsider publishing it again because we don't want to alienate people," Micner said. "We don't want to hurt people, certainly."
    The letter AASA sent to Brenzel also complained about a January issue of the Herald advertising the Asian American Film Festival with the headline "If You Have Yellow Fever" and the description "Where can you find the largest gatherings of Lees, Wangs, and Kims on campus this weekend? For once, the answer isn't 'at the library.'"
    Prasad said AASA has arranged a meeting with Yale College Dean Peter Salovey and Dean of Student Affairs Betty Trachtenberg Thursday to discuss Yale's continued funding of the two publications in light of the content in question.  


Norman Mailer
Douglas Brinkley

6/30/05 Editor and Publisher: “Asian American Journalists Angered by Mailer's Swipe at NYT's Kakutani.”
    New York - The Asian American Journalist Association (AAJA) is up in arms over comments novelist Norman Mailer made against longtime New York Times book critic Michiko Kakutani.
     New York 's Daily News reported today that in an interview with Rolling Stone, Mailer called the Japanese-American reviewer "a one-woman kamikaze" and "a token" hire at the Times.
    AAJA president and Dallas Morning News reporter Esther Wu wrote in a letter to Rolling Stone publisher Jann Wenner, "We take greater offense at his reference to her as a 'two-fer' and 'token' because she's 'Asiatic, feminist,' which essentially diminishes the accomplishments of all women and journalists."
    The Daily News also reported that after trading remarks with Wu through media outlets, Mailer stood by his "token" accusation.
    The article stated that Wu responded, "But this has nothing to do with political correctness and everything to do with character assassination of two whole classes of people (women and minorities) by Mr. Mailer."
    Wu also criticized the author of the Rolling Stone article, Douglas Brinkley, who mentioned Mailer's two Pulitzer Prizes (for nonfiction and fiction) but did not cite Kakutani's for criticism.
    Through a spokesman for the Times, Kakutani declined to comment  

3/1/02 AsianWeek.com: "Michelle Kwan Headline Controversy Continues to Haunt Us,"
By Rene M. Astudillo of Asian American Journalists Association
    In 1998, American figure skater Tara Lipinski beat fellow American Michelle Kwan to capture the gold medal at the Nagano Winter Olympics. A headline announcing the upset victory on the MSNBC website read, “American Beats Out Kwan.”
    Four years later, in Salt Lake City, Kwan — again favored to win gold — lost out to fellow American Sarah Hughes and Russian skater Irina Slutskaya.
    History is repeated, and I’m not just talking gold medals.
    The day after the women’s figure skating finals in Salt Lake City , the Seattle Times’ sports page ran a controversial secondary headline on its lead story about the gold-medal skating performance of Sarah Hughes. It read, “American outshines Kwan, Slutskaya in skating surprise.”
    Prompted by numerous reader complaints that the heading implied that Michelle Kwan was not an American, the Times immediately issued an apology — first on its website, then in the next day’s edition of the paper — about what it called a “misunderstanding.”
    The Times explained that the headline was in two parts, the main headline reading “Hughes Good as Gold.” The apology went on to say, “The writer was attempting to find another word for ‘Hughes’ in order not to repeat her name in the second head.” The apology further claimed that the headline was written quickly on deadline.
    Also on Feb. 22, the San Francisco Chronicle ran a front-page story on the figure skating finals. In the jump page, staff writer John Crumpacker made reference to the 1998 Olympic competition by saying, “And Kwan, who persevered for the past four years after losing out on the Olympic gold medal to American Tara Lipinski in Nagano , glumly settled for the bronze medal this time.”
    I wrote a letter to the editor expressing concern about the statement’s implication that Kwan was not an American, just like the MSNBC headline implied in 1998. Admittedly and in hindsight, I missed the first reference to Kwan in the third paragraph of the news story. It said, “Skating after Hughes, the two favorites, American Michelle Kwan and Russian Irina Slutskaya ...”
    Chronicle assistant executive editor Narda Zacchino pointed out, “A careful reading of the story would make clear that the nationality of each skater is stated with the first identification of that skater, so that when Tara Lipinski is mentioned, we tell the readers that she is American, just as we told them earlier in the first references that Kwan is American and Sarah Hughes is American and Slutskaya is Russian.”
    By the rules of editing, the Chronicle did not err. But other readers and members of the Asian American Journalists Association (AAJA) saw an issue beyond editorial correctness. Hayley Sterling, former AAJA Washington, D.C., chapter president, said, “The fact that the line stood out for many of us should be reason enough to make issue of it. I agree with another writer — it would’ve been more accurate and informative, and perhaps less confusing to some readers if the sentence read ‘fellow American’ Tara Lipinski.”
    Ti-Hua Chang of the AAJA New York chapter suggested that the Chronicle should be more sensitive to the previous flap with the MSNBC headline. “Given that history and context, the Chronicle should have added one more word ‘fellow’ to American Tara Lipinski,” Chang added.
    Another Chronicle staffer, David de la Fuente, maintained, “The phrase questioned is not a mistake of apparent omission (as would be the case if the story never mentioned Kwan being an American) or apparent commission (as was the case with the 1998 MSNBC headline).”
    De la Fuente asserted further: “Michelle Kwan has been in the spotlight for several years now. She is not the fresh-faced and relatively unfamiliar newcomer she was in 1988, and I sincerely doubt that there are very many people who were interested enough in skating to a) read that article or b) watch that competition who did not know she is an American.”
    Agreed. But if so much controversy was generated by the Chronicle story beyond just readers missing references to Kwan as American, there must be an issue here. If there are enough people complaining about inappropriate headlines such as the one ran by the Seattle Times –— and prompting an apology from a respected newspaper — then we know readers get involved in what they read, and writers and editors should be more sensitive to the things they print.
    Part of AAJA’s core mission is to be vigilant about fair and accurate coverage of Asian Americans and Asian American issues. The real issue here is not Michelle Kwan, but all Americans of different racial and ethnic heritage who have long been “tokenized” and who have historically been relegated to a “second-class” citizen status. Many Asian Americans have had this experience, including many of our own journalist-members. But we must also remember that there are thousands of other Asian American readers who don’t care about editorial correctness yet constantly bear the insult and hurt caused by even the slightest suggestion or implication that they are less American than their fellow Americans.
    Rene M. Astudillo is executive director of the Asian American Journalists Association.

Judicial Watch, Inc.
P.O. Box 44444
Washington, DC 20026
888-JW-ETHIC
Fax: 202-646-5199
info@judicialwatch.org

June 8-14, 2001 AsianWeek.com: "Judicial Watch Questions Patriotism of Matt Fong,"  www.asianweek.com/2001_06_08/news3_mattfongchallenged.html

    Judicial Watch, a conservative think tank in Washington, DC,  alleges that Matt Fong — President Bush’s nominee for undersecretary of the Army — may be a security risk to the United States.
   Fong accepted a $100,000 donation from Ted Sioeng, an Indonesian businessman, to pay off debt from his 1994 campaign for California Treasurer.  Fong later discovered that $50,000 came from Sioeng’s personal account and returned the money immediately.
   Fong, a graduate of the Air Force Academy and former California State Treasurer, does not understand why Larry Klayman, President of Judicial Watch would continue to explore what Fong calls “a dead campaign finance issue.”
   “It’s incumbent upon our community to support those of us who take positions of public service — the elected side like the governor or the cabinet side [such as] Elaine Chao, Norm Mineta or myself,” Fong said. “We need to demonstrate to mainstream America that Americans of Asian ancestry are capable, qualified, and loyal.”
   He added: “I’m a Lieutenant Colonel in the Air Force Reserve. I’ve been working in the Pentagon. For him to suggest I’m [a security risk], with the only basis of having had this experience on this campaign contribution issue, really stretches the credibility of his statement [that it is a non-race issue].”
   Vincent Eng, Legal Director of the Asian Pacific Legal Consortium, said it is easy to point fingers at Asian groups in light of tense relations with China and rampant xenophobia against Chinese.
   “It’s wrong to think anyone who is Asian who gives money is connected to China,” Eng said. “A lot of this goes to paranoia that money is going back to China.  Fong has always been a patriot. His record alone will demonstrate that Klayman’s accusations are unfounded.”
   Laws prohibit contributions of more than $1,000 from individuals, while political action committees (PACs) can donate $5,000 to each candidate.  “Soft money,” contributions of unlimited size to political parties, are under scrutiny by Congress.  The proposed McCain-Feingold bill would ban “soft money,” allowing only “hard money” donations limited by campaign laws.  Donations from foreign nationals to American elections are already banned.
   Klayman warned that the Sioeng’s donation was illegal and that Fong is a security risk.
   “It needs to be thoroughly investigated before he is made Secretary of the Army,” Klayman said.
   Klayman said that Fong’s qualifications are not the issue. Because Fong accepted money from someone who is an “agent of Communist China,” the importance of his potential position to national security should require Congress to further investigate Fong.
   But Asian Pacific American civil rights organizations such as the Japanese American Citizens League (JACL), the National Federation of Filipino American Associations (NFFAA), and the Organization of Chinese Americans (OCA) defend Fong.
   “It’s a level of racial profiling,” Eng said. “[Klayman is] targeting his distrust for Asians in general.  He is making wild accusations. There was never any issue that questions his loyalty.  If he was any other type of background, I don’t think it would ever be an issue.”
   The Democratic National Committee was also accused of accepting illegal campaign money, Eng pointed out. However, they never returned the money and did not receive the same criticism as Fong.
   Klayman suggested that most of API communities want to get to the truth. However, “Some people in the API community are very quick to play the race card. They are doing a disservice to this country,” he said.

    After Dr. Wen Ho Lee was freed, Notra Trulock and Judicial Watch filed a defamation lawsuit against Dr. Lee, alleging he and others had "scapegoated" Trulock to divert attention from security lapses at Los Alamos National Laboratory.  Trulock denies that he is a vindictive racist.  See Wen Ho Lee Debacle

    Klayman opposed Senate confirmation of Bill Lann Lee because, Klayman argued, of potential associations with disgraced Democratic fundraiser John Huang.  "Fear and Loathing," Aug./Sept. 2001 aMagazine.

    The New Republic published an article alleging that Secretary of Labor Elaine Chao had turned the right-wing Heritage Foundation away from its anti-Communist tradition and persuaded her husband, Senator Mitch McConnell, to become a China booster.  Detailing the Taiwan-born Chao's personal background as a possible motivating factor, the article suggested that she and her family had been responsible for "the buying of Mitch McConnell and the Heritage Foundation by the People's Republic of China."  "Fear and Loathing," Aug./Sept. 2001 aMagazine.

    John Derbyshire, a novelist and contributing editor at the National Review, published an essay in the January 2000 Chronicles magazine arguing for internment of Chinese-Americans "in the increasingly thinkable event of a war between China and the United States."  He concedes that most Chinese-Americans are not security risks but argues that some are.  He "guarantees" that new camps for Chinese-Americans will be established, noting that he - an Englishman who has not applied to naturalize as an American - would accompany his Chinese-born wife and their two children into such a camp.  "Fear and Loathing," Aug./Sept. 2001 aMagazine. 

   During the U.S.-China dispute over the spy plane in April 2001, Ray Lytle, a Springfield, Illinois deejay, harassed people with Chinese surnames on the air.  He later apologized to the National Asian Pacific American Legal Consortium.  "Fear and Loathing," Aug./Sept. 2001 aMagazine.