12/31/06 Asian Tribune: Asian American Clout in US Politics on the Rise
by Daya Gamage US Bureau Asian Tribune
    Washington , D.C. 31 December (Asiantribune.com): For the benefit of the readers of Asian origin spread throughout the West and the East, Asian Tribune presents an account compiled by the U.S. State Department of the increased involvement of Asian Americans domiciled in the United States . America is an immigrant nation. As new ways blend with old, immigrant participation in the broader community increases, and that sometimes means entering politics.  Each new wave of American citizens, their children and grandchildren, successfully enters the U.S. electoral and political process.
    South Asian Americans are particularly engaged, which is nothing new for immigrants from the Asian subcontinent. They have been politically active since they began arriving in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, when they formed the California-based Gadar Party in support of India s independence from Britain .
    Later, they challenged harsh laws restricting Asian immigration and naturalization in the first half of the 20th century. One early immigrant from India , Dalip Singh Saund, was the first Asian elected to the U.S. Congress. He was elected in 1956 from a southern California congressional district and served three terms before he suffered a career-ending stroke during his fourth-term campaign.
    Decades later, another American with South Asian roots was elected to the U.S. Congress: Bobby Jindal, whose parents came from India s Punjab state. He won his second term representing Louisiana s 1st District by a nearly 90 percent majority in the November 2006 U.S. midterm elections.
    The new 110th Congress, which convenes January 4, 2007, is diverse, but judging from the 2006 midterm elections, the real action for South Asian Americans is local. State legislature and local city council elections demonstrated that ethnically South Asian citizens are mobilized behind candidates who represent their concerns -- and they are having an impact. More candidates are emerging from ethnic minority groups, and South Asian American candidates ran in more than 30 races around the country in 2006.
    "Our goal is to get more South Asians involved in American civic and political life," Deepa Iyer, head of the nonpartisan advocacy group South Asian American Leaders of Tomorrow (SAALT), told State Departments USINFO at the SAALT office in Takoma Park, Maryland.
    She says there is a trend toward "getting out there and becoming citizens and voting. We have definitely seen a larger trend of first-time voters in the South Asian community." Bangladeshis appear to be among the biggest group of first-time Asian American voters, she said. More South Asians "are invested enough in their cities and neighborhoods here in America that they want to make a difference by running for office," she added.
    In California , the cradle of South Asian-American politics, two Sikhs -- Kashmir Singh Gill and Tej Maan -- are celebrating their election to the Yuba City Council. Tej Maan echoed Iyer when he told USINFO why he ran for office: "I wanted to take part and make a difference," adding, "I never think of myself as a politician. I just think of myself as a volunteer for community work." He said his constituency is composed largely of average, working-class people. His platform: "I wanted everyone to have a voice, not just the special interests."
    Consistently successful representatives to state legislatures are Minnesotas Satveer Chaudhary, Iowas Swati Dandekar and Marylands Kumar Barve, all of who won by respectable margins in 2006. Software engineer Saqib Ali, whose parents came from India and Pakistan , is the first Muslim to be elected to the Maryland House of Delegates. Eight Muslims ran for office in Maryland in 2006. Keith Ellison, from Minnesota , is the first Muslim to be elected to the U.S. Congress. 
    Immigration is one issue that motivates South Asian Americans: reducing visa backlogs and increasing protection from exploitation are among their concerns.
    Legal and social obstacles can make many immigrants feel isolated. Hate crimes and discriminatory profiling exacerbate the situation, but also prompt political participation.
    "We have seen over the past six years there has been more engagement and more awareness," Iyer said. "[W]e want to know more about our rights and how we can enforce those rights not only do I want to learn about my rights, I want to become active in my community, whether its by voting or by running for office."
    "Oftentimes, there is a perception that the community is doing very well, and in many circumstances thats true. But there is also a segment that is shut off and disempowered and marginalized," Iyer said. She identified recent, working-class immigrants as being among those "who are having a hard time integrating into American society." Iyer, who was 12 years old when she moved from India to Kentucky with her parents, knows the difficulty of adjustment. Her belief "in the ideals of the American Constitution and the values that the country professes" led her to civil-rights advocacy. "I just wanted to work in a context where I could try to contribute to a melding of those two things," she said.

12/29/06 teluguportal.net: South Asian Americans getting more politically empowered
by Arun Kumar
    Indian American Bobby Jindal may be the most famous South Asian face in the new 110th US Congress convening Jan 4, but going by the last poll the real action for the community is local. More candidates are emerging from ethnic minority groups and South Asian American candidates ran in more than 30 races around the country in the Nov 7 midterm elections.
    State legislature and local city council elections demonstrated that ethnically South Asian citizens are mobilised behind candidates who represent their concerns - and they are having an impact.
    Jindal, whose parents came from India 's Punjab state, won his second term in the House of Representatives from Louisiana 's 1st District by a nearly 90 percent majority. "Our goal is to get more South Asians involved in American civic and political life," Deepa Iyer, head of the non-partisan advocacy group South Asian American Leaders of Tomorrow (SAALT), told an official State Department website.
    There is a trend toward "getting out there and becoming citizens and voting. We have definitely seen a larger trend of first-time voters in the South Asian community," she said.
    Bangladeshis appear to be among the biggest group of first-time Asian American voters, she said. More South Asians "are invested enough in their cities and neighbourhoods here in America that they want to make a difference by running for office," she added.
    Immigration is one issue that motivates South Asian Americans: reducing visa backlogs and increasing protection from exploitation are among their concerns.
    Legal and social obstacles can make many immigrants feel isolated. Hate crimes and discriminatory profiling exacerbate the situation, but also prompt political participation.
    "We have seen over the past six years there has been more engagement and more awareness," Iyer said. "We want to know more about our rights and how we can enforce those rights ... not only do I want to learn about my rights, I want to become active in my community, whether it's by voting or by running for office."
    "Oftentimes, there is a perception that the community is doing very well, and ... in many circumstances that's true. But there is also a segment ... that is shut off and disempowered and marginalized," Iyer said.
    She identified recent, working-class immigrants as being among those "who are having a hard time integrating into American society." Iyer, who was 12 years old when she moved from India to Kentucky with her parents, knows the difficulty of adjustment.
    Her belief "in the ideals of the American Constitution and the values that the country professes" led her to civil-rights advocacy. "I just wanted to work in a context where I could try to contribute to a melding of those two things," she said.
    Besides advocacy and political analysis, SAALT runs educational outreach programmes in schools, colleges and places of worship, teaching tolerance, raising civic awareness and building leadership skills.
    In California , the cradle of South Asian-American politics, two Sikhs-Kashmir Singh Gill and Tej Maan-are celebrating their election to the Yuba City Council. Tej Maan echoed Iyer in telling why he ran for office: "I wanted to take part and make a difference," "I never think of myself as a politician.
    I just think of myself as a volunteer for community work." He said his constituency is composed largely of average, working-class people. His platform: "I wanted everyone to have a voice, not just the special interests."
    Consistently successful representatives to state legislatures are Minnesota' s Satveer Chaudhary, Iowa's Swati Dandekar and Maryland's Kumar Barve, all of who won by respectable margins in 2006.
    Software engineer Saqib Ali, whose parents came from India and Pakistan , is the first Muslim to be elected to the Maryland House of Delegates. Eight Muslims ran for office in Maryland in 2006. Keith Ellison, from Minnesota , is the first Muslim to be elected to the US Congress.
    South Asian Americans have been politically active in US since they began arriving in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, when they formed the California-based Gadar Party in support of India 's independence from Britain .
    Later, they challenged harsh laws restricting Asian immigration and naturalisation in the first half of the 20th century. One early immigrant from India , Dalip Singh Saund, was the first Asian elected to the US Congress. He was elected in 1956 from a southern California congressional district and served three terms before he suffered a career-ending stroke during his fourth-term campaign.

12/28/06 San Jose Mercury News: Asian-Americans leapfrog into politics: Success Shows Immigrants Blending into American Life Faster, Experts Say,
By Jessie Mangaliman
    One-third of Santa Clara County cities will be led by Asian-American mayors in the new year, all immigrants who seized the basics of U.S. civic life and climbed its leadership rungs into political history.
    Cupertino , Milpitas , Palo Alto , Saratoga and Sunnyvale will usher in 2007 with municipal leaders born in Hong Kong , Japan , Taiwan and the Philippines . All five mayors said they never dreamed of leading an American city. Michael Chang and Patrick Kwok, who remains as vice mayor.
    Palo Alto 's Kishimoto, 51, a Stanford-educated author who immigrated with her family from Japan in 1961, said her turning point was in 1990. She had two young children and the city was proposing to raise the speed limit from 25 mph to 35 mph on her street. The shy mom joined a neighborhood group that quashed the plan. ``That visual connection is important,'' he said of serving as a role model. ``If they see someone they can relate to, one day they'd be doing that as well.''

12/28/06 San Diego Union Tribune: 15-year-old star student one of 43 in state to ace college entrance exam,
By Blanca Gonzalez
    Rancho Penasquitos Vicky Wang's parents are used to their 15-year-old daughter getting good grades, but they were a bit incredulous when she told them she scored 2400 on her SAT.
    My mom said, 'Are you sure?' and my dad asked for my (computer) log-in so he could check it himself, Vicky said.
    The Westview High School junior's own initial reaction to getting the highest possible score on the college entrance exam was similar to that of her parents. I was checking my score (on a computer) at school and some friends were looking over my shoulder. I said, 'Don't tell anyone, it's probably a mistake.'
    After checking and rechecking her score, Vicky's next reaction was typical of any teen. I thought yay! No more SAT, she said.
    Vicky took the recently revamped SAT in November. The rigorous test measures verbal and math reasoning skills and is used for admission by most colleges. Last year, the SAT included an essay question for the first time. Each of the three sections is scored on a scale of 200 to 800.
    More than 1.4 million college-bound students took the test in 2006, according to the College Board, which administers the test. Vicky was one of 238 students nationwide who scored 2400.
    The College Board does not keep track of how many San Diego County students or how many juniors scored 2400, but it reports that 43 California students earned the top score.
    Although she didn't take any prep courses, Vicky said she studied a lot. I didn't want to sit in a classroom hearing someone drone on and on, . . . but I did spend lot of time in the library on my own, she said.
    Westview Principal Dawn Kastner is not surprised at Vicky's academic success. She's very self-motivated and really balanced. She's going to be OK when she gets to college, Kastner said.
    Kastner, who is also Vicky's homeroom teacher, lauded the junior as an all-around good kid.
    She's not just smart, she's wise. . . . And as bright as she is, she's even nicer than that, Kastner said.
    Last year was Kastner's first year at Westview. She said she had mostly freshmen in her homeroom and Vicky helped with students' questions.
    I thought of her as a big sister to the other kids, Kastner said.
    Vicky, who enjoys math and science, said she was most worried about doing the essay portion of the SAT exam.
    I don't feel like I'm very creative, she said. So she was happy to get an essay prompt she liked. It was about the influence of books on society.
    While Vicky won't need to study for any more SAT exams, she still has a full load of Advanced Placement classes this year, including AP Physics and AP Calculus, and another year of school before she graduates in 2008. She's not sure of her grade point average, but the National Merit Finalist knows it's over 4.0.
    Vicky, who plays the piano and volunteers as a tutor, is also one of only two juniors on the school's Academic League varsity team. Her mother advised her to drop the Science Olympiad this year because of her heavy schedule, but she still makes time for the National Honor Society, California Scholarship Federation, Interact Club, Link Crew and Model United Nations.
    One recent afternoon, Vicky joined the rest of the Academic League varsity team in adviser Scott Strachan's classroom, where the teacher drilled them on topics ranging from the anatomy of the eyeball to the Civil War.
    Later that evening, she practiced piano in preparation for an upcoming recital. Vicky hasn't decided on a college major, but she's sure she'll want to minor in music.
    I love the piano. It's one of my passions, she said. I know a lot of kids who only play the piano because their parents tell them, but I really love playing the piano.
    Vicky, whose parents are a computational biologist and former chemist, has an affinity for science but figures she has time to choose a career. Her next priority is deciding where to apply for college admission.
    When I was little, I said I wanted to go to Harvard or Stanford. . . . Now I'm not sure if that fits me, she said.
    With the SAT behind her, Vicky can spend more time on other things. Now I can focus on college stuff, she said, I have to do some soul-searching about where I want to go.

12/27/06  http://www.imdiversity.com: "Asian American Family Focus of PBS Drama: My Life Disoriented Launches Jan. 7 on Independent Lens,"
By Adam Smith, Sampan
    Actress Di Quon says shes spent much of her acting career playing the same role that many Asian American actors get stuck with. The friend of the main character. Case in point: Her first big break in 2002 was as Lily Kim, a seamstress and friend of Jennifer Lopezs character in Maid In Manhattan.
    Why am I always the friend? she asked herself. So, one day while dining with a producer in California , she said to him: I think I should be the main person for once, and I should have a Caucasian friend. Wouldnt that be interesting?
    The producer, Sam Chi, asked: What would the show be about?
    I think it would have to be life experiences that everyone shares, she replied.
    In that one conversation, the idea for My Life Disoriented, a 30-minute short film that will air on WBGH 44 on January 7, was born.
    In PBSs My Life, Quon plays Kimberlee Fung, a teenager who is in the process of sorting out her new identity at a new high school where there are very few other Asians. Her family, including her teenage sister Aimee (Karin Anna Cheung of "Better Luck Tomorrow"), has just moved from San Francisco to Bakersfield , California , to be with their grandparents. Kimberlee gets a chance to start over at a new school where she has a shot at making friends with the cool kids while Aimee, who was popular back in San Francisco, just gets separated from her boyfriend and becomes depressed. There's more: Their half-Asian cousin, Phil (Phil Young), tries to hide his mixed identity by painting himself Goth, and the family business is a massage parlor rumored to give extras.
    Kimberlees character is loosely based on Quans life as a teen. She, too, moved from San Francisco to Bakersfield .
    I was the only full-Asian girl in my high school and thats where we got that idea, she said. Most people have that similar kind of experience of being different and if you dont, you feel that way anyway.
    The films writer, Claire Yorita Lee, said the work is not meant to exclusively appeal to Asian Americans, though the story revolves around an Asian American family.
    I feel like we tried to make it as universal as possible, said Yorita Lee. Everyone went to high school, and everyone has a family.
    Still, they felt part of their mission was to feature Asian Americans in lead roles and show that, despite frequent misrepresentations on mainstream television, everyone struggles to fit in, find love, and get along with family, no matter the race or ethnicity.
    Theres not really a lot of representation for Asian Americans on television, said Quon, noting that many Asians are relegated to roles as either foreigners or to roles that fit too nicely into common stereotypes.
    In addition, while writing the short, which is directed and produced by Eric Byler (Sam Chi only played a role in the early stages of production), they intentionally included Asian American men in lead roles, said Yorita Lee.
    "We definitely wanted to have Asian American men, and one that could be a love interest. Because I think that sometimes people think that... Asian American men can't be seen as love interests or sexy. I think that's changing now, but we definitely wanted to have Asian American men not just be the dad or the grandpa," said Yorita Lee.
    Quon, who also is executive producer of My LifeDisoriented, said while shes thankful PBS was brave enough to give us a shot, the goal is for the film to become one episode in a series.
    Yet she and Yorita Lee said theyre also happy just to have the 30-minute film finally broadcast across the U.S. on PBS's film series of documentaries and dramas, Independent Lens.
    In the beginning I was very skeptical, said Yorita Lee, who wasnt sure My Life would ever be aired. They started the production with only a small grant about $11,000 from ITVS (Independent Television Service) and donations from family, and at one point, the feature was cut from an hour to 30 minutes because of a lack of money.
    It was a labor of love, said Quon.
    Things took a turn for the better, however, when the group presented their first scene to ITVS. They really loved it and they gave us a huge grant, said Yorita Lee. She doesnt want the amount of the second grant disclosed to the public, but indicated it was several times more than the first.
    They appear hopeful that this is just the beginning for My Life.
    We have a lot of interest from the networks, said Quon.
For more, see http://www.mylifedisoriented.com/

12/23/06: http://news.newamericamedia.org: Meet Jay Goyal, 26, Ohio State Representative,
    Conversation between Asian American Writers Workshop staff member Anjali Goyal and her brother Jay Goyal, newly elected State Representative from the 73rd District to Ohio House of Representatives. Jay Goyal, 26, is an engineer and vice president of Goyal Industries, his family's business. He worked hard to win the Democratic primary in May and has, he said, "knocked on 10,000 doors" to meet voters.
    Anjali: Jay, do you have a few minutes? I want to interview you.
    Jay: Yeah. Fire away.
    Anjali: Do you remember the precise moment in your life when you knew you wanted to be in politics?
    Jay: I don't think there was ever a specific point at which I knew I wanted to go into politics. Its something I was interested in ever since I was young, but its not something I thought I'd ever go into.
    Anjali: So what drew you to politics?
    Jay: Umm ... I've always had an interest in helping people and I've always had an interest in public policy. I never planned on running for office, but a situation came up where I felt that I had an opportunity to make a difference and positively affect my community. The current state rep was retiring. Some people within the party approached me about running, and I felt that there were significant enough issues to address to where I wanted to get involved and make a difference.
    Anjali: What are five critical issues you think aren't getting enough attention?
    Jay: In Ohio , educational funding, health care, early childhood education, work force training with jobs and economic development, Medicaid reform.
    Anjali: Do you find it worrisome -- the direction those issues are heading in Middle America and Ohio ?
    Jay: Yeah, definitely. We're seeing our middle class being squeezed. We're seeing a lot of our good paying manufacturing jobs leave the area and being replaced with jobs at Wal-Mart.
    Anjali: Yeah, how do you feel about Wal-Mart?
    Jay: I don't dislike Wal-Mart, but I think it's unfortunate that their wages and benefits are not enough to support a family.
    Anjali: So basically, are you saying that it looks like the job market is okay but really skilled jobs are being replaced with lower-wage/no health plan kinds of jobs that lead to a lower standard of living for middle class Americans?
    Jay: Yeah, that's pretty accurate. Although it still can be tough to find a job, especially one that pays well.
    Anjali: What do you think the 2006 elections said about America 's priorities?
    Jay: It was a change election. People were unhappy with how things were going on a number of levels -- Iraq , political ethics, jobs. People were unhappy with the way the country was headed. They hope to see stability in Iraq and a reduction of American forces there. They hope to see ethics and integrity brought back to public service. And they hope to see the creation of good-paying jobs for them.
    Anjali: How difficult was it running as a South Asian or minority?
    Jay: It certainly presents some unique obstacles that had to be overcome. This is a rural conservative district, and there may have been people who felt uncomfortable voting for me because of my ethnicity. On the one hand I had to overcome obstacles to prove to people that I was a serious candidate and that I could win. Another was demonstrating to the people of Richland County that I am one of them and have their best interests at heart.
    Anjali: How did you do that?
    Jay: I did that by telling people my family's story of moving here and starting a business. I tied it in with the American Dream. I also went out to the people of the district and knocked on 12 or 13 thousand doors.
    Anjali: Yeah, the mayor of Mansfield said something about how she thinks you went through three pairs of shoes. How was the support from the Asian American community, both in Mansfield/Richland County/Ohio, and at the national level?
    Jay: The support was great. The South Asian community here locally and throughout the state was extremely supportive. The Asian American community, specifically the Asian American Action Fund, was generous as well.
    Anjali: What do you think are the biggest issues facing Asian Americans?
    Jay: Good question. Maybe acceptance and integration with general society. I think hate crimes, racism, and xenophobia are real concerns.
    Anjali: What do you think minorities need to do to feel less alienated from American politics?
    Jay: I would say get involved. But that's a simple answer for a much deeper problem. Many minorities don't think that politics matters and that it will not affect their day-to-day life. And in many cases, I think they have a point -- that politics alone won't change their situation.
    Anjali: List three things that were indispensable to winning your campaign.
    Jay: Time, money, perseverance.
    Anjali: How about something more specific?
    Jay: My Treo 650, Powerade, and money ... or my Saturn.
    Anjali: Ha. Money. What did you learn during this run for office that you never knew about politics?
    Jay: Hmm ... I gained more of an appreciation of what candidates have to go through in order to serve. I learned how you always have to be careful who you trust and that you can't believe everything you hear.
    Anjali: What are some of the pressures of being such a young politician?
    Jay: The only unique pressure is having to prove to people that you know your stuff, can handle yourself, and know how to play the game.
    Anjali: Do you see yourself running for higher office in the future, like getting to Washington ?
    Jay: I don't know. You really have to take things one day at a time and prove yourself first. If you don't accomplish what you said you were going to do, it's hard to ask the public for a promotion. But if I am able to accomplish what I want to do, yes, I would love to tackle issues on the federal level.
    Anjali: What would you say to President Bush if you were to meet him?
    Jay: I don't know if it would matter what I said to him, but I'd probably ask him how he could run on being a uniter when he's been one of the most divisive and partisan presidents ever.
    Anjali: Who is your pick for the 2008 presidency?
    Jay: I really liked Mark Warner, but he dropped out. Right now, I like Edwards, Gore, and Richardson . I like Obama as a VP candidate.
    Anjali: Okay, one more: Many Americans have some inaccurate stereotypes about Ohio (like mixing it up with Iowa ). Name one thing you would want people to know about Ohio .
    Jay: Go Bucks!
    Anjali: Seriously, Jay.
    Jay: I am serious. Ohio State is going to kill Michigan this Saturday. That's what I would want people to know. It's a very accurate reflection of the mood of the state.
    Anjali: I always tell people that Ohio is a microcosm of America across socio-economic-geographic lines: jobs, education, class, race, ethnicity, ratio of urban to suburban to rural -- that if sociologists want statistics about Americans taken from a smaller sample they use Ohio . In my experience, many people don't realize that it's a very diverse state.
    Jay: Your response is pretty good too.
    Anjali: Thanks for letting me interview you, Jay.
    Jay: No problem. I'm happy to do it, it was fun.

12/22/06 AsianWeek: Mike Honda Named to Powerful Appropriations
     Washington Congressman Mike Honda was named to the powerful Appropriations Committee for the coming 2007-09 Congress. He becomes the only Asian American in the democratic majority controlling the committee, which has the power to determine spending priorities. 
    "As chair of the Asian Pacific American Caucus, I am also honored to bring an Asian Pacific American voice to the committee. APAs are a growing portion of our nations population, and they have gone for too long without representation on the committee that sets our nations funding priorities," said Honda in a statement. 
    Honda identified priorities for affordable health care, worker training, port and border security, law enforcement, natural disaster recover, health care for veterans and education. 
    In particular, Honda noted the priority of recovery from Hurricane Katrina. The congressman has conducted hearings and investigated the plight of Asian Americans, particularly Vietnamese Americans hit hard by the 2005 hurricane. 
    The congressman also has advocated for restoring veterans benefits to Filipino American World War II veterans assailing the outgoing republican Congress for holding up the Filipino Veterans Equity Act. 
    Honda was among 10 new democrats appointed to the 65-member committee by Speaker-designate Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco) and the Democratic Party Steering and Policy Committee. 
    "With the intellect and integrity of this diverse group of members, House democrats will lead our country in a new direction that will turn the American dream into reality for all, not just the privileged few," Pelosi said. 
    Honda noted that his 15th District representing Silicon Valley is 34 percent APA, including the cities of Cupertino , Milpitas , parts of San Jose and Santa Clara . 
    In 2006, Honda as vice chairman of the Democratic National Committee led party efforts to successfully retake Congress. Prior to joining Congress in 2000, Honda was a state assemblyman and county supervisor. He worked for over 30 years as a teacher and principal. 
    Also among Pelosis new appointments was Congresswoman-elect Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii) to the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee.

12/15/06 AsianWeek.com: Chinese Sheriff Lee Influences Jefferson Parish's Re-Election,
    Jefferson Parish, La. Political analysts are attributing U.S. Rep. William Jeffersons (D-La.), recent re-election to Jefferson Parish Sheriff Harry Lee.
    "Lee certainly had a heck of a big influence [on the outcome]," said Ed Renwick, a political scientist at Loyola University in New Orleans . 
    On the Tuesday before the Saturday, Dec. 9, runoff, Lee, who is Chinese American, held a news conference and declared his "utter contempt" for Jefferson s opponent, State. Rep. Karen Carter, for her criticism of Jefferson Parish officials evacuation efforts during Hurricane Katrina. In Spike Lees film, When the Levees Broke, Carter, labeled the actions by law enforcement officers "disheartening and unacceptable" and called for the police involved to be "reprimanded accordingly."
    Carter also called sheriffs deputies inhumane for stopping people, mostly black residents stranded in flooded New Orleans , from walking across the Crescent City Connection bridge. She stands by her remarks. 
    "She made us look like were a bunch of yahoos down here, a bunch of racists," said Lee, who chastised Carter for her "fat mouth." 
    Lee also sent out 25,000 flyers asking voters to: 'Just Say No to Karen Carter."
    ABC-26 television station political analyst Jeff Crouere said Jefferson beat out Carter, both of whom are black, in predominantly white precincts. Crouere attributed this to Lees successful attempt to demonize Carter. 
    Jefferson also secured a majority of the votes in black neighborhoods in New Orleans and also won in Jefferson Parish, where Lee campaigned against Carter.
    During the Dec. 5 press conference, Lee, who has been sheriff since 1979, also urged Jefferson Parish residents to stay home and not vote. It apparently worked as the final tally shows that while 28% of registered voters cast ballots in the primary, only 15% voted in the runoff election. 
    Susan Howell, a political scientist at the University of New Orleans , said Jefferson might have won without Lees move, but that the sheriff "made it a landslide." 
    Despite his anger against Carter, Lee did not officially endorse Jefferson who is currently under investigation in a federal bribery scheme. 
    "I dont care whos elected to Congress as long as its not Karen Carter," Lee said.

12/7/2006 Press Release: The Asian Pacific American Media Coalition Releases 2006 Report Card on Television Diversity
    Contact: Leonie Campbell of the Asian American Justice Center , 202-296-2300 ext. 135; 202-492-4591 (cell) or lcampbell@advancingequality.org; Web: http://www.advancingequality.org
    Los Angeles -- The Asian Pacific American Media Coalition (APAMC) says opportunities for starring roles on prime-time shows for Asian Pacific American (APA) actors have improved slightly over the past year on the four major networks - ABC, NBC, CBS and Fox.
    Nonetheless, APAMC is concerned about the severe drop in APA and minority writers and producers. At ABC, NBC and Fox, notably, representation of APA writers and producers plummeted 27 percent from the previous year.
    Compared with other racial groups, APAs are far less likely to star in prime-time programming.
    The report card, which is based on data from ABC, CBS, Fox and NBC, grades the networks on APA representation on-air and behind the camera on prime-time shows, including development contracts, employment executives and procurement and diversity initiatives with APAs.
    "While we have seen some improvement since 2000, the percentage of Asian Americans on prime-time television is far from representative of the booming APA population in the United States ," said Karen Narasaki, executive director of the Asian American Justice Center , (AAJC), which is part of the coalition. "We know the networks are aware of the problem and look forward to working with them to turn that trend around."
    APAMC finds that the dearth of quality roles for APA actors directly mirrors a lack of APA writers and producers. "Increasing the number of APA writers and producers on prime-time shows is crucial to increasing the presence of well-rounded APA characters," Narasaki added.
    Three of the four networks - CBS, NBC and Fox - showed improvement overall. ABC's grade remained unchanged from last year. Narasaki pointed to ABC's Grey's Anatomy and Lost and NBC's Heroes as "good examples" of how diverse programming can figure prominently in "both commercial and critical success."
    With a C-plus, ABC is doing better than the other networks, but is slipping in terms of writers, producers and directors. NBC had a C-plus, improving marginally, Fox had a C-plus and CBS saw improvement over all in its diversity initiatives, garnering a C.
    Earlier this year, AAJC released "Asian Pacific Americans in Prime Time: Setting the Stage," a report that evaluates the type, quality and complexity of television characters portrayed by APA actors. The study is available at http://www.advancingequality.org.
    "A lack of fully developed APA acting roles is the direct result of a scarcity of APA writers and producers," said Narasaki. "Allowing opportunities for talented minority writers helps foster roles depicting Asian Pacific Americans and other minorities as fully formed, nonstereotypical characters."
    The Asian Pacific American Media Coalition (APAMC) has agreements with ABC, NBC, CBS and FOX, committing them to work to increase diversity onscreen and behind the camera. APAMC members include such organizations as the Asian American Justice Center , the Center for Asian American Media, East-West Players, Japanese American Citizens League, Media Action Network for Asian Americans, the Organization of Chinese Americans, and Visual Communications.
    The Asian American Justice Center (http://www.advancingequality.org ), formerly known as NAPALC, is a national organization dedicated to defending and advancing the civil and human rights of Asian Americans. It works closely with three affiliates - the Asian American Institute of Chicago (http://www.aaichicago.org), the Asian Law Caucus (http://www.asianlawcaucus.org ) in San Francisco , and the Asian Pacific American Legal Center ( http://www.apalc.org ) in Los Angeles - and 102 community partners in 47 cities and 24 states in the country. AAJC chairs the Asian Pacific American Media Coalition.  

12/7/06 Hyphen: Asian America Unabridged: Anti-immigration group fronts Asian American,
    A organization calling itself Vietnamese for Fair Immigration was actually co-founded by white guy who espoused his views on Web sites and in letters to the editor while pretending to be Vietnamese, according to the Oakland Tribune.
    Vietnamese for Fair Immigration's primary complaint is that illegal immigrants -- particularly Latino immigrants -- are causing the long waits for their family members who come here from Vietnam . The group has placed a billboard ad in Berkeley that reads, "No Racist Amnesty." 
    Tim Brummer apparently used the name Tim Binh as spokesman for the group. But his wife, who is Vietnamese, told the Tribune reporter that her husband was using a fake name. 
    According to the story, some anti-immigration groups, which have overwhelmingly white memberships, are creating or backing other organizations to blunt accusations of racism. For example, Choose Black America, was created by the Federation for American Immigration Reform.
    Seems like it's going to be hard to have an honest debate about such an important issue if some of the players aren't being honest about themselves.

12/6/06 Sacramento Bee: Bill passed to save WWII camps; Japanese American internment sites will be preserved,
by David Whitney 
    Congress completed action Tuesday on legislation to preserve and protect the remnants of one of the darkest chapters in American history: the internment camps and gathering centers that were used in the roundup and forced detention of Japanese American citizens during World War II.
    "By preserving these sites, we will be demonstrating our commitment to equal treatment under the law," said Rep. Mike Honda, D-San Jose, who spent time as a child in the Granada War Relocation Center near Amache , Colo.
    The voice vote in the House of Representatives came two days short of the 65th anniversary of the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor . That aggression stirred such fear and anger in the United States that President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066 three months later, ordering the roundup. The Supreme Court later upheld the directive on the grounds of "pressing public necessity."
    Congress issued a formal apology in 1988 and offered $20,000 apiece in compensation to the survivors of the camps, who lost their freedom and property without any formal legal proceedings. Lesser numbers of Alaska Natives, Germans and Italians also were ordered detained.
    On the West Coast, the Japanese Americans drew a strong public reaction. They were removed from their homes with very few possessions, taken to processing centers and transported to the internment camps, in remote corners of seven states, where they lived behind barbed-wire fences for most of the war.
    Ten relocation centers were built to house them, and two -- Manzanar and Minidoka -- have been turned over to the National Park Service.
    With money from the legislation, what remains of the others can be restored and operated by local sponsors to keep the memory of the camps alive. President Bush is expected to sign the bill.
    The legislation authorizes up to $38 million in federal grants to help preserve the camps and gathering centers. The money must be matched by local communities. It can be used to buy land, restore what remains of the centers and construct interpretive centers.
    The chief author of the legislation is Rep. Bill Thomas, R-Bakersfield, who choked with tears last November when the measure first came to the floor and passed, also on a voice vote. Thomas, the stern and acerbic chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, is retiring, and his bill could be his final legislative victory after 28 years in the House.
    "The understanding of this period in our history is essential," Thomas said. "It has to do with the fundamental rights ... of native-born citizens in a time of war."
    Thomas' interest in the plight of the Japanese Americans at the camps dates back to his service in the California Legislature, when he roomed with former state Sen. Floyd Mori, who is now the acting head of the Japanese American Citizens League.
    An estimated 120,000 Japanese and Japanese Americans were rounded up under the executive order. Almost two-thirds of them were U.S. citizens. Many never recovered their confiscated property.
    "The internment of thousands of Japanese Americans during World War II is a painful part of our nation's past," said Rep. Doris Matsui, D-Sacramento. "The memories of the time ... so many innocent Americans spent in stark and isolated camps continue to resonate today."
    Matsui was born in the Poston Relocation Center in Arizona , where her parents met while in confinement.
    Her late husband, Rep. Robert Matsui, spent a brief period in California 's Tule Lake War Relocation Center near the Oregon border before being moved to an Idaho camp. Tule Lake was the center where the most troublesome detainees were sent, many simply because they refused to sign loyalty pledges.
    "Let us pass it today so that those who come after us will know of the places where their ancestors struggled for freedom in the country that they loved," said Matsui, a co-sponsor and leading proponent of Thomas' bill.

12/4/06 San Mateo County Times: Capitol's demographics shift; Swearing in of Yee, first Chinese-American senator, could increase political participation of Asian Americans,
by Rebekah Gordon
    The swearing in of state legislators at the Capitol can feel like a rerun marathon, but for the first time in a while for San Mateo County , today's ceremonies actually mark a new episode. 
    Former Assemblyman Leland Yee, D-San Francisco, will be sworn in to represent the 8th Senate District, replacing Jackie Speier, D-Hillsborough, and making him the first Chinese American ever, and the first Asian American in 40 years, to serve in the Senate. 
    "It is a historic step, not only for the Bay Area, but also for California and the United States ," Yee said.
    "Other barriers have been broken, but it's taken 150 years to break that." 
    Along with the election of Fiona Ma, D-San Francisco, to Yee's former Assembly seat in the 12th District, the ceremonies represent a demographic shift for state-level political representation of San Mateo County . The five state legislators who represent San Mateo County are now 40 percent Asian American.
    Reflecting a similar proportion of Asians in the general population, their terms in office may spell changes in priorities, media coverage and participation from those who historically have not been involved in politics. 
    A child psychologist, Yee, 58, immigrated to the United States from Guangdong , China , when he was 3 and did not speak any English. His mother still does not speak it. That, he said,will affect how he shapes his constituent services in a district that has grown to be 32 percent Asian, according to the Institute of Governmental Studies at the University of California , Berkeley . 
    "Bilingual services (are) going to be extremely important to me," Yee said. "Being culturally and linguistically sensitive is going to be extremely important in my public policy work." 
    Legislatively, the difference can be more subtle. For example, Yee said it might be more intuitive for him to make sure language services are provided for in a bill to enhance children's mental health care. 
    "The issues are not going to be different," Yee said.
    "But the ways in which we look at these issues are going to be different. It's going be a more expansive view that includes everybody." 
    Those involved in local Chinese-American politics don't doubt that Yee's and Ma's candidacy boosted voter turnout among the group. Historically, said David Lee, the executive director of the San Francisco-based Chinese American Voters Education Committee, Chinese Americans have been taught to keep their distance from politics. 
    "It makes politics and going into politics and public service an honorable profession," Lee said. "That wasn't true 30 years, even 20 years ago." 
    Also a political science lecturer at San Francisco State University , Lee said he sees a visible impact on the younger generation. 
    "To have role models in the very highest offices helps to break down those old-fashioned ideas," he said.
    "There is a much greater sense that Asian Americans are making progress in politics and that they want to be a part of it." 
    It is reflective of what's going on nationally. A study, released in May by the Washington D.C.-based Asian American Action Fund, found that Asian-American candidates for office are increasing by 21 percent every two years. 
    In addition, the study found more than a third of Asian-American voters voted for the first time in the 2004 election and that between 1990 and 2000, the number of Asian-American voters grew by 118 percent. 
    The data shows a reflection of politics finally catching up with demographics.
     "The growth and evolution of the political participation of the Asian-American community has taken time to develop," said Gordon Mar, co-director of the Chinese Progressive Association of San Francisco. "It's not something that happens immediately with the demographic shift." 
    Yee's and Ma's positions may also spell changes in media coverage; the area's various Chinese language newspapers and other outlets are likely to follow Yee and Ma much more closely than they would follow a non-Asian. 
    "That's a positive in raising more understanding and awareness within our community about statewide policy issues that would get less coverage and less attention by the average community member," Mar said.  
    But for all the talk about how things might be different, both Yee and Ma are quick to point out that they represent not just Asians. 
    "I have a history of representing everybody," Ma, 40, said, pointing to the other immigrant groups, such as Russians, that populate the district where she previously served on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. "I have great relationships with everybody and I'm going to continue to represent everybody." 
    According to the Institute of Governmental Studies , Ma's district which covers Daly City , Broadmoor and Colma in San Mateo County is 43 percent Asian. But Ma, who will be one of eight Asian Americans in the legislature, said it would be naive to think that all those people would vote for her based on race alone.
    Performance records still matter. 
    "The community knows the difference," Ma said. "When it comes to election time they know what we're doing out there." 
    While she said she will also have staff to provide language help, she is focused on meeting everybody's needs. She hopes to propose a bill today to identify pedestrian crossing signals near schools and senior centers that should be converted to the safer countdown signals. 
    "It's not tailored to help one constituency," she said. 
    Some activists in the Chinese-American community say the jury is still out on whether Yee and Ma will actually do a better job of representing their interests. Their concern is greatest for the large pockets of recent immigrants and working poor who have the smallest voice in the political arena. 
    "Asian Americans certainly want a legislature that reflects our diversity," said Vincent Pan, executive director of the San Francisco-based Chinese for Affirmative Action. "At the same time, we are sophisticated enough to want real results, and not just window dressing. Like other elected officials, Ma and Yee understand they should be held accountable for performance."

12/3/06 New York Times: "Surge in Asian Enrollment Alters Schools,"
by Winnie Hu
    When Cresskill School District officials proposed a $31.1 million renovation of their three public schools in 2004, they worried that residents in this affluent borough of 7,700 in Bergen County would not go along. The last school project was rejected twice before narrowly passing in 1998. And that was for only $3.9 million.
    While the Cresskill schools clearly needed fixing up boiler repairs at the high school alone were costing $25,000 a year many parents told school officials that it was simply too much to spend, said Charles V. Khoury, the superintendent, who met with nearly a dozen parent and community groups.
    So Mr. Khoury was all the more surprised after making his pitch to the Korean Parents Association, known as the K.P.A., which co-exists alongside the more traditional parent organizations at the Cresskill schools. The association, which was founded in 1982 for Korean families who spoke little English, now represents more than 100 families.
    They said, Why dont you ask for $40 million? Dr. Khoury recalled, with a grin of disbelief. It was a wonderful feeling because I realized I didnt have to sell them on it. They recognized the value of education and the value of the schools. 
    The Korean parents quickly went to work, lobbying people at churches and cultural events to support the renovations, which included building an athletic complex and updating seven science labs at the high school. On the day of the referendum, in January 2005, a half-dozen Korean parents gathered at the high school to place last-minute calls to Korean voters. And by the end of the night, the most expensive school project in Cresskills history was approved by two-thirds of the voters. 
    Even as the Asian population hovers at 4 percent nationwide, an influx of Asian families in towns across the New York region in the past decade has helped refashion suburban school systems that were once predominantly white. Asian students are the fastest-growing minority in the region, and have even become the majority in the Herricks Union Free School District on the North Shore of Long Island, where more than half of the 4,200 students are Indian, Korean and Chinese. In New Jersey, 46 percent of the 13,682 students in the Edison Township School District were Asian last year, up from 36 percent five years ago.
    South Brunswick, Woodbridge and the West Windsor-Plainsboro Regional School District in New Jersey have also seen big increases in the last five years, as have Syosset and Jericho Districts on Long Island.
    Of course, New York City continues to be a magnet for many Asian immigrants, who have historically spent time in its ethnic enclaves Chinatown, Flushing and Sunset Park before moving to the suburbs, a migration pattern set by earlier generations of European immigrants. In the last five years, the citys Asian population has increased by more than 100,000, or roughly 13 percent, according to the planning department.
    But in recent years, many educated, successful Asians have carved out their own route, bypassing the city to move directly to the suburbs. The families are often drawn by word-of mouth about the schools, rather than by low taxes or social services, and tap into thriving networks of Asians already living there. In some cases, Korean and Japanese mothers have been known to take their children to the United States for the school year while the fathers stay behind at high-paying corporate jobs in their own countries.
    Koreans are very aware of the schools, and their rankings; thats the first thing they ask other parents when they move, said Maria Shim, 40, whose two daughters, Esther, 12, and Nicole, 10, attend the Cresskill schools. 
    School officials, teachers and parents say the expanding Asian population has strengthened their schools, not only by raising test scores but also by promoting diversity and tolerance. At Edison High School, in New Jersey, Indian students have formed the Peacock Society, an after-school club that organizes cultural festivals. Similarly, on Long Island, one of the most popular events at Great Neck South High School is Asian Night, where Chinese students and others put on a two-hour extravaganza of Asian art, theater and dance. Its noisy, its fun and everybody loves it, said Ronald L. Friedman, the superintendent.
    Across the region, the enrollment of Asian students is up 28 percent since the 2000-1 school year. Almost every school district has felt some impact from Asian immigration, but the growth has been most remarkable in districts in Somerset, Middlesex, Mercer and Morris Counties in New Jersey and Nassau County in New York, which now have large Asian student populations.
    Westchester and Connecticut have lower Asian enrollments, but populations there are growing as well. Stamford has seen a 45 percent jump in Asian enrollment in five years, but Asians still number just 6 percent of the total. In the Valhalla Union Free School District in Westchester, enrollment has doubled since 2000-1.
    Perhaps nowhere is this diversity more evident than in the Herricks school district on Long Island, where administrators say a majority of students this year are Asian. Last year, the district reported to the state an enrollment that was 45 percent Asian. As the schools have gained a reputation for rigorous academics, more Asian families have moved in, fueling a rapid rise in the Asian student population, from 26 percent in 1991. School officials have even received inquiries from parents in China and India who are relocating to New York. 
    Jack Bierwirth, the Herricks superintendent, said the impact can be seen in everyday classroom discussions that have grown deeper, richer and more personal as students from other countries share their experiences. Whether its a piece of artwork or a piece of literature, he said, you all gain something from seeing it from different perspectives. 
    To that end, school officials have started taking part in educational exchanges to South Korea, China and Japan. 
    Since 2004, 62 Connecticut schools have been partners with Chinese schools in Shandong Province. After Michael Graner, the superintendent of the Ledyard Public Schools, where 5 percent of the 3,000 students are Asian, returned from the Qingdao Arts School last year, he told his own students about how the Chinese students went to class six days a week and had to compete for admission to the high schools. 
    It was an eye-opening experience, said Mr. Graner, whose district recently was host to a Chinese teacher from Qingdao. A lot of times, for American students, the world is what they see.
    Still, the large numbers of Asians have also stretched resources and posed other challenges for schools that are rushing to expand classes for students speaking little English, hire more bilingual teachers who can be de facto translators and bring together often disparate cultural experiences under one school roof. 
    School officials in Woodbridge, N.J., have been trying to hire a qualified teacher for a bilingual class in Punjabi for four years. They still do not have one, though other classes are offered in Urdu and Gujarati for the districts Indian students, who speak more than a half-dozen Indian dialects. In New Haven, the Worthington Hooker Elementary School started its first bilingual Chinese class last year. Asian students make up 22 percent of the 398 students at the school, which draws many families of Yale faculty members. 
    In Cresskill, Koreans have moved next door to Irish, Italian and German families who relocated there from New York City after World War II. Asians make up about 20 percent of the boroughs population, and have an even larger presence in the schools. Nearly one-quarter of the districts 1,640 students are Asian, and of those, most are Korean.
    Benedict Romeo, the Cresskill mayor, said Korean families have become an integral part of not just the schools but also the larger community. For instance, he said, a Korean man donated 100 chairs to the community center in March, and other Korean parents have coached Little League and community soccer leagues. Weve accepted them, and thats the way it should be, he said. It enriches the population of the town. We have a broader range of cultures and we all seem to be getting along fine.
    The Cresskill schools, though not as well known as those in Ridgewood or Princeton, have increasingly earned recognition for their top-performing students. In September, the Cresskill Junior-Senior High School was ranked 15th in a statewide survey by New Jersey Monthly magazine. Last year, the school placed 93rd in a national survey of high schools published in Newsweek magazine. 
    Cresskill students have consistently outscored their peers on state assessments. In 2005, 90.8 percent of Cresskills 11th graders passed tests in reading and writing, and 89.8 percent in math, compared with state averages of 83.2 percent and 75.5 percent. Cresskill students had average SAT scores of 555 verbal and 597 math compared with state averages of 501 and 519.
    All of that has been a selling point for Korean families.
    Ms. Shim, who was born in Seoul, recalled that when she graduated from Cresskill High School in 1985, it had only a half-dozen Asian students. Thirteen years later, Ms. Shim settled in Cresskill with her husband, Seo Koo, who owns an import business in Manhattan, so that her children could attend the boroughs schools. 
    The Korean Parents Association, which acts as a good-will emissary of sorts for the Korean community, has sought to bridge the different cultures. In 2004, the parents raised $3,500 from membership dues, garage sales and bake sales of dumplings to send the high school principal, Peter Eftychiou, to visit schools in Seoul. This year, the parents plan to raise $4,500 to send Dr. Khoury, the superintendent, to Seoul.
    Korean parents have also treated their childrens teachers to Korean plays and Carnegie Hall concerts. For the Lunar New Year, they set out a buffet of traditional Korean foods like stir-fried noodles and barbecued beef in the teachers lounge. They send Korean food to classrooms for International Day festivities.
    Its sort of our obligation to show our culture, said Julie Kim, 42, a piano teacher whose daughter, Leena, 17, and son, Andrew, 13, attend the high school. We want the teachers to understand where we came from because we are different when we go home.
    Without such efforts, Korean parents said that cultural differences could lead to social problems. For instance, Ms. Shim noted that Korean-born teenagers tend to be less self-conscious about holding hands and patting one another on the arm than Americans. Sometimes, people raised here, they dont know how to react, she said. They think: Is he being nice to me, or is he bullying me?
    Cresskills Korean culture has filtered into the hallways of the high school, where even non-Korean students will shout out Korean words like the one meaning stop, hahjima! And while some racial stereotypes persist for instance, 14 of the 24 students in an honors chemistry class were Asian along with the teacher others have been dispelled by the large, diverse population. Nearly one-fifth of the Cresskill football team is Asian, and a former star quarterback was half-Korean and half-Chinese.
    Even so, many Korean students seem most comfortable hanging out with other Koreans. In classrooms and during lunch periods, Korean students could be seen sitting together, separating themselves from other students. I get to know the students more when theyre Korean, said John Han, 16, a junior who moved to Cresskill last year from New Paltz, N.Y., where he said there was only one other Korean in his school.
    Min Klein, a Cresskill math teacher who is Korean, said that her Korean students asked her to speak Korean to them in class. She refused. I do want to see more of a mix, she said. I dont think its a problem, but sometimes the other kids say, Why do all the Koreans sit together? I dont have the answer.
    To help address such concerns, the schools guidance department sponsors a Mix It Up day every month, when students are required at lunch to sit outside their usual cliques, whether that means Koreans, jocks or neighborhood youths. Were telling them, These are kids in your grade, get to know them, said Mr. Eftychiou, the principal. 
    Bob Valli, a guidance counselor and football coach who has worked at the school for three decades, said Korean students have set an example for their peers with their positive attitude and work ethic even as their growing presence has given the faculty new challenges like communicating with students who speak little, if any, English and who may not share common bonds and experiences.
    Its a small school so were able to assimilate everybody, he said. If it were a larger school, that may not be the case. We try real hard to keep the kids together.
    Ford Fessenden contributed reporting.

11/29/06 AP Business Week: Asian-American banks expanding,
By Deborah Yao
Upper Darby , Pa.
    When customers step inside the cheery, bright interior of Royal Asian Bank, they are greeted with a respectful bow and a greeting in Korean.
    At the Korean bank's branch in Upper Darby, a middle-class suburb of Philadelphia , employees speak not only Korean, but Mandarin, Cantonese, Cambodian and of course, English.
    Wearing a windbreaker and jeans, Korean pastor Young Hyun Jeon opened an account one rainy afternoon at the bank as his wife, clad in an orange track suit, sat demurely beside him.
    "They are familiar with my culture and language," the 59-year-old Rosemont resident said about choosing the bank. "While I can speak English, I feel more comfortable speaking Korean."
    Royal Asian Bank, a unit of Royal Bank America in Narberth, is one of a growing number of banks targeting the growing Asian community in Pennsylvania .
    Many of these banks are sprouting up in areas outside of known Asian strongholds in California and New York City as the population branches out. In the fiercely competitive world of banking, their cultural and linguistic ties give them an edge.
    Asians make up the second-fastest growing ethnic group in the U.S. after Hispanics, rising by 3 percent from July 2004 to July 2005 to 14.4 million, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Census figures released in August show that Asian households have a 2005 median income of over $61,000 a year, the highest of all groups -- including whites not of Hispanic descent, who came in second at nearly $51,000.
    There were 77 Asian banks nationwide as of June 30, voluntarily listing with the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. in Washington , D.C. That's up 24 percent from 62 Asian banks at the end of 2000. In contrast, the number of banks and thrifts as a whole shrank by 11 percent to 8,778 this year.
    In the Philadelphia area, Asian banks with a presence include Royal Asian Bank, MoreBank, Asian Bank and Woori America Bank. HSBC, a unit of London-based HSBC Holdings Plc whose roots are Asian, has a branch in Chinatown and downtown Philadelphia .
    Non-Asian banks such as Wells Fargo are targeting Asian businesses as well. As of the second quarter, the bank has lent these companies nearly $2 billion nationwide since starting four years ago.
    The number of Asian businesses grew by 24 percent to 1.1 million between 1997 and 2002, about double the national average, according to the U.S. Census Bureau's report released in May. Revenue topped $326 billion in 2002, up 8 percent from the prior five years.
    Serving this community, known for its relatively low lending losses, has been lucrative.
    Asian banks have been "highly successful in producing great returns for years," said Jeff Davis, director of research for financial institutions at FTN Midwest Securities Corp. in Cleveland .
    This year, FTN sees Asian banks posting a 10 percent earnings growth compared with 4 percent for small banks overall. Last year, profits rose 36 percent vs. 15 percent for small banks.
    In the Asian community, "the work ethics, income levels and educational levels are higher than average," Davis said. "They have low loss rates in lending."
    Edward Shin, president and chief executive of Royal Asian Bank, said he's only had one lending loss -- $20,000 -- during the bank's two years of operation.
    Even then, it was more of fraud, he said.
    The bank, a unit of Royal Bancshares of Pennsylvania Inc. in Narberth, has accumulated $65 million of assets in four branches. It plans to open another branch, in New Jersey .
    The close-knit nature of the community minimizes defaults, Shin said. Since many people know each other, word will quickly spread about someone who doesn't pay back a loan.
    Targeting Asians also goes beyond speaking the language. Shin said that since many immigrants are newly arrived, the bank tries to be flexible in asking for credit information.
    "I find a way to finance their businesses because they're newly immigrated and they work hard," he said.
    "In other banks, they just say, 'No, we can't do it."
    The bank will consider accounts from banks in Asia with a standby letter of credit as guarantee. Since bank employees are familiar with South Korea , they will know reputable banks there. Royal Asian Bank also would ask the customer whether family members are willing to back a loan.
    Royal Asian Bank also offers a savings plan adapted from a popular Korean system that acts like a fundraising club called "kye," pronounced "keh." In this system, each member of the group gives money every month to a pool. Eventually, each member gets a turn to take the whole pot.
    Shin's version, called "Club Savings," is designed to conform to banking laws. Customers deposit a set amount per month and collect the "pot" at the end of the term. For a $40.49 monthly deposit over 24 months, the customer gets $1,000 in two years. That comes out to a 3 percent interest rate.
    But coming from the same country also has its challenges.
    Shin said in South Korea , customers were able to pay utility bills at the bank. He has had to explain that it's different in America -- diplomatically, so as not to offend his customers.
    "Our community demands from us a lot, but we have rules and regulations," Shin said, quipping, "my customer gives me a straight punch and my company gives me the hook."

11/27/06  San Diego Union Tribune: "UC ethnic shift revives Proposition 209 debate: Asian-Americans gain while blacks, Latinos aren't keeping pace,"
by Eleanor Yang Su
    Will Asian-Americans one day make up a majority of students at the University of California ? 
    If the trend of the past decade continues, it just might happen.
    This month marks the 10-year anniversary of the passage of Proposition 209, the state initiative that banned using racial preferences in public university admissions and state hiring and contracting. 
    At the highly competitive University of California , where grades and test scores drive admissions, the enrollment trend is clear: Asian-American student numbers have grown the most, far outpacing their population increase in the state.
    Asian-Americans 14.1 percent of California 's 2005 high school graduating class make up 41.8 percent of the freshman class at UC campuses, up from 36 percent a decade ago.
    Meanwhile, blacks at 3 percent and whites at 32.2 percent make up smaller shares of UC's freshman class than they did previously. Latinos account for 16.3 percent of UC freshmen, up from 13 percent a decade ago, but still less than half their 36.5 percentage of state high school graduates. 
    The changes to UC's student demographics are definitive, but many continue to debate Proposition 209's merits and its effects. 
    Consider the story of Yat-Pang Au. He made headlines nearly 20 years ago when he filed a formal complaint against the University of California Berkeley alleging his rejection by the university was prompted by a discriminatory admissions policy toward Asians in response to their already soaring numbers at the campus. 
    Despite his personal experience, Au says he has mixed feelings about Proposition 209. 
    It's a more objective way of accepting those qualified, said Au, now 38 and running a security company in San Jose, but it's not a perfect system either. 
    The ethnic makeup at colleges after Proposition 209, particularly the dramatic drop in the enrollment of African-Americans, has prompted some to talk about repealing it. 
    Others, including one of the measure's most vocal proponents, former UC regent Ward Connerly, say the end of racial preferences has been a boon to the state by bringing it closer to being race-blind. 
    What's driving growth
    As a whole, Asian-American student numbers at UC have grown more than any other ethnic group each year since Proposition 209 passed in 1996. (At California State University 's 23 campuses, the ethnicity of its freshman class has remained generally steady over the last decade.) 
    Asian undergraduates already make up the largest racial group at seven of the nine UC undergraduate campuses. Only University of California Santa Cruz and University of California Santa Barbara have remained majority white in the past decade. At University of California Irvine , Asians make up a majority of undergraduates, or 51 percent. 
    Many academics agree that one thing driving the student numbers at UC is the growth of the Asian population in California . Another factor is Asians' prioritizing of education and economic ability to choose schools that better prepare students for college, said Robert Teranishi, an assistant professor at New York University , who has studied Asian-American trends in higher education. 
    Basically, Asians are vulnerable to the same challenges that all students are vulnerable to, Teranishi said, but in California , they tend to be positioned well to succeed in the system. 
    It's hard to generalize from the data because Asians are not monolithic, he said. The Asian category includes several different populations such as Chinese, East Indian/Pakistani and Vietnamese all of which have different cultural backgrounds and rates of admission to UC. 
    If the high Asian numbers at UC are reflective of anything, Teranishi said, it is UC's heavy reliance on grades and test scores. 
    The UC admissions process has two phases: the first looks at grades and test scores to determine who is eligible for the university. The second part involves specific campuses considering academic and non-academic elements to select whom to admit. 
    Of all the racial groups, Asians have the largest portion of students meeting UC eligibility requirements. In 2003, 31.4 percent of Asians met the requirements, compared with an overall average of 14.4 percent among all California high school seniors. 
    The university system also accepts the top 4 percent of each senior class in California high schools. That policy has tended to benefit poor whites and low-income Asians, said Frances Contreras, an education professor at the University of Washington , whose doctoral dissertation was on the effects of Proposition 209. 
    The ones that rose to the top were Vietnamese and Hmong, Contreras said.     
    Other impacts 
    Some say Proposition 209 has done great harm. Mostly notably, they point to the precipitous drop in black student numbers at UC. 
    There are 96 blacks in the freshman class of about 4,800 at the University of California Los Angeles this year. About 50 black freshmen are enrolled at the University of California San Diego this fall, making up only 1 percent of the class. If Proposition 209 remains in place, critics say, complete ethnic groups will lose access to the state's most prestigious public universities. 
    It perpetuates a stratification and racially segmented society, and that's bad for the soul of academia, said Maria Blanco, executive director of the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights of the San Francisco Bay Area, a nonprofit legal advocacy organization. 
    Blanco said it was unfair to judge all students by the same admissions criteria when the high school resources available to them, such as honors class offerings, vary so dramatically across the state. 
    Connerly said the criticisms were overblown, and that opponents of Proposition 209 were out of step with the 54.6 percent of voters who had approved the constitutional amendment. 
    Yeah, the number of black kids at UCLA, Berkeley and San Diego went down, Connerly said, but when you really look at that in the context of the state, there are relatively few people going to UC. That's a very small issue. 
    The greater good achieved, Connerly said, is that Proposition 209 has hastened the transition from a race-conscious society to one where race has no place in American life or law. 
    Connerly, who has mounted campaigns to do away with racial preferences in other states, had further success earlier this month. A measure in Michigan similar to Proposition 209 passed Nov. 7 with 58 percent of the vote. 
    Classroom diversity
    Researchers across the country have trained a keen eye on shifts in diversity following Proposition 209. 
    In the narrow view, some Asians are beneficiaries, and Latinos and blacks are losers; but really, everyone's a loser, said Gary Orfield, an education and social policy professor at Harvard. There may be enough minorities to have one or two kids in a classroom, but not enough to have a rich relationship. 
    Diversity in the classroom has a tremendous impact on helping with students' critical thinking and social skills, said Sylvia Hurtado, a UCLA professor and director of its Higher Education Research Institute. 
    Hurtado, who spent five years studying the impact of diversity on the learning experience, says a key to good teaching is interaction. When ethnically diverse classes interact, it benefits the learning environment and prepares students for the complexities of the workplace. 
    Even if you're talking about a subject in which race doesn't matter, it plays into whether you study in a group, how you develop skills and whether you have a support network, Hurtado said. 
    Students are divided on the issue. 
    At UCSD, nearly 53 percent of this year's freshman class is Asian-American. Whites make up about 28 percent and Latinos 12 percent. 
    Having diversity is a plus, but it doesn't feel like my education has [suffered] because of the drop in numbers, said Tiffany Yu, a UCSD freshman. 
    But UCSD sophomore Zach Vickers said students would benefit if race were considered in college admissions. Vickers is from the Northern California city of Alameda , where blacks and Latinos make up 15 percent of the population. 
    It was an eye-opening experience to come from a place with quite a lot of blacks and Latinos to none at all, Vickers said. I like the idea of a really diverse campus. 
    What's in the future?
    Some predict that certain minority groups will continue to shrink at UC. 
    That's prompted a group of influential UC academics to propose changes to UC's decades-old eligibility system. 
    By relying only on course grades and standardized test scores, UC's eligibility may not reflect a wide enough definition of merit, said Michael Brown, a UC Santa Barbara education professor. Adding the consideration of non-academic factors, such as leadership, initiative or improvement in grades in the course of one's high school career, may better gauge a student's potential, Brown said. 
    UC's faculty board that considers admissions changes is examining the eligibility system, and if it formulates a proposal, it will be presented to the UC Board of Regents. Changes to the system could reduce the number of Asians and whites admitted, Brown said, unless UC raises its overall enrollment. 
    One of our missions is to represent the California citizenry in their access to UC, Brown said. We can't afford to leave populations of our society behind. 

1/26/06 Boston Globe: Are Asian-American students discriminated against in college admissions?
by Christopher Shea
    In most contexts on college campuses, Asian-Americans are "people of color," a stripe in the multicultural rainbow. But when it comes to elite-college admissions, Asian-Americans put a strain on the usual "minority" alliances.
    Earlier this month, The Wall Street Journal reported that Jian Li, a freshman at Yale, had filed a complaint against Princeton with the Office of Civil Rights at the US Department of Education, charging that the university had rejected him because he was Asian-American. Despite perfect SAT scores, near-perfect achievement test scores, nine AP classes, and a class rank in the top 1 percent at Livingston High School in New Jersey, Li says he was rejected by Princeton, Harvard, Stanford, the University of Pennsylvania, and MIT, while getting into Yale, Cooper Union, Rutgers, and Cal Tech.
    Li, whose family moved to the United States from China when he was 4, told The Daily Princetonian that he was "fine" with being at Yale, but that discrimination against Asian-Americans in admissions had long bothered him. His decision to sue Princeton alone was "kind of arbitrary," he said. "If something comes of it, it will send a message for all the universities."
    To judge from the responses in Ivy League newspapers, most students wish he'd spared the effort. In The Daily Princetonian, Zachary Goldstein, a 2005 graduate, said the Yale frosh was "like a bad ex-boyfriend," harassing Old Nassau after she'd spurned him. A Yale Daily News columnist, Jonathan Pitts-Wiley, in a guest piece for the Princeton paper, called it "reprehensible" that "Li had the gall to unnecessarily racialize a personal defeat."
    The Yale writer went on to note that, in fact, "Asian-Americans are over represented" at Princeton : They make up 13 percent of undergraduates, compared with 4.5 percent of the population.
    Princeton 's admissions office, for its part, maintains that it makes no effort to align student demographics with that of the national population. Describing Li's complaint as "without merit," Princeton spokespeople have said that every student is evaluated using both academic and nonacademic criteria (such as leadership and artistic ability). And like other colleges, Princeton defends giving black and Hispanic students, children of alumni, and athletes a boost on the nonacademic side of the ledger.
    Yet Li isn't alone in his concerns, the derision heaped on him by his contemporaries notwithstanding. Daniel Golden, author of the Journal story this month, helped bring the issue of discrimination against Asian-Americans back to life this year in his book "The Price of Admission," in which he dubs Asian-Americans "the new Jews." From the 1920s through the 1950s, Jewish applicants with straight A's vexed elite-college admissions officers, who wanted to maintain a strong WASP tone on their campuses. The result was quotas.
    Golden basically concludes that some Asian-American students who would be admitted if they were of any other ethnicity get rejected -- often for reasons based on stereotype -- to make room for "more desirable" students. But he can't make an airtight case. The question now is: Will the Office of Civil Rights, with its investigative powers, prove Li and Golden right?
    In the late 1980s, in response to complaints, the Office of Civil Rights investigated whether Harvard had been discriminating against Asian-Americans. It found that while Asian-Americans faced longer odds than whites at admissions time (a 13.2 percent acceptance rate, compared with 17.4 percent for white students, from 1979 to 1988), the difference could largely be explained by the fact that few were legacy kids or recruited cornerbacks. The investigation did, however, turn up some embarrassingly stereotypical descriptions of rejected Asian students in Harvard records ("he's quiet and, of course, wants to be a doctor").
    To bolster his case, Li has cited work by two Princeton researchers, Thomas Espenshade and Chang Chung, that was originally framed as strengthening the case for affirmative action. In articles published in 2004 and 2005 in Social Science Quarterly, Espenshade and Chung analyzed the admissions fates and qualifications of 45,500 students who applied to three very elite, unnamed universities in 1997.
    The chief finding, according to the authors, was that ending all admissions preferences -- for athletes, legacy kids, and minorities -- would cut the number of black students at elite colleges by two-thirds, and Hispanic enrollment by one-half. Ending just legacy and athletic preferences, meanwhile -- something often proposed by egalitarians -- would, on its own, not help black and Hispanic students much.
    But Li's complaint draws attention to other aspects of the study: Asian-American students faced by far the lowest admissions rates of any ethnic group (17.6 percent, compared with 23.8 percent for whites, 33.7 percent for blacks, and 26.8 percent for Hispanics). What's more, contrary to the Office of Civil Rights report from 1990, legacy and athletic preferences trimmed Asian-American enrollment by only a few percentage points. But if preferences based on race, legacy status, and athletic talent were all done away with, Asian-American enrollment would jump 40 percent (while white enrollment would drop by 1 percent). To Li, it seems Asian-Americans alone bear the burden of affirmative action.
    Espenshade declined to answer questions about the study, saying via e-mail that he only wished to state "the obvious: academic merit is not the only kind of merit that elite college admission officers consider in making admission decisions."
    Li no doubt faces a difficult road in proving discrimination, given that elite colleges turn down many stellar applicants, but his complaint has touched a nerve. "[T]here can be good reasons for the disproportionately low acceptance rates for many Asians," one self-identified Yale student wrote on the online news site Inside Higher Ed, discussing Li's case. "Top-tier schools...look not only for good grades but for an interesting student who will bring something of value to the community."
    That sounds a lot like what admissions officers say, but there's a whiff of something else, too. The less-pleasant subtext is what Li's complaint is all about.

11/26/06 Dallas Morning News: Racism in disguise: It's not whites suffering from 'academic diversity.' It's Asians and blacks.
    It's time to admit that "diversity" is code for racism. If it makes you feel better, we can call it "nice" racism or "well-intentioned" racism or "racism that's good for you." Except that's the rub: It's racism that may be good for you if "you" are a diversity guru, a rich white liberal, a college administrator or one of sundry other types. But the question of whether diversity is good for "them" is a different question altogether, and much more difficult to answer. 
    If by "them" you mean minorities such as Jews, Chinese-Americans, Indian-Americans and other people of Asian descent, then the ongoing national obsession with diversity probably isn't good. Indeed, that's why Jian Li, a freshman at Yale, filed a civil rights complaint against Princeton University for rejecting him. Mr. Li had nigh-upon perfect test scores and grades, yet Princeton turned him down. He'll probably get nowhere with his complaint he did get into Yale, after all but it shines a light on an uncomfortable reality. 
    "Theoretically, affirmative action is supposed to take spots away from white applicants and redistribute them to underrepresented minorities," Mr. Li told the Daily Princetonian. "What's happening is one segment of the minority population is losing places to another segment of minorities, namely Asians to underrepresented minorities." 
    Mr. Li points to a study conducted by two Princeton academics last year that concluded that if you got rid of racial preferences in higher education, the number of whites admitted to schools would remain fairly constant. However, without racial preferences, Asians would take roughly 80 percent of the positions now allotted to Hispanic and black students. 
    In other words, there is a quota though none dare call it that keeping Asians out of elite schools in numbers disproportionate to their merit. This is the same sort of quota once used to keep Jews out of the Ivy League not because of their lack of qualifications, but because having too many Jews would change the "feel" of, say, Harvard or Yale. Today, it's the same thing, only we've given that feeling a name: diversity. 
    The greater irony is that it is far from clear that diversity is good for black students either. Peter Kirsanow, a member of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, notes that there is now ample empirical data showing that the supposed benefits of diversity in education are fleeting when real and often are simply nonexistent. Black students admitted to universities above their skill level often do poorly and fail to graduate in high numbers. UCLA law professor Richard Sander found that nearly half of black law students reside in the bottom 10 percent of their law-school classes. If they went to schools one notch down, they might do far better. 
    Today's diversity doctrine was contrived as a means of making racial preferences permanent. Affirmative action was intended as a temporary remedy for the tragic mistreatment of African-Americans. But as affirmative action drifted into racial preferences, it became constitutionally suspect because racial preferences are by definition discriminatory. 
    The brilliance of the diversity doctrine is that it does an end-run around all of this by saying that diversity isn't so much about helping the underprivileged, it's about providing a rich educational experience for everyone. 
    When the University of Michigan's admissions policies were being reviewed by the Supreme Court, former school President Lee Bollinger explained that diversity was as "as essential as the study of the Middle Ages, of international politics and of Shakespeare" because exposure to people of different hues lies at the core of the educational experience. That's another way of saying that racial preferences are forever. That business about redressing past discrimination against blacks is no longer the name of the game. 
    It's difficult to put into words how condescending this is in that it renders black students into props, show-and-tell objects for the other kids' educational benefit. 
    There was a time when condescension, discrimination, arrogant social engineering along racial lines and the like were dubbed racism. And, to paraphrase Shakespeare, racism by any other name still stinks. 
    Jonah Goldberg is a syndicated columnist. 

11/16/06: Duke Chronicle: Allegations against Princeton unfounded,
    Yale freshman Isaac Cohen filed a federal civil rights complaint against Princeton for rejecting his application for admission, claiming the university had discriminated against him because he is Jewish.
    The complaint alleges that Princeton 's admissions procedures are biased because they advantage other minority groups, namely blacks and Hispanics, legacy applicants and athletes, at the expense of Jewish applicants.
    In principle, Cohen's complaint points to an important and compelling phenomenon-that of discrimination against highly accomplished Jews on the basis of their ethnicity. However, Cohen's case against Princeton carries little personal or legal credibility.
    To begin with, Cohen's identity compromises the credibility of his case. Now a student at Yale, Cohen seems not to have suffered significant hardship because of his rejection from Princeton .  Cohen's motive for pressing this complaint, thus, does not appear to be any major grievance against Princeton . Instead, it is difficult to view his case as anything other than an attempt to gain publicity. Cohen's cause does not elicit sympathy. 
    Moreover, it is not clear that any intelligent Jew suffers undue hardship as a consequence of the affirmative action programs at selective universities. Even if students like Cohen are rejected at schools like Princeton in favor of blacks, Hispanics or underprivileged students, it does not seem that discrimination against Jews is so systematic at the top universities that they will not be accepted at any good college.  Cohen, after all, was accepted at Yale , Cal Tech, and Rutgers , and, in general, Jews are not a minority group that is underrepresented in elite universities. 
    More importantly, though, there is no evidence that Princeton discriminated against Cohen during the application process. Current legal precedent on the question of racial preference grew out of two cases filed in 2003 against the University of Michigan . In those cases, the Supreme Court ruled that colleges could use racial preferences benefiting underrepresented groups, but that quotas, points and other mechanistic policies are unconstitutional.
    Yet Cohen presents no evidence that Princeton implemented such a system to his disadvantage. On the contrary, the admissions process at universities such as Princeton and Duke is largely unpredictable, and admission is awarded on the basis of many factors. This is to say that Cohen cannot point to his SAT scores and GPA as reasonable proof that he deserved admission. For instance, both Princeton and Duke admit about half of their applicants with perfect SAT scores. They do this not due to discrimination, but because many students just do not fit into a university's vision of its freshman class. In other words, Cohen appears to be asserting that his rights were violated when Princeton denied him admission, yet in the complex and intricate world of college admissions, no one can assert that he has the legal right to get in anywhere.
    In sum, whereas the principle behind Cohen's case-pervasive influence that ethnicity has on admission in universities-is relevant and legitimate, the reality of the case does not identify a substantial, pervasive and harmful discrimination and it mistakes the nature of admissions at private universities like Princeton and Duke to be objective as opposed to subjective. The truth is more complex. 
    [The above was re-written to expose the liberal bias of Bigots for the Left.  The original editorial referred to Jian Li instead of Isaac Cohen and to Asian American instead of Jew.  For real reporting on: (1) how Ralph Lauren bought admission to Duke for his children and (2) Jian Li commenting on his complaint against Princeton, see Nov. 14, 2006 ABC News Nightline Program, College For Sale http://abcnews.go.com/Video/playerIndex?id=2625731 (Mr. Bashir interviews Jian Li, a Yale student, about racism and stereotyping against Asians by elite colleges in the admissions process. Dan Golden of the WSJ is also interviewed on the program.) ]

11/15/06 Yale Daily News: "Anti-Asian bias alleged; Princeton faces suit from Univ. freshman,"
By Kimberly Chow and Judy Wang
    Jian Li 10, who applied to Princeton University last year and was not accepted, is filing suit against the college for race-based discrimination in its admissions process.
    A Yale freshman has filed a civil rights complaint against Princeton University , alleging that the college did not accept his application for enrollment last spring because he is Asian-American.
   Jian Li '10, who was born in China and now lives in New Jersey, said that while he is not seeking any compensation from Princeton, he hopes to draw attention to discrimination against Asian-American students in the admissions process, which he called an "under-addressed issue."
   Li lodged his complaint with the Office for Civil Rights on Aug. 2 under the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which protects against discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex or national origin. After initially rejecting his claim for lack of evidence, the office reopened the case on Oct. 31 and began its investigation into Princeton 's admissions process.
   Li said he wants to broaden the discussion about affirmative action in admissions policy and is not interested in transferring to Princeton .
   "There is much dialogue about race issues along black and white lines, but it often seems that Asians are ignored," Li said.
   Princeton spokeswoman Cass Cliatt said Princeton is working with the Office for Civil Rights to examine the case.
   "We consider applicants as individuals and the University does not discriminate against Asian Americans," she said. "It's difficult to admit a class from among thousands of excellent applicants."
   Cliatt said Princeton admitted approximately half of all applicants with perfect SAT scores last year.
   Yale College Dean of Admissions Jeff Brenzel said Yale's admission policies are oriented to holistic evaluation of candidates, taking into account all aspects of their applications as well the need to assemble a freshman class that is diverse in many different respects.
   Li said he scored a perfect 2,400 on the SAT and a combined 2,390 on SAT II subject tests in calculus, chemistry and physics. While the civil rights agency is only using Li's test scores and GPA as evidence in the case, Li said he does not believe these two pieces of information fully represent his admissions profile. In high school, Li said, he was president of the intercultural organization American Field Service, participated in American Legion Boys' State and volunteered for a community service project in Costa Rica .
   Bruce Bailey, director of college counseling at the Lakeside School in Seattle , Wash. , said the use of perfect SAT scores as evidence of discrimination is not likely to help his case.
   "Anyone who knows anything about college admissions knows that scores are only one part of an application," he said. "I'm sure Princeton and Yale can fill their classes up with people with those kinds of scores."
   Bailey said the vast majority of students who apply to highly competitive schools like Yale and Princeton are qualified candidates, and thus admissions committees must consider a much wider range of indicators than just grades and test scores.
   Li said his case is based on a study of admissions processes published by three Princeton researchers in 2004, which found that while elite universities gave African-American applicants an advantage equivalent to 230 extra SAT points and Hispanic applicants 185 points while making admissions decisions, the schools placed Asian-Americans at a disadvantage equal to a loss of 50 SAT points.
   Li said he was aware of the discrimination revealed by the report before he applied to Princeton .
   "Before I'd even applied, I had known about this discrimination," Li said. "When I found out I was wait-listed, I had been hoping to get rejected so I would have legal standing to file the complaint."
   Two of the three researchers conducted another study on "disaffirmative action" in 2005, which found that Asian applicants to elite institutions would be the "biggest winners" if race were not a factor in admissions. In that scenario, the acceptance rate for Asian students would go up from 17.6 percent to 23.4 percent, the study found.
   The San Francisco-based group "Chinese for Affirmative Action" supports the practice of affirmative action in education for all ethnic groups, but Asian-Americans in particular.  CAA Executive Director Vincent Pan said Asians are often held up as the "model minority" - as a stereotypically high-achieving ethnic group - to supposedly prove that minorities do not need extra support, but this view is largely a myth.
   Pan said his group does not accept the claim of some Asian-Americans, such as Li, that affirmative action hurts their chances of getting into college. On the contrary, Pan said, affirmative action is able to help some Asian groups, like Cambodians and Vietnamese, who often come to the U.S. as immigrants with little education.
   The Executive Board of the Asian American Students Association at Princeton said in a statement Monday that the majority of the board thinks Princeton 's policy regarding admissions is basically "fair" in its evaluation of students' applications. They said the organization is organizing a forum so that students may discuss the issues of race in college admissions raised by Li's lawsuit.
   "This topic may be a delicate issue for some, but we are glad that it has allowed students at Princeton - and perhaps at Yale as well - to think about the merits and flaws of the college admission process," members of the Executive Board wrote in an e-mail.
   Megan Chiao, a sophomore and member of the Asian American Students Association at Princeton, said she thinks the majority of students at Princeton are critical of Li's allegations.
   "I agree that the issues Jian Li raises about how Asians could be hurt by affirmative action are valid," Chiao said. "But his specific case might not be credible because I don't think Princeton just accepts people based on academic merit."
   Some Yale students said that although they do not think Li's suit will be successful, the issues it raises about the admissions process need to be addressed.
   Aaron Meng '08, president of the Chinese-American Students' Association, said that although he does not think the case has much merit, he believes it is important to draw attention to the question of whether or not Asian-American applicants are being discriminated against in the admissions process.
   Meng said he thinks Asian culture has taught students to place more emphasis on studying than on partaking in creative activities, which may put Asian-American students at a disadvantage in the admissions process. Asian-American students may also be disadvantaged by their approach to college admissions preparation, rather than any discrimination in the process itself, Meng said.
   But Lily Dorman-Colby '09 said she thinks discrimination may have occurred in Li's case because college admissions officers strive to create ethnic diversity in spite of the fact that Asian-American students perform better on standardized tests and have higher grades.
   "It's getting to be a tricky situation for schools because, in order to represent the country as a whole, they are actually being discriminatory toward Asian Americans," she said.
   Since the complaint was made public, Li's case has received national attention from The Wall St. Journal, ABC's "20/20" and the online journal Inside Higher Ed.



11/14/06 Inside Higher Ed: New Challenge to Affirmative Action
by Scott Jaschik
   Nine out of every 10 students who apply to Princeton University are rejected, and many of them are students with the kinds of records that just about assure they will end up getting a great education somewhere. Jian Li, who despite his top grades and perfect SAT scores was one of this years rejects, ended up at Yale University . But he has set off a federal investigation of whether Princeton s affirmative action policies discriminate against Asian American applicants.
    Since he was rejected after first being put on the waiting list Li filed two complaints with the U.S. Education Departments Office for Civil Rights. OCR initially found insufficient evidence to proceed, but agreed to an inquiry after Li refiled his complaint with additional information. His complaints were first reported this weekend by The Wall Street Journal.
    By most measures, the odds are against Li winning his claim and Princeton denies that any bias took place. Demonstrating discrimination is particularly difficult at elite private universities, where thousands of exceptionally qualified students of all races and ethnicities are rejected every year and there is no explicit formula to determine admission. But Lis complaint comes at a time that many Asian applicants and the high school counselors who work with them report a view that they are held to a higher standard than are white, black or Latino students. And he is citing research by the universitys own professors to document
the impact of affirmative action on Asian applications.
    Li did not respond to messages seeking comment, but his complaint states that he received 800s on the mathematics, critical reading and writing parts of the SAT, that he graduated in the top 1 percent of his high school class, that he completed nine Advanced Placement classes by the time he graduated, and that he had been active in extracurricular activities as well serving as a delegate at Boys State, working in Costa Rica, etc.
   The problem, Li said, was his Chinese background. Li said that he left ethnicity blank on his application. But while Princeton s application indicates that question is optional, it doesnt list as optional other questions that Li answered: his name, his mothers and fathers names, his first language (Chinese), and the language spoken in his home (Chinese). Li said that this information made his ethnicity unequivocally clear to Princeton .
   Even if Li was a strong applicant and Princeton knew he was Chinese, that doesnt demonstrate discrimination. To try to do so, Li is pointing to research done by two Princeton scholars and published in Social Science Quarterly. The research looked at admissions decisions at elite colleges and found that without affirmative action, the acceptance rate for African American candidates would be likely to fall by nearly two-thirds, from 33.7 percent to 12.2 percent, while the acceptance rate for Hispanic applicants probably would be cut in half, from 26.8 percent to 12.9 percent.
    While white admit rates would stay steady, Asian students would be big winners under such a system. Their admission rate in a race-neutral system would go to 23.4 percent, from 17.6 percent. And their share of a class of admitted students would rise to 31.5 percent, from 23.7 percent.
    Cass Cliatt, a spokeswoman for Princeton, said that while the study was done by scholars at the university, the study examined elite colleges as a whole, not Princeton .
   Last year, she said, Princeton rejected about half of all the applicants who had perfect SAT scores and in doing so rejected people of a range of ethnicities. Princeton doesnt discriminate against Asian Americans, she said.
   Princeton does use affirmative action to recruit a diverse class, Cliatt said, but it does so through individual reviews of applications, not with separate policies for students from different racial and ethnic groups. You cant say someone was or wasnt admitted because of some formula, she said.
    In Princeton s freshman class, there are 172 Asian Americans more than any other minority group out of 1,231 students.
   What Princeton does not release is the sort of information used by its own scholars on admit rates by specific ethnic and racial groups. Princeton does publish data periodically on the admit rates of all minority applicants (showing an admit rate only marginally higher than for all applicants), but does not break out rates for different groups. Cliatt said that to date, there has not been much interest in those figures, but that Princeton might reconsider if there is more interest and it appears that releasing those numbers would be in the public interest. So far, she said, the public hasnt told us they want the breakdown.
   Critics of affirmative action eager to build on their successful effort in Michigan, where voters barred affirmative action at public colleges last week are anxious to get such data.  Private colleges do not need to release such data, but if the Education Department obtains statistics during its investigation and cites them in its analysis of the case, the information could become public.
    When such statistics have been released in the past, they have tended to come from public institutions, which must respond to open records requests, and the data at highly competitive publics have indicated large disparities in the test scores and grades, on average, of black and Latino applicants on one hand and white and Asian applicants on the other.
   In the weeks before the Michigan vote, the Center for Equal Opportunity a group opposed to affirmative action released data on the University of Michigan showing that the SAT median for black students admitted to Michigans main undergraduate college was 1160 in 2005, compared to 1260 for Hispanics, 1350 for whites and 1400 for Asians. High school grade point averages were 3.4 for black applicants, 3.6 for Hispanics, 3.8 for Asians, and 3.9 for whites. Michigan officials argued that the figures distorted the reality of admissions
procedures, which look beyond numbers. But the figures were much discussed in Michigan and similar figures when released on other state universities have been part of campaigns against affirmative action.
   At Princeton , Asian students who went to his high school arent impressed with Lis complaint.  Several noted that many Asian students from the high school have been admitted or are enrolled. One of them told The Daily Princetonian that his complaint was completely unwarranted.  

11/15/2006 Harvard Crimson: Fighting for Depth: At Harvard and beyond, superficially positive Asian stereotypes carry harmfuland complexconsequences.
By Alwa A. Cooper
    Peipei X. Zhang 08, Asian-American and unrepentant English concentrator, wants you to know that she does not like math. Not science, either, though shes good at both. Economics is boring, and keeping quiet is overrated. When I was younger, I was the fuckup. I did my schoolwork, but I played a lot. I wasnt as studious as every other Asian kid. Like, theres a lot of shy Asian girls, but Im not them, Zhang says, fashionably groomed in a cable-knit sweater and tweed shorts. 
    When I was applying to college, everybody expected me to fail, because I wasnt fitting into the stereotype of a good Asian child, according to the traditional Asian parents. Among my parents friends, no parent told their child, Be like Peipei, she says. 
    In high school, Zhang excelled academically and participated in a slew of extracurriculars, but it was her outgoing personality that stood out: teachers told her she was too loud to be an Asian girl. And yet, Zhang succeeded in winning a spot at Harvard. The Chinese-American community she grew up with in Boston was shocked. When I got into Harvard, the other parents were like, How the fuck did she get in? she says. 
    While Zhang and the rest of Harvards future Class of 2008 were preparing their college applications, Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel L. Golden 78 was writing a series of articles on the inequalities of admissions practices at top-tier universities that would earn him a Pulitzer Prize. Many of the articles, and the vast majority of Goldens bookThe Price of Admission: How Americas Ruling Class Buys Its Way into Elite Collegesand Who Gets Left Outside the Gates, published in Septemberfocus on preferences given to wealthy white students. However, sandwiched between chapters on A Break for Faculty Brats and The Legacy Establishment lies a section that touches a nerve recently exposed by affirmative action cases at the University of California-Berkeley and the University of Michigan: The New Jews: Asian-Americans Need Not Apply. 
    Much like Jews were before the 1950s, Asian-Americans are shortchanged relative to their academic performance, writes Golden. They are held to a higher academic standard in admissions, and are routinely admitted to the highest-level schools at the lowest rates of any ethnic group, including whites. Golden interviewed several current and former admissions officers at these schools to tease out a justification for the numbers. As it turned out, no sweet-talking was required. Official after official went on the record for Golden on the matter. The reasons for the rejections? One Korean student, applying from a top prep school, got pegged at MIT as yet another textureless math grind. At Vanderbilt, a former admissions staffer offered that Asians are very good students, but dont provide the kind of intellectual environment that colleges are looking for. 
    THE FIRST MODEL MINORITY 
    On January 7, 1928, six years after Harvard President and acknowledged xenophobe A. Lawrence Lowell, Class of 1877, decided to make it his business to keep Jews out of Harvard, an article called Trial By Jewry appeared in The Harvard Crimson. The article was a short news piecenot an editorialrunning just 315 words, half of which were devoted to a racist attack on Jews. 
    Individually, by their artistic ability and business acumen the Jews play an important part in American life. But, in their race clannishness, they choose to constitute a distinct body. And as such they are a perfectly legitimate subject for discussion, the author says. Race pride is a powerful and admirable force, but it would seem that the Jews could attain the desired friendly unity with the Gentile much sooner if the chord were not struck so loudly and often. These few damning words sum up the experience of the Jewish student at Harvard, and indeed the Jewish person in America , until the mid-1950s. Jews, many of whom were only first- or second-generation immigrants, if that, were seen as pseudo-American. But due to their growing population and prosperity, it was becoming increasingly difficult to ignore their presence. 
    As Jewish numbers climbed at the institutions of higher learning that had once been reserved for long-established families of white Protestant descent, anti-Semitism increased. Nevertheless, by the time Lowell took over as Harvard president in 1909, Harvard was more than 20 percent Jewish, according to a recent New Yorker article. Alarmed, President Lowell eventually instituted a quota that cut the population of Jews at Harvard down to 15 percent over his 24-year tenure. To justify its actions, Harvard turned to Jewish stereotypes of race clannishness and abilities limited to purely brainy pursuits. The message sent was that Jews as an ethnicity were one-dimensional, presented little benefit to a university but brainpower without personality, and tended to self-segregate. Almost 100 years later, Harvards attitudes toward Asian-Americans, another model minority, has echoes of its past attitudes towards Jews, both in its admissions and in its approach to University life in general. 
    SOUND FAMILIAR? 
    At Harvard, Asian-American concern over suspected discrimination in admissions predates Goldens book. In 1992, an admissions official met with members of the Asian-American Assocation (AAA) to reassure them that, despite reports that Asian-American students consistently had the lowest admit rates of any ethnic group at Harvard while having the highest SAT scores, a quota designed to lower their numbers did not exist. The difference between the rates of admission between Asian and white students was chalked up to preferences for legacy and recruited athletes, two categories that are filled almost entirely by white students. Despite the lower rate of admissionThe Crimson reported that for the Class of 1995, Asians were admitted at a 17 percent rate, whites at 19 percent, Hispanics at 20 percent, and black students at 32 percentthe population of Asian students at Harvard has dropped only slightly from a high of a full fifth of the student body in 1992 to about 17.7 percent now. Asians made up 3.6 percent of the national population in the 2000, and that figure is rising, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. 
    Director of Admissions Marlyn McGrath Lewis 70-73 writes in an e-mail that this discrepancy in representation doesnt concern the Admissions Office. A fundamental thing to understand is that we do not think of representativeness as a goal of our admissions process. We do not use goals, targets, or quotas in choosing among applicants, writes McGrath Lewis. When our proportions of Asian-Americans are larger than their proportion in the country as a whole, that simply indicates how well those who did apply did compared with other applicants in our pool. As for Goldens accusations of stereotyping, McGrath Lewis denies it occurs: It would be incorrect to say that our Committee reviews Asian-American students by criteria different from those we use for other applicants, she writes. Nor does our Committee operate on the stereotype that Asian-American students are poorly rounded. We have too much experience with students of all backgrounds to make that assumption. 
    Goldens experience, however, suggests otherwise. He writes that Harvard evaluators ranked Asian American candidates on average below whites in personal qualities, and repeatedly described them as quiet/shy, science/math oriented, and hard workers. While McGrath Lewis and other high-ranking admissions officials deny the presence of stereotyping, the lower-level staffers responsible for individual applications acknowledge that such practices exist, according to Goldens book. The reason lies in the language of the stereotypethe Asian student is good at math and science, talented with the piano or violin, quiet, and shy. He or she can be found more often than not in Cabot Science Library until the wee hours of the morning, bent over chemistry or economics textbooks, while other students socialize. Unlike the often explicitly negative labels placed on Latino and black students, on the surface the Asian-American is a model minority. Since Asians are doing so well in getting into college and getting jobs, the argument runs, they dont need the lip-service respect paid to other minorities. 
    Several white students at dinner in one of the House dining halls, who asked not to be named, offered their own takes on the stereotype. One said, Well, theyre science concentrators. They stick together. Socially inept. Another agreed, Studiousoh, yeah, asocial, definitely. I mean, that just comes from studying, and not knowing how to talk to people. A third: Yeah, I guess I think of them as having broken English. In other words, the anti-Peipei Zhang. 
    Asians concentrating in the humanities or participating in unscholarly pursuits have come to expect surprised reactions from white students. Jeremy S. Lin 10 is a recruited basketball player, a member of the varsity team. He is also Asian-American. Since matriculating here, hes discovered that these two facts are difficult for many Harvard students to accept together. Some people dont believe that I play basketball, Lin says. When people see me, they automatically assume Im the worst on the team. They ask me if I only play when were already winning by a lot, things like that. Again and again, from scribblings in the margins of college applications to dining hall conversations, the same themes arisesoftpedaled by patronizing concessions to perceived skill in the sciences, the accusation is that Asian-Americans do not speak the universitys language, do not contribute to university community, and do not participate in university life. According to many Asian-Americans, the fact that racism directed towards them is rarely direct is no less damaging to the community. Yet, others consider themselves lucky that thats all it is. 
    One Asian student, who lived in a virtually all-white community before coming to Harvard, doesnt see the problem. I think because I havent had the whole identify with your own color thing, sometimes its annoying to me when people get really into [Asian-American activism], the student, who asked not to be named, says. Racism was a fact of life for me, growing up. When youre on the playground, and youre in an argument, sometimes it comes down to you being called a Chink. And thats terrible, but this stuff is minor. Pick your battles, I guess. 
    HISTORY OF A STEREOTYPE 
    Like Jews at the turn of the century, Asians in America and at Harvard often come from immigrant families. Many Asian students cite the experiences of their parents or grandparents, who often fled politically unstable countries for a more secure life in the United States , as a significant factor in decisions about career paths. Lisa S. Pao 08, an English concentrator and second-generation immigrant, identifies that mentality as a source of the stereotype. You watch what it means to your parents, to come to another country and work so hard and build a better lifeits sometimes an unfortunate assumption that having a better future means more money, Pao says. And thats why a lot of the majors that [Asians] who get into college pick are medicine, economics, business. Zhangs parents, though they supported her in her choice to study English, werent fully comfortable with it until she landed an animation internship last summer at Nickelodeon Studios, proving one could concentrate in the humanities and also eventually get a job. 
    Members of many minority groups who, like Zhang, see clichd portrayals of their own ethnicities doing battle with often exclusively white images of what a typical American should be, often resolve at an early age to define themselves against that stereotype. One issue thats often overlooked is the social impact of being seen as a minority. You hear people say When I was growing up, I thought to be Asian was ugly. I didnt want to be Asian. I wished I was white, says AAA Co-President Sanby Lee 08. 
    I hated being Chinese. Zhang says. Now I know its part of my heritage, and I dont have to conform to whats expected of my ethnicity. I would go to Chinese [language] school, and I was just the oddball. 
    Often, its only in high-school, college, or later that Asian-Americans and others are able to create their own conceptions of their ethnicities and how to relate to them. Even then, they can face criticism from others. If you do something thats not seen as typically Asian, theres a tendency for people to treat you as not Asian, Lee says. Government concentrator Edward Y. Lee 08 says, There will be Asian-Americans who will be like, Why are you acting so white? 
    The views of those like the prejudiced admissions staffers Golden interviewed are always at risk of becoming the identity that minority groups embrace for themselves, making them even more harmful. The luxury of exploring ones academic and extracurricular interests without worrying if they contribute to the marginalization of ones community is a privilege that non-minorities take for granted, and that many Asian-American students feel they dont yet have. 
    The hardest thing for me was realizing that [my concentration] is a stereotype. I didnt know until I was in my late teens, and that was difficult, says Molecular and Cellular Biology concentrator Alisa T. Zhang 08. She is typical of Asian students concentrating in sciences, who are aware of the stereotype and struggle to resist being limited by it. The externally positive nature of the Asian stereotypeSo good at math! So skilled in the lab!becomes a burden when it circumscribes the role Asians play at Harvard, and it is difficult to escape when so many students, for a variety of reasons, feel they have to sheepishly admit to being part of it. 
    These students are also confronted with pressure from older members of the Asian community to Americanize. I do think the need to assimilate is bigger in the Asian community [than among other minorities], says Sanby Lee, who is also a Crimson editor. But I think that surface conception of self-segregation ignores other factors. 
    BREAKING FREE 
    Edward Lee, vice-chair of the Undergraduate Council Finance Committee, co-founder of the Asian-American Political Initiative, and aspiring politician, has made it his mission to encourage Asian-Americans at Harvard and across the country to speak up and join American political dialogue in more concentrated ways. Throughout history, Asians would rather stay silent than stick out, he says. They want their children to be the cream of the mainstream. I think [taking the safe route] is more of a hazard than it is beneficial. 
    Asian Americans feature relatively little in the UC, and even less so in national politics. Often, Asians and the American majority feel mutual discomfort with the weaving of Asians into the political and social fabric, and that discomfornt manifests itself in a reluctance for either side to get involved in the public sphere. An unfortunate consequence is that Asians then continue to be marginalized. Theres not even an idea that Asian-American history is part of our history, says Sanby Lee. Weve brought this up with faculty before, and the gist of it was that they dont see a need for [an Asian-American studies department] because theres already East Asian studies. Its a lack of awareness of the issue that just makes it very difficult. The culture of silence on both sides of the issue is what allows, among other things, college administrators to tell a Wall Street Journal reporter that Asians all look the same on paper without fear of retaliation. 
    The goal of unity, however, is further compromised by the fact that the sheer number of cultures amassed under the label of Asian makes it difficult to achieve the kind of homogenous front implied by the names of groups like AAA. When people use the word Asian, much of the time they mean East Asian, and usually specifically Chinese. East Asians, meaning those with Chinese, North and South Korean, Japanese, or Taiwanese ancestry, make up a majority of the Asians at Harvard. Often, Southeast Asiansthe region variably composed of India , Vietnam , Thailand , and several other countriesare lumped in with East Asians on ethnic surveys. In the smaller-scale world of college admissions, the Common Application, used by over 300 colleges, splits applicants of Asian heritage not into categories of East Asian and Southeast Asian descent but into Asians and Asian-Americans. Southeast Asian-Americans with heritage from countries like Vietnam and Laos have some of the countrys lowest high-school graduation rates, but in applications are indistinguishable from their East Asian counterparts, who are generally much more socioeconomically and educationally advantaged. Efforts to reduce the numbers of Asians in colleges, mostly directed toward East Asians, end up penalizing Southeast Asians, Golden writes in the book. Beyond the Southeast Asian/East Asian divide, there are historical factions within the groups. Until only a few generations ago, Japan and China were bitter enemies (see sidebar); now, theyve been bound together in a designation that, while useful for political reasons, is somewhat meaningless in other, important cultural ways. 
    As far as making a stronger Asian-American voice heard on campus, to the extent that it can be done when an entire continent is lumped together under one term, Sanby Lee recognizes the challenge: I definitely think that it comes up again and again in not wanting to be politically involved, that stereotype of being very apathetic, passive, not wanting to stand out. 
    LOOKING AHEAD 
    Asian-Americans occupy a unique position on Harvards campus, represented in pure numbers at as much as four times their national presence yet barely acknowledged in the administrative and political life of the university. If the communitys tag as the new Jews holds up, in fifty years Asian students could have an even more considerable stake in higher education. According to The Chronicle of Higher Education, Jews, who still comprise less than two percent of the American population, comprised one third of the Ivy League in 2000an astronomical amount, and one now readily accepted by admissions administrators, who no longer force Jewish applicants to do battle against a stereotype designed to prevent them from succeeding. In the Ivies of the future, Asian students will make up increasing numbers of alumni applicantsa highly courted demographic to top schools. They may eventually enjoy the same prize Jewish students have won; first, to gain a seat at the table without adhering to American stereotypes, and then, to use that power to redefine the conception of what it is to be American. But a major roadblock to Asian-American empowerment is that same old stereotype, imposed upon them by society and internalized by the community, that can polarize its members when it should unite them to reject it. But as the community expands its historical conventions to include a new tradition of speaking up when necessary to defend its places at Harvard and in America , Asian Americans are slowly but surely putting strength behind their numbers.

11/14/06 National Review: The Big Lie of Diversity: Elite audacity and the MCRI,
By Peter Kirsanow
    When it comes to racial preferences, elites seem to believe that their opinions matter more than the democratically expressed will of the majority. Within hours after the people of the state of Michigan rendered a pulverizing blow to state-sponsored racial discrimination, the elites, who know better how to socially engineer society than do the benighted natives of that state, threw down the gauntlet: preferences now, preferences forever.
    The day after Michigan voters passed Proposal 2 also known as the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative (MCRI) banning state-sponsored racial, ethnic, and gender preferences, University of Michigan President Mary Sue Coleman issued a statement impressive for its obstinacy and condescension. She asserted that the University of Michigan will immediately begin exploring legal action to overturn the proposition that the voters passed 58 percent to 42 percent.
    Opponents of racial discrimination, particularly black and Hispanic students, should pray that the University of Michigan litigates, because if the school does go to court, the great emperor of campus diversity will finally be revealed as having no clothes: Not one selective university in the country (save, perhaps, for the service academies) that employs racial preferences in admissions can achieve its diversity goals and still comply with the Supreme Courts standards in Grutter v. Bollinger. Moreover, not one school will be able to adduce evidence that their version of diversity produces objectively measurable educational benefits.
    The preferences given to preferred minorities in college admissions are so powerful that they violate the Supreme Courts requirement that race not dominate admissions criteria. For example, before Grutter was issued in 2003, University of Texas law professor Lino Graglia noted that the median GPA and LSAT percentiles for admitees to the countrys elite law schools are 3.8 and 98 respectively. Fewer than 20 black law-school applicants in the entire country met those standards. That means that the University of Michigan Law School alone, which has about thirty black law students in each entering class, could admit all of the black students at the median for elite law schools (with ten seats still left to fill), leaving every other top law school in the country with no choice but to admit black students well below the median if it is to reach its diversity goals.
    As bad as those figures are, a study released just a few weeks ago by the Center for Equal Opportunity regarding the University of Michigans current admissions policies (and using data furnished by the university) shows that the schools racial preferences have gotten even more severe since Grutter. Given that they can no longer count on a Justice OConnor to rescue their absurdly unbalanced admissions program, the University of Michigan s administrators may want to reconsider whether it is wise to raise legal issues that could result in the elimination of racial preferences at every college campus in the country.
    Before the universitys administrators expend vast funds trying to overturn Proposal 2, they should at least explain to students, the voters, and taxpayers why the school seeks to perpetuate a program that does manifest and considerable harm to its purported beneficiaries.
    Why is it, for example, that the University of Michigan and other selective schools continue to promote racially discriminatory admissions policies that lead to greater academic failure among black and Hispanic students than what results from racially neutral policies? Why do they extol policies that suppress black and Hispanic graduation rates? Is the University of Michigan s mission to educate and graduate students or is it to placate racial bean counters?
    The continued defense of racial discrimination in admissions is no longer contrary just to the principle of equal treatment, but to empirical evidence as well. Perhaps twenty years ago academic elites could hide behind the veil of uninformed good intentions to justify racial preferences; today, hard evidence continues to mount demonstrating that racial preferences have a devastating impact on preferred minorities. Why didnt President Coleman mention in her address the myriad studies showing that the benefits of diversity are, at best, negligible and most likely illusory? Dont academic elites think that black and Hispanic students should know about (to cite but one example) the studies by UCLA law professor Richard Sander showing that because of the mismatch effect caused by affirmative action (i.e., under-qualified minorities being admitted to schools at which they have difficulty competing) half of black law students cluster at the bottom 10 percent of their respective law-school classes? Would college administrators continue to mouth platitudes about affirmative action if their students knew that preferential admissions cause black law students to flunk out at two-and-a-half times the rate of whites? Or that black law students are six times less likely to pass the bar?  Or that half of black law students never become lawyers?
    These arent the only questions about affirmative action that academic elites strenuously avoid. They also fail to tell Asian students that many, if not most, admissions offices discriminate against Asian applicants in a manner resembling the Jewish quotas of the 1950s. How many Asian students know that their odds of being admitted at selective schools are 200 times worse than those of a similarly qualified black or Hispanic applicant?
    In defending affirmative action, President Coleman stated that she will not allow this university to go down the path of mediocrity. Yet affirmative action programs are a big reason why remedial programs are proliferating on college campuses. Maybe its not the case at the University of Michigan , but at some schools half of all black and Hispanic students require remedial training in subjects they shouldve learned in high school or even middle school.
    Hate groups would be hard-pressed to come up with a more insidious plan to retard black and Hispanic advancement. It would be even harder for them to keep students ignorant about the effects of the plan. But for elites, its a piece of cake.
    Peter Kirsanow is a member of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. He is also a member of the National Labor Relations Board. These comments do not necessarily reflect the positions of either organization.  

11/13/06: Allen's Slur Against Asian American Cost Him Election for U.S. Senate
    According to CNN poll figures, Virginians cast 2,364,217 votes in the 
U.S. Senate race. 3% of the votes (70,926) were cast by Asian Americans. 68% of the Asian Americans voted Democratic, while 32% voted Republican. 68 - 32 = 36. 70,926 x 36% = 25,534 votes. 
    Democrat Jim Webb won the Senate race by only 7,231 votes.
    If Asian Americans had voted 50-50, Webb would have lost and the Republicans would still control the Senate.
    In August 2006, incumbent Senator George Allen (R) had referred to S. R. Sidarth as "Macaca."  Sidarth is a 20-year-old Indian American attending the University of Virginia. He was born and raised in Fairfax County. 
    The word "macaca" refers to a type of monkey commonly found in Africa and Asia.  In certain French-speaking societies, it is an ethnic slur against people with dark skin; Allen's mother is an immigrant of French Tunisian descent. 
    According to the Washington Post, Allen's remarks thrust his past which includes a youthful admiration of the Confederate flag and an office that once displayed a noose back into the public spotlight. 
    Statistics from 11/13/06 www.80-20.us e-mail and CNN exit polls: http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2006/pages/results/states/TX/S/01/epolls.0.html. 

11/11/06 Wall Street Journal: "Is Admissions Bar Higher for Asians At Elite 
Schools?  School Standards Are Probed Even as Enrollment Increases; 
A Bias Claim at Princeton,"
by Daniel Golden
    Though Asian-Americans constitute only about 4.5% of the U.S. population, they typically account for anywhere from 10% to 30% of students at many of the nation's elite colleges.
    Even so, based on their outstanding grades and test scores, Asian-Americans 
increasingly say their enrollment should be much higher -- a contention backed by a growing body of evidence.
    Whether elite colleges give Asian-American students a fair shake is becoming a big concern in college-admissions offices. Federal civil-rights officials are investigating charges by a top Chinese-American student that he was rejected by Princeton University last spring because of his race and national origin.
    Meanwhile, voter attacks on admissions preferences for other minority groups -- as well as research indicating colleges give less weight to high test scores of Asian-American applicants -- may push schools to boost Asian enrollment. Tuesday, Michigan voters approved a ballot measure striking down admissions preferences for African-Americans and Hispanics. The move is expected to benefit Asian applicants to state universities there -- as similar initiatives have done in California and Washington.
    If the same measure is passed in coming years in Illinois, Missouri and Oregon -- where opponents of such preferences say they plan to introduce it -- Asian-American enrollment likely would climb at selective public universities in those states as well.
    During the Michigan campaign, a group that opposes affirmative action released a study bolstering claims that Asian students are held to a higher standard. The study, by the Center for Equal Opportunity, in Virginia, found that Asian applicants admitted to the University of Michigan in 2005 had a median SAT score of 1400 on the 400-1600 scale then in use. That was 50 points higher than the median score of white students who were accepted, 140 points 
higher than that of Hispanics and 240 points higher than that of blacks.
    Roger Clegg, president and general counsel of the Center for Equal Opportunity, said universities are "legally vulnerable" to challenges from rejected Asian-American applicants.
    Princeton, where Asian-Americans constitute about 13% of the student body, faces such a challenge. A spokesman for the Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights said it is investigating a complaint filed by Jian Li, now a 17-year-old freshman at Yale University. Despite racking up the maximum 2400 score on the SAT and 2390 -- 10 points below the ceiling -- on SAT2 subject tests in physics, chemistry and calculus, Mr. Li was spurned by three Ivy League universities, Stanford University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
    The Office for Civil Rights initially rejected Mr. Li's complaint due to "insufficient" evidence. Mr. Li appealed, citing a white high-school classmate admitted to Princeton despite lower test scores and grades. The office notified him late last month that it would look into the case.
    His complaint seeks to suspend federal financial assistance to Princeton until the university "discontinues discrimination against Asian-Americans in all forms by eliminating race preferences, legacy preferences, and athlete preferences." Legacy preference is the edge most elite colleges, including Princeton, give to alumni children. The Office for Civil Rights has the power to terminate such financial aid but usually works with colleges to resolve cases rather than taking enforcement action.
    Mr. Li, who emigrated to the U.S. from China as a 4-year-old and graduated from a public high school in Livingston, N.J., said he hopes his action will set a precedent for other Asian-American students. He wants to "send a message to the admissions committee to be more cognizant of possible bias, and that the way they're conducting admissions is not really equitable," he said.
    Princeton spokeswoman Cass Cliatt said the university is aware of the complaint and will provide the Office for Civil Rights with information it has requested.
    Princeton has said in the past that it considers applicants as individuals and doesn't discriminate against Asian-Americans.
    When elite colleges began practicing affirmative action in the late 1960s and 1970s, they gave an admissions boost to Asian-American applicants as well as blacks and Hispanics. As the percentage of Asian-Americans in elite schools quickly overtook their slice of the U.S. population, many colleges stopped giving them preference -- and in some cases may have leaned the other way.
    In 1990, a federal investigation concluded that Harvard University admitted Asian-American applicants at a lower rate than white students despite the Asians' slightly stronger test scores and grades.
    Federal investigators also found that Harvard admissions staff had stereotyped Asian-American candidates as quiet, shy and oriented toward math and science. The government didn't bring charges because it concluded it was Harvard's preferences for athletes and alumni children -- few of whom were Asian -- that accounted for the admissions gap.
    The University of California came under similar scrutiny at about the same time. In 1989, as the federal government was investigating alleged Asian-American quotas at UC's Berkeley campus, Berkeley's chancellor apologized for a drop in Asian enrollment. The next year, federal investigators found that the mathematics department at UCLA had discriminated against Asian-American graduate school applicants. In 1992, Berkeley's law school agreed under federal pressure to 
drop a policy that limited Asian enrollment by comparing Asian applicants against each other rather than the entire applicant pool.
    Asian-American enrollment at Berkeley has increased since California voters banned affirmative action in college admissions. Berkeley accepted 4,122 Asian-American applicants for this fall's freshman class -- nearly 42% of the total admitted. That is up from 2,925 in 1997, or 34.6%, the last year before the ban took effect. Similarly, Asian-American undergraduate enrollment at the 
University of Washington rose to 25.4% in 2004 from 22.1% in 1998, when voters in that state prohibited affirmative action in college admissions.
    The University of Michigan may be poised for a similar leap in Asian-American enrollment, now that voters in that state have banned affirmative action. The Center for Equal Opportunity study found that, among applicants with a 1240 SAT score and 3.2 grade point average in 2005, the university admitted 10% of Asian-Americans, 14% of whites, 88% of Hispanics and 92% of blacks. 
Asian applicants to the university's medical school also faced a higher admissions bar than any other group.
    Julie Peterson, spokeswoman for the University of Michigan, said the study was flawed because many applicants take the ACT test instead of the SAT, and standardized test scores are only one of various tools used to evaluate candidates. "I utterly reject the conclusion" that the university discriminates against Asian-Americans, she said. Asian-Americans constitute 12.6% of the 
university's undergraduates.
    Jonathan Reider, director of college counseling at San Francisco University High School, said most elite colleges' handling of Asian applicants has become fairer in recent years. Mr. Reider, a former Stanford admissions official, said Stanford staffers were dismayed 20 years ago when an internal study showed they were less likely to admit Asian applicants than comparable whites. 
As a result, he said, Stanford strived to eliminate unconscious bias and repeated the study every year until Asians no longer faced a disadvantage.
    Last month, Mr. Reider participated in a panel discussion at a college-admissions conference. It was titled, "Too Asian?" and explored whether colleges treat Asian applicants differently.
    Precise figures of Asian-American representation at the nation's top schools are hard to come by.  Don Joe, an attorney and activist who runs Asian-American Politics, an Internet site that tracks enrollment, puts the average proportion of Asian-Americans at 25 top colleges at 15.9% in 2005, up from 10% in 1992.
    Still, he said, he is hearing more complaints "from Asian-American parents about how their children have excellent grades and scores but are being rejected by the most selective colleges. It appears to be an open secret."
    Mr. Li, who said he was in the top 1% of his high-school class and took five advanced placement courses in his senior year, left blank the questions on college applications about his ethnicity and place of birth. "It seemed very irrelevant to me, if not offensive," he said. Mr. Li, who has permanent 
resident status in the U.S., did note that his citizenship, first language and language spoken at home were Chinese.
    Along with Yale, he won admission to the California Institute of Technology, Rutgers University and the Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art.
    He said four schools -- Princeton, Harvard, Stanford and the University of Pennsylvania -- placed him on their waiting lists before rejecting him. "I was very close to being accepted at these schools," he said. "I was thinking, had my ethnicity been different, it would have put me over the top. Even if race had just a marginal effect, it may have disadvantaged me."
    He ultimately focused his complaint against Princeton after reading a 2004 study by three Princeton researchers concluding that an Asian-American applicant needed to score 50 points higher on the SAT than other applicants to have the same change of admission to an elite university.
    "As an Asian-American and a native of China, my chances of admission were drastically reduced," Mr. Li claims in his complaint.



11/9/06 New America Media; Asians in Eight States Favored Dems, Nixed Michigan Affirmative Action Ban,
    New York Asian American voters in eight states continued a decade-long shift towards Democratic candidates, with 79 percent of those polled favoring Democrats in Tuesday's congressional and state elections. They also rejected an affirmative action ban that won in Michigan .
    Preliminary results of a nonpartisan, multilingual exit poll of over 4,600 Asian American voters, released by the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund, showed Asian American voter turnout helping Democratic candidates in closely watched races in Virginia , New Jersey and other states.
    Most exit poll respondents (87 percent) said that they had voted in a previous election, while 13 percent said they were first-time voters. Over 625 pro bono attorneys, law students and community activists monitored polling places and surveyed Asian American voters in New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Michigan, Illinois, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Maryland, and Washington, D.C.
    Margaret Fung, AALDEF executive director said, Asian American voters reacted to sharp ideological differences among the candidates and displayed their awareness of party labels.
    Fung added that the decade-long trend of Asian American voters favoring Democrats contributed to the dramatic shifts in political power that took place in Tuesday's midterm elections."
    Exit Poll Survey Highlights
    Virginia -- The exit poll of more than 250 Asian American voters showed 76 percent voted for Democratic senatorial bet Jim Webb, 21 percent voted for incumbent Republican Sen. George Allen, and 3 percent voted for Glenda Parker. After maintaining a slim lead, Webb was declared the winner by 0.3 percent of the total vote (49.6 percent) beating Allen (49.3 percent). Allen is best known among Asian Americans for his derogatory macaca remark to a South Asian campaign worker.
    New Jersey -- this heated Senate race, among more than 370 Asian Americans polled, 77 percent voted for incumbent Sen. Robert Menendez, while 20% voted for Republican challenger Thomas Kean Jr.a 57-point margin. Among all New Jersey voters, Menendez held his seat by an 8-point margin (53 percent to 45 percent).
    Maryland -- In Maryland 's open Senate seat, among over 200 Asian American voters polled, 73 percent chose Democrat Ben Cardin, with 24 percent for Republican Michael Steele, and 3 percent for Green Party candidate Kevin Zeese. Among the general electorate, 55 percent voted for Cardin, 44 percent for Steele, and 2 percent for Zeese.
    Pennsylvania -- Among more than 200 Asian American voters polled in Philadelphia , 71 percent voted for Democratic candidate Bob Casey, while 29 percent voted for Republican incumbent Sen. Rick Santorum. Among all voters, 59 percent voted for Casey and 41 percent voted for Santorum.
    Massachusetts -- Democratic gubernatorial candidate Deval Patrick, who became the nation's second African American elected governor, received support from 75 percent of more than 350 Asian American voters polled in Boston , Dorchester, Lowell and Quincy , with Kerry Healey receiving 21 percent. Statewide, 56 percent voted for Patrick, and 35 percent voted for Healey.
    Michigan Proposal 2 -- Rejecting claims that Asian Americans are hurt by affirmative action programs, three in four Asian American voters voted No to Proposal 2, which seeks to end race- and gender-based affirmative action programs in education, hiring, contracting and health initiatives. More than 300 Asian American votersincluding Arab Americansparticipated in AALDEFs exit poll survey in Michigan . Proposal 2 passed by a wide margin, 58 percent to 42 percent.
    Illinois -- Democratic incumbent Gov. Rod R. Blagojevich defeated his Republican opponent Judy Baar Topinka with a 10-point lead, 50 percent to 40 percent. In contrast, 99 percent of the 170 Asian Americans polled in Chicago voted for Blagojevich, with 1 percent for Topinka.
    New York -- Of over 2,300 Asian American voters polled in New York City , 82 percent voted for Democratic candidate for attorney general Andrew Cuomo. Republican contender Jeanine Pirro received 14 percent of the Asian American vote, with 4 percent voting for other candidates. Cuomo led Pirro 58 percent to 40 percent among all voters statewide.
    AALDEF has been conducting a nonpartisan exit poll of Asian American voters for 19 years. Volunteersthe majority of whom spoke one of 15 Asian languages or dialectsconducted the multilingual survey, which was translated into nine languages: Chinese, Korean, Vietnamese, Khmer, Bengali, Arabic, Punjabi, Urdu, and Gujarati.

11/9/06 aaa-fund.org: In Nevada, which recently became one of the early-primary states in the 2008 presidential election, 4.6% of the voting-age population is Asian American.  Between 1990 and 2000, the population of Nevada increased by 66%, but the Asian American population increased at a rate almost four times as large.  

11/8/06 Detroit News: Michigan voters outlaw race, gender preferences,
    A controversial proposal to ban affirmative action at public colleges and 
governments was approved by Michigan voters Tuesday.
    Michigan is now the third state in the nation to outlaw racial preferences at 
public entities by way of a ballot proposal.
    Proposal 2 outlaws racial, gender and ethnicity preferences in public college 
admissions, government hiring and government contracting. Private businesses 
will still be allowed to use affirmative action.
    The passage of Prop 2 effectively overhauls the University of Michigan 's 
selective admissions process and puts outreach, recruitment and financial aid 
programs for minorities and women in jeopardy. While U-M's use of affirmative 
action has been widely publicized, other less-selective Michigan colleges have 
gender- and race-specific programs and scholarships that would likely be 
challenged.
    Leaders predict that enrollment of black, Hispanic and Native American 
students combined will plummet from 12-14 percent of the student body to about 
4-6 percent. [which implies enrollment of Asian American students will increase 
by 200%].

11/3/06 Washington Post: VFW Passes Over Veteran in Illinois ,
by Don Babwin  The Associated Press
     Chicago -- The Veterans of Foreign Wars' political action committee Friday endorsed a Republican congressional candidate with no military experience over a Democrat who lost her legs in combat in Iraq .
    The endorsement of GOP state Sen. Peter Roskam over Tammy Duckworth angered some Illinois veterans, as well as national figures such as former Sen. Bob Kerrey, a veteran who lost a leg in Vietnam .
    "They should be ashamed of themselves," he said. "They have some explaining to do to their members."
    Duckworth is a former Black Hawk helicopter pilot with the Army who lost her legs when her aircraft was hit by a rocket-propelled grenade.
    A spokesman for the VFW political action committee did not immediately return calls for comment. The endorsement was announced by the two campaigns.
    Flanked by more than 20 veterans at a news conference, Duckworth said she was never contacted by the organization or asked to fill out a questionnaire, as typically happens when organizations are deciding which candidates to endorse.
    "I think it's unfortunate they did this," she said.
    Duckworth has said that invading Iraq was a mistake but now that American troops are there, withdrawal should be tied to an aggressive training plan for Iraqi forces.
    Roskam has repeatedly said the military needs to "finish well" in Iraq . He caused a stir during a debate when he said the district wasn't a "cut-and-run district" _ something Duckworth supporters called inappropriate, given her injuries.

11/3/06 AsianWeek.com: Native American Tribes and Intuit Target Chiang,
by Maeley Tom - Capitol Watch
    Six Southern California Native American tribal casino owners and software company Intuit have put together millions of dollars to orchestrate a campaign to defeat John Chiang for State Controller.
    The six tribes are upset because the democratic leadership of the Assembly did not approve a bill that would increase their gambling operations. So the tribes, through an independent expenditure committee called Team 2006, have decided to support specific republican state constitutional officer candidates in retaliation. John Chiang has been selected as one of the targets, even though Chiang had no involvement with this legislative issue whatsoever.
    Software giant Intuit is spending $1 million to defeat Chiang for a purely self-serving economic reason. Chiang supports "ReadyReturn," a free and easy online tax filing through pre-filled returns for single, low-income Californians. Intuit was successful in killing the "ReadyReturn" pilot program in the Legislature. According to the Los Angeles Times, "The program alarms Intuit. If it were to be fully implemented, ReadyReturn could threaten sales of one of the companys most successful software programs: TurboTax."
    It is even more disheartening that these stealth groups in one day can outspend what candidates themselves raise in an entire campaign.
    The dastardly agenda of the Team 2006 tribes and Intuit is disappointing. As 
Assembly Member Judy Chu states: "If they want to punish state legislators who did not vote for their bill, that would be one thing. But demonstrating their political muscle by trying to defeat an outstanding candidate like John Chiang is just plain unfair."
    John Chiang is already the highest-ranking Asian statewide-elected official, and the only candidate with a background in finance and tax policy. He has won practically every major newspaper endorsement, 29-2 at the last count. The endorsements universally point to Chiangs far superior fiscal experience and touts his leadership skills in using bipartisan approaches to solve issues.
    "It is truly remarkable that one special interest group could decide the outcome of an important state election because of an issue that has nothing to do with the candidates or the office involved," says Chiang who is fighting back in the media and up and down the state.
    I believe Team 2006 seriously underestimated how significant John Chiangs 
candidacy is to both the democrats and republicans of this community, the second fastest-growing population group and voter bloc in California . There is already evidence that this political move against Chiang has raised his profile in a positive way, and is causing a negative backlash for special interest groups involved.
    The Team 2006 tribes have squandered years of relationship building with a strong ally. This community has an expansive memory and is tired of being considered "easy pickings." Lets see how this community responds to these six tribes when they need public support or the help of legislators who represent a large number of APA constituents in their district the next time around.
    Please vote Nov. 7!
    Statewide APA Angry Reaction to Chiangs challengers: National political guru Garry Souths Oct. 25 article in the California Majority Report website was the first to blast Team 2006 on behalf of Chiang and the APA community.
    Reeling from the blatant, ill motive last-minute efforts to take out our communitys best-qualified statewide candidate for constitutional office, many APA leaders feel angry and betrayed. Why not? After all the majority of APA voters helped these very same tribes in passing Prop. 5 in 1998 to allow them to establish their casinos. Every casino today depends on a large number of APA patrons to contribute to their economic success. And yet this is how these tribes pay our community back for our support.
    APA political clout can have the last word
    It is important to remember that these six tribes identified below are only a subgroup of the California tribal casino owners. Other major groups such as the California Tribal Business Alliance have been steadfast supporters of Chiangs candidacy.
    Team 2006 Tribes attacking John Chiang:
    San Manuel Band of Mission Indians
26569 Community Center Drive
Highland, CA 92346
Ph: (909) 864-8933
Fax: (909) 864-3370
Chairman Henry Duro
Vice Chairman Vince Duro
    Pechanga Band of Luiseno Indians
P.O. Box 1477
Temecula, CA 92593
Ph: (951) 694-1508
Tribal Chairman Mark A. Macarro (TV spokesman for Prop. 5)
    Soboba Band of Luiseno Indians
23904 Soboba Road
P.O. Box 487
San Jacinto, CA 92581
Ph: (909) 654-2765
Fax: (909) 654-4198
Chairman Robert Salgado Sr.
    Sycuan Band of Kumeyaay Indians
5459 Sycuan Road
El Cajon, CA 92019
Ph: (619) 445-2613
Fax: (619) 445-1927
Chairman Daniel J. Tucker
Vice Chairman Joseph Sandoval
    Santa Ynez Band of Mission Indians
P.O. Box 517
Santa Ynez, CA 93460
Ph: (805) 688-7997
Fax: (805) 686-9578
Chairman Vincent Armenta
Vice Chairman Richard Gomez
    Agua Caliente Band of Cahuilla Indians
600 E. Tahquitz Canyon
Palm Springs, CA 92262
Ph: (760) 325-3400
Fax: (760) 325-0593
Chairman Richard M. Milanovich
Vice Chairman Barbara Gonzales Lyons

11/2/06 ABC News: The Privilege of Education: Harvard. Yale. Princeton . How 
Much Does a Name-Brand Education Amount To?
By Martin Bashir
    Jian Li was the perfect student. Incredibly, he got a perfect score on his SATs.
    He should also be a perfect example of how second-generation immigrants can transform their lives when they work hard in the land of meritocracy and opportunity.
    But he doesn't see it that way.
    Watch Nightline tonight at 11:35 p.m ET and a special two-hour edition of "20/20" Friday at 9 p.m. ET 
    "I was completely naive," said Li, now age 19. 
    He applied to Harvard, Princeton, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Stanford, among other places and didn't get into any of those colleges.
    Yet, he soon became aware that other high school students with lower SAT scores had sailed past him.
    "There are lots of preferences given to academically unqualified individuals." he said.  "For example, George Bush. I doubt he had the academic qualifications that would have gotten him into an elite university [Yale], but because of who his father was, he had the advantage over other applicants with better academic records."
    A Tricky Process: Children of Prominent Alumni Versus Hardworking Students Versus 'Development Admits'
    So why was Li shut out from some of the most prestigious colleges in the country?
    For eight years, Keith Brodie was the president of Duke University in North Carolina and ultimately, in charge of admissions.
    He still teaches part time, within the university's department of psychiatry. According to Brodie, sifting through applicants is an arduous process.
    "You look at the last several years, they've seen over 15,000 applications a year [at Duke]," he said.
    "You end up discarding about 5,000 as coming from folk you just wouldn't think could graduate. But that leaves you with 10,000 people, and you end up offering about 3,000, of those 10,000, admission. And so the question is how do you pick those 3,000 from that 10,000? And that's where it gets tricky," he said.
    Tricky is one way of describing Duke's admissions, but Brodie also says it involves a carefully defined process. Applications are divided into three basic categories.
    There's the ordinary hardworking 18-year-old who hopes that exceptional SAT scores will get them in -- students like Li.
    Then there's the legacy applicant, whose parents are prominent alumni. One example would be Al Gore's four children -- all of whom went to Harvard, following in the former vice president's footsteps. Or Senator Majority Leader Bill Frist, whose son, Harrison, followed him to Princeton .
    And finally there is the "development admit," a student recommended by the college's financial development office.
    Brodie has no bones about explaining what a "development admit" is.
    "A 'development admit' would come in perhaps with very low numbers but with high potential for donating money to the university through the family," Brodie said.
    Schools as Businesses
    Because all of these elite universities are also private businesses, there is a strong push to admit at least some students who will bring additional funds with them in the form of hefty donations.
    Duke University 's development department has found ever more creative ways of raising capital. Brodie recalls the genius of Joel Fleishman, former Duke vice chancellor.
    "He was a consummate artist in basically bringing wealthy applicants to Duke," he said. "He had a Christmas card list that was a mile long. He gave very nice gifts to the families of some of these kids. Many of these families appreciated good wine. And so they would receive fairly expensive bottles of wine from him, and that endeared Duke and Joel to these families."
    This way of cultivating development contributions was particularly effective. Author Daniel Golden, who went to Harvard and wrote "The Price of Admission," provided illuminating details with the story of fashion billionaire Ralph Lauren.
    According to Golden, Dylan and David Lauren were good students but not outstanding. After the Lauren family reportedly sought consideration as a "development family," he said the Lauren offspring were admitted to Duke and that Fleishman wined and dined the Laurens at Parents' Weekend and other social events.
    Golden said the fashion guru eventually pledged a six-figure sum to Duke.
    The Power of Influence
    According to Brodie, he cut down the number of development admits during his tenure but estimates that about 50 percent of Duke's current student body is made up of legacy and development admits.
    But affluence isn't the only advantage that will help win a place at an elite university. 
    Influence is also a powerful asset. Author Daniel Golden, who went to Harvard and is the author of "The Price of Admission," details the story of Christopher Ovitz, son of former Hollywood agent and president of Walt Disney, Michael Ovitz.
    According to Golden, Christopher Ovitz applied to Brown University, but "was not even in the range of the normal stretch that Brown would make for children of the wealthy and powerful."
    But he was granted a place at Brown. Although Christopher Ovitz lasted only a year, according to Golden, Brown has reaped the ongoing rewards from Ovitz and his extensive Hollywood contacts.
    "He brought a number of his key clients. A-list people like Martin Scorsese for well-publicized events that gave the campus, you know, a lot of panache," Golden said.
    In his book, Golden details strategies utilized by other universities to provide places for the children of privilege.
    His analysis asks: Are Ivy League colleges putting places up for sale? 
    According to Brodie, there's little doubt.
    "I believe that is the case that there are few slots in every entering class that are basically for sale," he said.
    And as for Li, he was eventually accepted at Yale University, without a donation from his parents or a visit from a celebrity.
    He's likely to graduate with honors.

10/31/06: COALITION OF ASIAN PACIFIC AMERICANS CALL FOR BOYCOTT OF QUICKEN SOFTWARE PUBLISHER
*** Intuit throws $1 million behind John Chiang opponent ***
    SAN FRANCISCO (Oct. 31, 2006) - The Coalition of Asian Pacific Americans 
(blog.capaweb.org) is asking consumers to stop buying Quicken software and other products 
made by Mountain View-based Intuit in response to the company's attempt to buy an election 
away from state Controller candidate John Chiang. 
    The Coalition of Asian Pacific Americans is a political action committee supporting 
candidates with a record of advocating issues important to Asian Americans and Pacific 
Islanders. 
    CAPA is also asking Intuit senior vice president and chief financial officer Kiran M. Patel and 
other Asian American and Pacific Islander officers and employees of the company to explain why their company is spending money against a qualified APA candidate to preserve software sales numbers.
    Chiang, a Board of Equalization member running for Controller, supports a simplified tax filing process called "ReadyReturn," which helps low-income Californians because it does not require
the purchase of tax software such as Quicken. 
    Intuit apparently believes that Chiang's election as Controller would impact sales of the 
company's products and is willing to spend $1 million to prevent that. 
    "Boycott new purchases of Quicken, QuickBooks and TurboTax if you're against blatantly buying candidates to increase corporate wealth," said Dale Minami, president of CAPA. "With a million dollars, Intuit could have donated at least 20,000 copies of their product to low-income tax filers, 
but instead threw that money to prevent the election of John Chiang." 
    In an Oct. 29 editorial the Sacramento Bee said: "When you see attack ads against Chiang on 
the television, you know who paid for them, and what kind of favors they will expect in return. You 
can make sure they are wasting their money by helping to elect John Chiang as California 's next controller." 
    CAPA is asking people to send pledges to boycott Intuit products via email or fax to co-founder and executive committee chairman Scott Cook, president and CEO Steve Bennett and chairman Bill Campbell: 

Bill Campbell, Chairman of the Board
Bill_Campbell@intuit.com 
fax 650-944-5295 

Scott Cook, Co-Founder & Executive Committee Chairman
scott_cook@intuit.com
fax 650-944-5295

Steve Bennett, President
fax 650-944-5295

10/17/06 The San Francisco Examiner: Asian-American politicians try to rally voting bloc,
by Bonnie Eslinger
    San Francisco - One-third of population, S.F. Asians usually account for one-fourth of city voters
    With Election Day just three weeks away, an unprecedented coalition of Asian-American politicians gathered for a press conference Monday to remind Asian-Americans in The City of their potential power at the ballot box and encourage them to vote for Asian-American candidates.
    Of the 52 candidates running for city office, more than one-fourth are of Asian or Pacific Islander heritage. Although some are competing in races for school board or city supervisor, all 14 of the Asian-American candidates attended the get out the vote rally.
    Supervisor Fiona Ma, who is vacating her District 4 seat to run for the state Assembly, said that if voters in that Sunset-area district didnt choose an Asian-American candidate, there will be no Asians on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors representing the Asian community this will be a tremendous travesty and a bad message here in San Francisco .
    Ma encouraged Asian-American voters to use The Citys Rank-Choice Voting system to back up their first vote with a second Asian-American candidate.
    Im glad to see so many more candidates running. The problem is with so many Asians running, the chances of having one succeed goes down, Ma said after the event.
    Asian-Americans, including Pacific Islanders, count for more than one-third of San Francisco s population and a similar percentage of The Citys registered voters. However, theyve made up less than one-fourth of voters in recent elections, according to San Francisco political analyst David Latterman.
    People are always asking, does my vote count? In the Asian community the answer is yes, said San Francisco Public Defender Jeff Adachi, who is running unopposed for re-election. Were approaching 40 percent. If we get people out to vote, wed have a tremendous amount of political power.
    Caucasian residents make up about 56 percent of The Citys population, according to recent U.S. Census Bureau figures, but constituted about two-thirds of those who voted in recent elections, according to Latterman, who said its not unusual for groups of constituents to fall into identify voting.
    Everyone decries identify voting, but most people do it, Latterman said. We see it in the Asian community, we see it in the gay community, we see it in the African-American community.
    African-American and Hispanic residents, who make up approximately 8 percent and 14 percent of The Citys population respectively, have lower percentages representing those ethnic populations on Election Day, he said.
    School board candidate Jane Kim said non-Asian candidates often ignore Asian-American voters.
    People still know that Asian-Americans are not coming out to vote in the numbers they could be, so theyre still discounting their vote, Kim said.
    One day in the not too distant future, San Francisco voters will elect an Asian-American mayor, predicted San Francisco political consultant Eric Jaye.
    The Asian-American voting block is power at this point because of its potential, Jaye said. They are not the leading single group among voters, although thats changing with time.

10/16/06 Wall Street Journal: Banks Vie for Lucrative Prize: Chinese in U.S. : Competition Is Driving Takeovers To Serve a Growing Demographic; Megabanks Loom as a Threat.
By Ann Carrns
    Threatened by slowing growth and mounting competition, several small banks catering to the rapidly increasing Chinese population in the U.S. are battling for coast-to-coast supremacy in that highly profitable niche.
    Following the lead of expansion-hungry mainstream banks, the three largest Chinese-focused banks in the nation have bought or agreed to acquire five commercial banks during the past year. In all, they have spent $1.34 billion on 11 takeovers since early 2003. Analysts see the trend continuing.  UCBH Holdings Inc. of San Francisco , the nation's third-largest Chinese-focused bank by stock-market value, at $1.66 billion, last month announced the purchase of Atlanta-based Summit Bank Corp. Summit , with branches in Atlanta , San Francisco and Houston , specializes in commercial loans to small and midsize businesses. The $175.5 million deal is the second-largest for UCBH, which made acquisitions last year in Boston and Seattle .
    The Summit deal follows a bidding war that erupted last fall for Great Eastern Bank, the biggest bank targeting Chinese consumers and businesses in New York City .  Cathay General Bancorp, based in Los Angeles , struck first by securing options to buy a 41% stake that valued the entire company at about $69 million. Great Eastern sought other buyers, agreeing to a deal with UCBH. But Cathay won the battle in April with a $101 million offer.
    "One of our key strategies is to serve Chinese businesses in major cities in the U.S.," says Heng Chen, finance chief at Cathay, which was started in a storefront office in the Chinatown section of Los Angeles in 1962 and now has a market value of $1.85 billion. In July, Cathay agreed to buy New Asia Bancorp for $23.5 million to enter Chicago .
    The takeovers are fueled by many of the same pressures squeezing regional banks. The real-estate slowdown is putting the brakes on loan growth, and the shrinking difference between yields of long- and short-term bonds continues to crimp net interest income.
    Like big acquirers, Chinese-focused banks want to attract new customers and offer more services to existing ones, while adding scale to become more cost-efficient. Meanwhile, analysts say, smaller ethnic banks are feeling increasingly burdened by the cost of complying with regulations, such as those designed to thwart money laundering.
    About 80 banks largely target Asian consumers and businesses or are majority-owned by Asians, according to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. Some attractive markets such as Chicago and Houston haven't been "picked over" yet, says Campbell Chaney, an analyst at Sanders Morris Harris Inc. In metropolitan New York , No. 1 in the number of Chinese-owned businesses, potential targets include Chinese American Bank and United Orient Bank, each with a presence in Chinatown .
    The activity partly reflects the nation's expanding Chinese population, which was about 2.9 million in 2005, a 21% increase since 2000, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. The overall U.S. population rose 5% in the same period.
    The strongest ethnic Chinese banks cater obsessively to their customers. Many Chinese consumers are diligent savers and prefer to have written documents showing their account balances, so the specialized banks typically offer savings-account passbooks, which many big banks stopped doing years ago.
    Chinese-focused banks also are often willing to lend to immigrants lacking a traditional credit history. UCBH will consider an applicant's savings and bill-payment record.
    "It works," says Thomas Wu, UCBH's 48-year-old chairman and chief executive officer, who was initially unable to get a mortgage after moving to the U.S. in 1991 even though he had worked previously at four other banks. Last year, UCBH charged off a scant 0.03% of its loans.
    While some of the world's biggest banks, including Bank of America Corp. and Roayl Bank of Scotland PLC, have spent billions of dollars buying small stakes in China 's biggest lenders, small Chinese banks in the U.S. generally are limiting bets to one or two offices in China that deal mostly with existing U.S. customers.
    "We pride ourselves on being a financial bridge," says Dominic Ng, chairman and CEO of East West Bancorp Inc. of Pasadena , Calif. , the nation's largest ethnic Chinese bank, with a market value of $2.3 billion. UCBH hopes to buy a bank in mainland China to expand its trade-finance business.
    The formula is starting to show signs of stress. Combined profit growth of 18% at East West, Cathay and UCBH in the first half of 2006 trounced the industry overall but puts the three leading Chinese-focused banks on track to fall short of their 29% average annual earnings growth since 2001. Summit, the bank UCBH is buying, reported a 16% first-half profit rise through June 30, but balance-sheet growth has been "lackluster," says Joe Morford, an analyst at RBC Capital Markets. UCBH is paying a 52% premium over Summit 's pre-takeover share price.
    Among the biggest threats facing Chinese-focused banks are megabanks that have deeper lending and investment-banking services, many more branches and growing interest in the sector. Bank of America, based in Charlotte , N.C. , with 140 branches in Chinese communities in California , recently began mailing calendars to some Chinese customers to mark the Chinese New Year, a spokesman says.
    Last month, Wells Fargo & Co., of San Francisco , the nation's fourth-largest bank by market value, opened a branch in the Oakland , Calif. , Chinatown with specially themed art, fabric and colors, plus Chinese-language signs and Chinese-speaking employees. All 6,500 Wells Fargo automated-teller machines offer Chinese as an language option, and the bank has made $1.9 billion in loans to Asian business owners since 2002, approaching a target of $3 billion in 10 years.
    "We try to be where they are," says Tzu-Chen Lee, Wells Fargo senior vice president in charge of the Asian segment.

10/11/06 San Jose Mercury News: Viet-Americans embrace lawmaker
By Edwin Garcia
    Assemblyman Van Tran, donning a city of San Jose construction hat, digs his 
ceremonial shovel into the ground, turning the earth alongside dozens of local 
dignitaries on what will become the Viet Heritage Gardens in San Jose .
    But it's a short -- often interrupted -- walk through Kelley Park after the 
ceremony that best illustrates the high regard for Tran in the South Bay: A doctor 
offers to raise campaign money for him; Rep. Mike Honda gushes about Tran's 
popularity; and an aide to San Jose Councilman Dave Cortese pleads for the 
assemblyman's endorsement should Cortese run for county supervisor in 2008.
    Spend a day in San Jose with Tran and one quickly comes to understand that 
he is the most important and influential political figure for the city's sizable 
Vietnamese-American population. And for those who aren't Vietnamese, he 
provides a critical link to a growing bloc of South Bay voters -- even if he 
doesn't technically represent any of them.
    Tran, a 41-year-old Republican, was elected nearly 400 miles away in Orange  
County . No matter.
    In San Jose , Vietnamese-Americans young and old, conservative and liberal, 
treat him like he's their legislator. They invite him to community celebrations 
attended by thousands, shower him with respect that their local representatives 
could only envy, and frequently drive two hours to lobby him at the state capital.
    ``We feel like we have a friend in Sacramento ,'' said Helen Duong, board 
member of the Viet Heritage Society of San Jose. ``Even though he's not from 
here, he listens to us,'' she said, describing Tran as ``like an honored member 
of the family.''
    Tran, who left Vietnam aboard a C-130 military cargo plane at age 10, 
became the highest-ranking elected official of Vietnamese heritage in the 
United States when voters in Garden Grove and surrounding cities chose him 
to represent the 68th Assembly District nearly two years ago.
    Popular here
    He's been in constant demand for speaking engagements nationwide, 
especially in Santa Clara County, home to more than 100,000 Vietnamese-
Americans.
    But that popularity has come with a price. Tran now carries a concealed handgun
 -- the result of death threats made by communist sympathizers. And not everyone 
in his home district is thrilled with Tran's routine visits to San Jose , seven trips 
since January.
    ``If he is taking care of the issues of the voters in Orange County, then he can go 
anywhere he wants to go; he can go on vacation,'' said Long Kim Pham, a 
Republican who lost to Tran in the June primary. ``But first, he has to perform,'' 
Pham said, criticizing Tran for failing to produce meaningful legislation.
    On this particular visit in late August, Tran and his wife, Cyndi, a model, spent 
about nine hours in San Jose . She reads driving directions from scraps of paper, 
while he steers their Mercedes-Benz C320 from the groundbreaking celebration 
to a book-signing of a former political prisoner, to an impromptu visit for 
Vietnamese-language Mass, to a fundraiser for a friend -- a Vietnamese 
candidate running for mayor of Irvine -- and finally to a reunion of South 
Vietnamese army veterans.
    ``To many Vietnamese-Americans, not only in California but in the United 
States ,'' Tran said, on the drive back to his Sacramento-area home, ``I'm a symbol 
of the burgeoning community.''
    That's not what his parents had in mind when they fled Vietnam with four young 
children in 1975.
    Tran's father, an English professor, and his mother, a dentist, wanted their 
children to work in health science.
    ``My family, me, and my wife, and relatives, nobody was interested in politics,'' 
said Tran's father, Dien Van Tran, 77. ``Most of my kids are professionals -- all of 
them are dentists except Van. He followed his own way.''
    Tran, who grew up in Arkansas , Texas , Michigan and Orange County , where 
his mother opened a dental practice, became a student activist at the University 
of California-Irvine in the late 1980s, speaking out about the lack of freedom in 
Vietnam .
    At a time when Orange County's large Vietnamese-American population was 
becoming more politically active, Tran caught the attention of Rep. Bob Dornan, 
R-Garden Grove, who hired him as a district aide, and two years later took a job 
with state Sen. Ed Royce.
    ``He was young, bright, ambitious, articulate,'' recalled Royce, now a 
congressman for Fullerton . ``But also, besides being a fairly cerebral guy and very 
hardworking, he's got the ability to motivate people.''
    Royce encouraged him to consider public office upon graduating with a degree 
in political science. Instead, Tran went to Hamline University in St. Paul , Minn. , for 
a law degree and a master's in public administration.
    Auspicious start
    When he returned to California in 1992, he volunteered as a community 
spokesman, interpreting to the general public the anger of thousands of immigrants 
who protested against a shopkeeper in the Little Saigon district who raised the 
communist flag at his video store.
    ``It's like marching Hitler right down New York City or a Jewish community,'' Tran 
said. ``Like Castro going through Little Havana.''
    Tran was appointed to the Garden Grove Planning Commission, then quickly 
raised $100,000 in his race for a city council seat.
    Four years later, he sprang for the Assembly, which put him on a fundraising 
circuit into the homes of Silicon Valley millionaires who treated him like a 
homegrown candidate, a celebrity, even.
    Chieu Le, co-founder of the San Jose-based Lee's Sandwiches chain, presses 
an open hand against his heart when asked his opinion of Tran. ``We feel very 
honored to have him.''
    And so do local politicians. ``The whole Vietnamese community is enjoying his 
successes,'' said Councilman Chuck Reed, the San Jose mayoral contender who 
won Tran's endorsement and couldn't care less that the assemblyman's district is 
in Southern California.
    Linda Nguyen and Madison Nguyen also sought Tran's endorsement when they 
campaigned for San Jose City Council last year, but he sat out the race. Still, Tran 
said, Madison Nguyen found an ``assertive and creative'' way to remind voters of 
the assemblyman's clout: She uploaded a picture of herself with Tran and posted 
it on her campaign Web site. She won, becoming the first Vietnamese-American 
on the council.
    ``Think of African-Americans and someone like Martin Luther King, and Latinos 
and someone like Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta,'' said San Jose State 
University political scientist Professor Larry Gerston. ``These people were far away, 
but if they gave their blessing to a candidate, it meant a lot to people.''
    Despite Tran's high-profile status among the state's half-million residents of 
Vietnamese origin, his legislative work is considered low-key.
    In less than two years on the job, Tran has yet to deliver any remember-me-for-
this legislation. He's introduced 30 bills; eight became law.
    That's not good enough for Paul Lucas, the Democrat facing Tran in November 
in a district that heavily favors the Republican candidate. ``I don't think he's gotten 
anything done,'' Lucas said.
    Tran, who wears dark suits and neatly trimmed hair, counters that his performance 
shouldn't be judged solely by the bills he proposes. He has vehemently opposed 
``bad laws that hurt the quality of life for Californians.'' And he also said it's hard to 
produce when the Democratic majority decides the fate of bills.
    Assembly Republican Leader George Plescia of San Diego calls Tran a ``very 
quick study,'' and a ``quiet, methodical worker'' who promotes the party's goals 
through his conservative stance.
    `Awesome responsibility'
    Tran's fans see a highly effective legislator who backed Gov. Arnold 
Schwarzenegger's executive order that recognizes the flag of the former Republic  
of Vietnam . They know about the time he protested on the Assembly floor when 
prevented from criticizing a visiting delegation of the Vietnamese government. 
And they're grateful for his measure asking for a study to determine whether the 
shelf life of popular Vietnamese rice cakes can be safely extended beyond the 
four hours allowed under state law.
    Being a political trailblazer, Tran noted, is both an ``honor and an awesome 
responsibility,'' in part because so many of his supporters aren't confined to the 
geographical boundaries of his home base.
    ``I work extremely hard for my constituents, and my first priority is to the people 
of my district,'' Tran said. ``It so happens that being the first and the highest, I'm 
perfectly willing to work overtime and pull double duty in doing the extracurricular 
duties outside my Assembly district.''
    He added: ``I share the same values and ideals as a member of the Vietnamese 
community, whether I go to San Jose or New York .''
    When it comes to plotting his political future, Tran, who is expected to be re-
elected to another two-year term in the Assembly, makes no secret: He wants to 
join the House of Representatives one day.
    If and when that time comes, his supporters in San Jose once again won't be 
able to cast a vote. But Tran will be counting on them -- and they will be counting 
on Tran.

10/10/06 Inside Higher Education: Too Asian?
    Rachel, for an Asian, has many friends.
    Thats the kind of line that apparently is turning up more and more in letters of 
recommendation on behalf of Asian American applicants to top colleges, 
according to experts on a panel called Too Asian? at the annual meeting of 
the National Association for College Admission Counseling.
    When the recommendation line was cited as the kind of bias even perhaps 
well intentioned bias that pervades the admissions process, many in the 
audience at first seemed angry that in 2006 people would reference race in that 
way. But when it came time for audience comments, one high school counselor 
said that counselors feel they have no choice but to mention students Asian 
status and to try to make it seem like their Asian students are different from 
other Asian students.
    We make those comparisons because we feel its the only way we can get 
through and get our students looked at, said the counselor, to knowing nods 
from others in the audience.
    Many Asian students and their families have for years believed that quotas 
or bias hinder their chances at top Ivy or California universities. But to listen to 
panelists and members of a standing room only audience the intensity of 
concern has grown, as has mistrust of the system.
    In the discussion at the NACAC meeting, participants tried to talk frankly 
about Asian students perceptions and colleges perception of Asians with 
several people admitting that they were simultaneously denouncing stereotypes 
and saying that some of them had at least partial truth that colleges and high 
schools need to confront.
    Admissions officers, while defending the overall integrity of the system, 
admitted that bias is a real problem. And advocates for Asian students admitted 
that they are challenged by the many Asian families who want to consider only 
a subset of institutions.
    Many counselors during and after the session said that they have little 
doubt that when applying for undergraduate admission to research universities, 
white applicants are getting admitted with lower test scores and grades than 
Asian applicants are. One high school guidance counselor told the panel of experts that a sign of the distrust of the system is that he is increasingly asked by Asian American students if they would be better off applying to college if they declined to check the race/ethnicity box on the applications.
    Jon Reider, a counselor at University High School, in San Francisco, urged the 
questioner to encourage students to continue to check the box, and he questioned whether leaving the box would do much good. If your name is Wong..... he said to laughter. But he also noted that one of the many ways Asian Americans today dont fit stereotypes is in their names. The Asian American woman on the panel and admissions official at Colorado College was named Rachel Cederberg.
    The prompt for the discussion was an article that ran last year in The Wall Street Journal about the new white flight. The article reported that white families were leaving some nice suburbs with great public schools or sending their children to private schools as districts became too Asian, apparently meaning districts where after-school academic programs are more popular than soccer. While the school districts about which the article was written have criticized the piece, many at the NACAC meeting said that the attitudes quoted in the article were real and were playing a big impact in college admissions.
    Reider said he thought the article and the question of Too Asian? that it posed was shameful and said that he was embarrassed as an American that such a piece would appear today. He asked whether anyone would think of publishing an article called Too Latino? and compared the bias to the kind of bigotry that for decades limited the enrollment of Jewish students at top private universities. This is a racist question, he said.
    He also said that the bias is real and cited his experience in his previous job as part of the admissions office at Stanford University . There, he said, the office did a study some years ago in which it compared Asian and white applicants with the same overall academic and leadership rankings. The study was only of 
unhooked kids, meaning those with no extra help for being an alumni child or an 
athlete. The study found that comparably qualified white applicants were 
significantly more likely to be admitted than their Asian counterparts.
    Stanfords admissions office responded with some serious self-reflection, he 
said, and officials now spend some time each year studying different kinds of bias  like letters that compare Asian applicants to other Asians in an attempt to weed out any unfair judgments. With bias removed, he said, theres no way that a school or college can be considered too Asian.
    At the same time, he and others said that part of the problem in admissions 
today is created by Asian applicants and especially their parents who tend 
to accept only certain colleges as legitimate options.
    Colorado College , where Cederberg now works, has an Asian population 
under 10 percent a figure that is quite typical for liberal arts colleges. Asian 
students are considered to add to diversity to the college and she has the full 
support of the college in recruiting them, she said.
    Based on working with institutions where Asian enrollment exceed 25 percent 
something that is increasingly common at elite publics in California and top 
universities elsewhere she said she hears lots of talk about admissions officers 
who complain about yet another Asian student who wants to major in math and 
science and who plays the violin or people who say I dont want another boring Asian.
    She said she wishes more Asian students would look at liberal arts colleges. 
A broader problem, several speakers said, was an emphasis on just a few kinds 
of institutions.
    Mike White, principal of Lynbrook High School , in one of the districts The Wall 
Street Journal wrote about, said that he has a very tough time persuading Asian 
students to look at the California State University campuses, including nearby San 
Jose State University , which has many academic programs in areas his students 
want to study.
    If they dont get into the University of California campus of choice or Stanford, 
he said, many prefer to enroll at a community college and transfer to a UC campus 
rather than attending a Cal State campus. White stressed that he didnt mean to 
be critical of community colleges, but that it struck him that his students were 
ignoring institutions that were a good match just because the institutions didnt 
have a perceived level of prestige.
    Reider described an exercise he does for Asian parents in which he tells them 
about two institutions. At one, he describes walking through a beautify campus, 
meeting a president who knows all the students by name, seeing labs that are first 
rate, and learning that science students are admitted to top graduate and 
professional programs, based in part on their original research. At the other 
institution, he describes how he meets a smart science student frustrated that he 
cant get any work done because of the loud music down the hall. When Reider 
walks down the hall, a student blaring music tells him its a party school.
    After he describes the two campuses, he says he tells the parents youd want 
your kids at the first school, right? They agree. Then he tells them that the first 
institution was Whitman College (although he quickly adds that it could have 
been a few dozen other liberal arts colleges) and the second institution was 
Harvard University . And then, he said, the parents all say that they were wrong 
when they answered the question the first time, and they still want their kids at 
Harvard.  

10/10/06: UCLA Daily Bruin: Scholar named endowed chair: Professor 
celebrated for dedication to study of Japanese American experience, activism,
by Philip Lin
    UCLA became the first university to establish an endowed chair devoted 
specifically to the study of the Japanese-American internment during World War II 
and named Lane Ryo Hirabayashi to hold the position.
    The 53-year-old anthropologist was celebrated Saturday afternoon as the first 
holder of the George and Sakaye Aratani Chair on the Japanese American 
Internment, Redress and Community, a position within the Asian American Studies Department at UCLA.
    Hirabayashi was selected after a year-long international search conducted by 
the professors, staff and students of the Asian American Studies Center and 
Department.
    "(The Aratanis') endowed chair will make it possible for pre-eminent and 
committed scholars like professor Hirabayashi, along with their students, to 
continue to explore, analyze, share and apply the Japanese American experience for generations and generations," said Don Nakanishi, director and professor of the UCLA Asian American Studies Center.
    The endowed chair, funded by a $500,000 donation from the Aratanis, will 
furnish Hirabayashi with money to research Japanese American studies.
    Professors holding the position are charged with teaching at least one course 
related to internment and must also organize or aid public education programs 
on the issue.
    "Being appointed as the inaugural recipient of the Aratani Chair is like a dream come true for me," Hirabayashi said. "Not only will I join a stellar set of colleagues in Asian American Studies at UCLA, I can contribute to the long tradition of Japanese American Studies and collaboration with community groups that have been undertaken by so many distinguished UCLA facility, staff and students over the years."
    The study of the Japanese internment also has meaning to Hirabayashi 
personally, he said, as his parents and grandparents were interned, and he grew 
up hearing stories of their experience.
    Hirabayashi said he will never forget what his colleagues told him when he first 
entered academia.
    "They told me something I never forgot: Don't just be an academic, go out and 
get involved in the Japanese American community," he said.
    He explained that they meant for him to take on an active role in promoting the 
rights of Asian Americans and to avoid simply teaching activism without actually 
going out and doing what he encouraged.
    But Aiko Herzig, a senior research associate from the Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians, said the formation of the chair is relevant for everyone today.
    "To apply what they learn to the situation today is especially important," Herzig 
said, specifically referring to connections she said she has found between the 
incarceration of Japanese Americans in the 1940s and the treatment of Iraqi-
Americans today.
    George and Sakaye Aratani established the endowed chair to help educate 
the American public and advance the Japanese American community.
    Both George and Sakaye Aratani had been interned during World War II, and 
George Aratani is the founder and former CEO of Mikasa Corporation and 
Kenwood Corporation, two companies he started after having lost his finances 
during the war.
    Patricia O'Brien, executive dean of the UCLA College , called the founding of the chair a welcome gift that would continue to benefit the UCLA community far 
into the future.
    She said the addition would be useful to all students no matter what their 
ethnicity.
    Susie Ling, Hirabayashi's colleague and a professor at Pasadena City  
College , said the creation of the endowed chair would help the Japanese 
American community as a whole.
    "The re-dress movement had a can-do attitude. (Hirabayashi) has that same 
can-do attitude," she said.
    Some members of the Asian American Studies Center said they believe the 
addition of Hirabayashi as the new chair would help fulfill the goal of educating 
people about Japanese American issues.
    "His professional vision will not only fulfill the goals of the endowed chair, but 
also exchange the undergraduate and graduate curriculum and forge important 
links between Asian American studies and other departments as well as the 
larger community," said Cindy Fan, chair and professor of the Department of 
Asian American Studies.

10/8/06 Contra Costa Times: California State Assembly: District 20,
by Chris De Benedetti
    State Assemblyman Alberto Torrico, D-Fremont, is fighting to retain his seat 
against Republican challenger Ken Nishimura in the Nov. 7 election.
    Area residents cite the importance of creating jobs and increasing economic 
development in District 20, which covers Fremont , Newark , Union City , Milpitas and parts of San Jose , Hayward , Castro Valley and Pleasanton .
    Torrico said he has hit the ground running in his first term, authoring 24 measures 
that were approved by the Legislature in two years. Nine eventually became law.
    Pension reform is a particular passion of Torrico's, a member of the Assembly's Committee on Public Employees, Retirement and Social Security. The assistant majority whip also serves on seven other committees, including the Committee on Transportation.
    "I've been a quick study. I've worked hard to address the issues in the district 
and now I'm one of the top three or four Democrats in the Assembly," he said.
    The area's infrastructure, including highways, transit and schools, needs to be 
improved, Torrico said. Although it has been a challenge to create an environment where quality jobs are being fostered, he said, "I think we're making progress with that."
    But equally important is improving "human infrastructure." He wants to provide 
universal health care, especially for children, and have smaller class sizes in schools. "We need to make everybody at schools more accountable for our kids' performance," he said.
    Meanwhile, Nishimura -- a first-time candidate -- said he would bring fresh, 
pragmatic ideas with a bipartisan spirit to solve problems related to traffic, education, health care and infrastructure.
    "I believe strongly in personal responsibility," he said. "Success comes from each person. The role of government is just to provide the framework."
    The district's traffic woes would be eased by increased unity among the region's transit agencies, Nishimura said. In addition, cities surrounding southern Alameda County that attract the most jobs need to provide adequate housing "to keep people from traveling 90 miles right through our district to get to work," he said.
    To improve education, Nishimura says he wants to help smaller school districts be more competitive by changing the way that education funds are distributed. He advocates allowing working parents to visit classrooms more often to foster more cooperation among schools, parents and students.
    "That's a far stronger lever to improve education than throwing money at schools," he said.
Alberto Torrico
Party: Democrat
Age: 37
Education: B.A. in political science, Santa Clara University, 1991; law degree, Hastings College of the Law, 1995
Background: Attorney, formerly Newark vice mayor and City Council member, currently state assemblyman representing District 20
Positions: Top priorities are job creation; economic development; improving transportation; fostering quality jobs to create middle-class families; and improving the state's infrastructure, including schools and highways.
Ken Nishimura
Party: Republican
Age: 40
Education: B.S. in electrical engineering, UC Berkeley, 1988; M.S. in electrical engineering, UC Berkeley, 1990; doctorate in electrical engineering, UC Berkeley, 1993
Background:: Electrical engineer, R&D project manager at Agilent Technologies
Positions: Wants to improve water and transportation infrastructure, ease traffic woes by unifying different transit agencies, make education spending more efficient to help smaller districts, deliver health care to more people, and reduce pollution emissions by expanding the vehicle buy-back program.

10/6/06: Assistant U.S. Attorney Bob Kwan was appointed by the U.S. Court of 
Appeals for the Ninth Circuit to the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Central District 
of California

9/7/06: Bush Nominates Judges to Central District
            President George W. Bush nominated Los Angeles Superior Court Judge 
George H. Wu to a judgeship on the U.S. District Court for the Central District of 
California.  Wu was named by Governor Pete Wilson (R) to the Los Angeles 
Municipal Court in 1993 and the Superior Court in 1996.
    Wu graduated from Pomona College in Claremont in 1972 and the University of 
Chicago Law School in 1975.  He was an associate at LeBoeuf, Lamb, Leiby & 
MacRae in Los Angeles from 1989 to 1991. He served as an assistant division 
chief of the Civil Division of the U.S. Attorneys Office for the Central District of 
California in Los Angeles from 1991 to 1993.  
    If confirmed by the Senate, Wu will fill a vacancy created when Judge Ronald 
S.W. Lew announced that he would take senior status on Sept. 19.

 

9/25/06 Press of Atlantic City: Asian-American families hard work pays off,
By Timothy Puko
    Fonny Lau and her husband, Siu Poy Lau, own their own business selling satellite 
television subscriptions and wholesale gifts. Their daughter is getting a masters degree 
in education, and Fonnys brothers are two doctors and a scientist. 
    Alvin Ongs father was a doctor, and he raised a doctor, a surgeon, a lawyer and a 
doctor-to-be.  Man Ching and Cheong Ming Chan have never had white-collar jobs since 
arriving in the United States about 40 years ago. They work at casino restaurants in 
Atlantic City and on those wages, about $60,000 combined, have supported three 
children, putting two through college so far.
    Most of their life is spent working, said John Chan, the oldest of their three sons. 
They did this consistently, seven days a week, and money, any income they got was 
either saved or invested in me to buy items.
    At 28 years old, John Chan has an apartment in Jersey City , works as an electrical 
engineer at ITT Electronic Systems in Clifton and already makes about as much money 
each year as his parents do combined. His youngest brother is still in high school, but 
the middle child is a Web designer with Vonage.
    The success of all these Asian-American families is rather common. Despite a large 
wealth gap across racial lines in the United States that finds most minorities on the 
wrong side, Asian households surpassed even those of white Americans in their 
median income in 2005, according to Census figures.
    Across the country, the state and Atlantic and Ocean counties, data released last 
month by the U.S. Census bureau do not vary in this area. The median Asian-American 
household in the state had an income of $85,723 last year. The median income of all 
New Jersey households was $61,627.
    There are ugly stereotypes (for Asian Americans), but they arent mostly the ones that 
keep you out of prosperity, said Barbara Robles, one of the authors of The Color of 
Wealth, a book released this summer by United for a Fair Economy. We actually say 
this is an example of what can happen when the obstacles disappear.
    The data do not necessarily mean that Asian Americans are richer than everyone else. 
Whites still made more, individually, than did Asians about $2,500 more in Atlantic  
County and New Jersey last year, according to Census data.
    Economists point out that Asian households are larger than average, trailing only 
Hispanic families, according to Census data. Most Asians live in the most expensive 
areas of the country and are they are less likely than whites to be employed as the 
highest-paid corporate executives.
    But the differences in median income across races are still stark. Asians and 
Hispanics in Atlantic County have similar household sizes, but Asian households made 
almost twice as much. 
    The median Asian household in the county earned $63,514. The median Hispanic 
household earned only $36,394. Black households earned even less: a median income 
of $30,075.
    It means (Asian Americans) are well off. Theres no denying that, said James W. 
Hughes, dean of Rutgers Edward J. Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy.
    Hughes and many others suggest the value of education in many Asian cultures as 
the impetus for this phenomenon. Asians have the highest high school and college 
graduation rates in the state. 
    More than 65 percent of Asian Americans older than 25 have bachelors degrees, 
according to the Census Bureau. The next highest group was whites, with 35.2 percent 
owning bachelors degrees.
    Asians value education, very much so, said Ong, 39 of Linwood. They value it more 
than politics; they value it more than money. Family and education are key.
    Ong, who is Chinese, lived with grandparents in the Philippines until he was 9. He 
then moved to New York City to be with his parents, who had immigrated when he was 
still a baby.
    His father was a doctor with a family practice in the city. Ong, who attended the 
University of Pennsylvania and then the State University of New York Stony Brook 
School of Medicine, is now an orthopedic doctor at the Rothman Institutes office in 
Egg Harbor Township .
    Asian fathers are different, he said. They say, You have to get 100 on your school 
(test). I dont need you to be an athlete, you have to do well at school.
    Their heroes arent necessarily Babe Ruth. Theyre Albert Einstein or a famous 
violinist or a famous doctor.
    But the same emphasis that is often placed on supporting the next generation is 
also placed on supporting the community. Businesses like laundries, restaurants and 
grocery stores that are historically linked with segments of the Asian community have 
been opportunities for the community to hire workers from within itself.
    Philip Hoang, 44, immigrated from Vietnam in 1975. Three years ago, he bought a 
house for him and his two children and Mays Landing.
    It took him 20 years to save enough money for the purchase, and most of that time 
he spent working in restaurants. Before moving to Atlantic City, where he has since 
worked in restaurants at Ballys Atlantic City and Borgata Hotel Casino & Spa, he 
would always be employed by or build partnerships with other Asian businessmen.
    Stories like Hoangs stem from the larger history of Asian immigrants in the United 
States , the authors of The Color of Wealth said.
    In spite of, or because of, the marginalization of Asians, within ethnic enclaves, 
there was a high degree of self-sufficiency and wealth creation, as business and 
service enterprises owned by Asians and serving Asian consumers sprang up, the 
book says.
    The book also builds an argument that there is a connection, often ignored, 
between public policy and wealth. It credits the GI Bill, designed to help World War II 
veterans pay for college, as being one of the most important government acts in 
helping increasing middle class wealth after the war.
    While Asians had often been victims of discriminatory taxes and citizenship laws, 
Asians could benefit from the GI Bill, which allowed their culture value of education to 
flourish. Blacks and Latinos were mostly excluded, a factor that played a large role in 
the wealth disparity, the book says.
    Traditional Asian family values also had been encouraged in previous decades 
by discriminatory policies. While Asian immigrants could not become citizens, after 
the Civil War their children could, encouraging them to invest more in their childrens 
lives than their own.
    Although the Laus, Ongs and Chans immigrated about 100 years later, the cultural 
values have yet to change.
    My income might not be high, Fonny Lau says, but hopefully my daughters and 
sons will be.



9/21/06 The Economist: Poison Ivy: Not so much palaces of learning as bastions of 
privilege and hypocrisy,
    American universities like to think of themselves as engines of social justice, 
thronging with diversity. But how much truth is there in this flattering self-image? Over 
the past few years Daniel Golden has written a series of coruscating stories in the Wall 
Street Journal about the admissions practices of America 's elite universities, 
suggesting that they are not so much engines of social justice as bastions of privilege. 
Now he has produced a bookThe Price of Admission: How America's Ruling Class 
Buys Its Way into Elite Collegesand Who Gets Left Outside the Gatesthat 
deserves to become a classic.
    Mr Golden shows that elite universities do everything in their power to admit the 
children of privilege. If they cannot get them in through the front door by relaxing their 
standards, then they smuggle them in through the back. No less than 60% of the places 
in elite universities are given to candidates who have some sort of extra hook, from 
rich or alumni parents to sporting prowess. The number of whites who benefit from 
this affirmative action is far greater than the number of blacks.
    The American establishment is extraordinarily good at getting its children into the 
best colleges. In the last presidential election both candidatesGeorge Bush and John 
Kerrywere C students who would have had little chance of getting into Yale if they 
had not come from Yale families. Al Gore and Bill Frist both got their sons into their 
alma maters (Harvard and Princeton respectively), despite their average academic 
performances. Universities bend over backwards to admit legacies (ie, the children 
of alumni). Harvard admits 40% of legacy applicants compared with 11% of applicants 
overall. Amherst admits 50%. An average of 21-24% of students in each year at Notre 
Dame are the offspring of alumni. When it comes to the children of particularly rich 
donors, the bending-over-backwards reaches astonishing levels. Harvard even has 
something called a Z lista list of applicants who are given a place after a year's 
deferment to catch upthat is dominated by the children of rich alumni.
    University behaviour is at its worst when it comes to grovelling to celebrities. Duke  
University 's admissions director visited Steven Spielberg's house to interview his 
stepdaughter. Princeton found a place for Lauren Bushthe president's niece and a 
top fashion modeldespite the fact that she missed the application deadline by a 
month. Brown University was so keen to admit Michael Ovitz's son that it gave him a 
place as a special student. (He dropped out after a year.)
    Most people think of black football and basketball stars when they hear about 
sports scholarships. But there are also sports scholarships for rich white students 
who play preppie sports such as fencing, squash, sailing, riding, golf and, of course, 
lacrosse. The University of Virginia even has scholarships for polo-players, relatively 
few of whom come from the inner cities.
    You might imagine that academics would be up in arms about this. Alas, they have 
too much skin in the game. Academics not only escape tuition fees if they can get 
their children into the universities where they teach. They get huge preferences as 
well. Boston University accepted 91% of faculty brats in 2003, at a cost of about 
$9m. Notre Dame accepts about 70% of the children of university employees, 
compared with 19% of unhooked applicants, despite markedly lower average SAT 
scores.
    Why do Mr Golden's findings matter so much? The most important reason is that
America is witnessing a potentially explosive combination of trends. Social inequality 
is rising at a time when the escalators of social mobility are slowing ( America has 
lower levels of social mobility than most European countries). The returns on higher 
education are rising: the median earnings in 2000 of Americans with a bachelor's 
degree or higher were about double those of high-school leavers. But elite universities 
are becoming more socially exclusive. Between 1980 and 1992, for example, the 
proportion of disadvantaged children in four-year colleges fell slightly (from 29% to 
28%) while the proportion of well-to-do children rose substantially (from 55% to 66%).
    Mr Golden's findings do not account for all of this. Get rid of affirmative action for 
the rich, and rich children will still do better. But they clearly account for some 
differences: unhooked candidates are competing for just 40% of university places. 
And they raise all sorts of issues of justice and hypocrisy. What is one to make of 
Mr Frist, who opposes affirmative action for minorities while practising it for his own 
son?
    The poor left behind
    Two groups of people overwhelmingly bear the burden of these policiesAsian-
Americans and poor whites. Asian-Americans are the new Jews, held to higher 
standards (they need to score at least 50 points higher than non-Asians even to be in 
the game) and frequently stigmatised for their characters (Harvard evaluators 
persistently rated Asian-Americans below whites on personal qualities). When the 
University of California , Berkeley briefly considered introducing means-based 
affirmative action, it rejected the idea on the ground that using poverty yields a lot of 
poor white kids and poor Asian kids.
    There are a few signs that the winds of reform are blowing. Several elite universities 
have expanded financial aid for poor children. Texas A&M has got rid of legacy 
preferences. Only last week Harvard announced that it was getting rid of early 
admissiona system that favours privileged childrenand Princeton rapidly 
followed suit. But the wind is going to have to blow a heck of a lot harder, and for a 
heck of a lot longer, before America's money-addicted and legacy-loving universities 
can be shamed into returning to what ought to have been their guiding principle all 
along: admitting people to university on the basis of their intellectual ability.

9/19/06 INDOlink News Bureau: Asian-American Buying Power Tops $427 Billion
    New York , Sept. 19, 2006 - Per new statistics released earlier this month by the 
Selig Center for Economic Growth at the University of Georgia , Asian consumer 
annual buying power in the United States has reached $427 billion, representing 
a 59% increase since the beginning of the decade. Furthermore, Asian buying 
power has the second fastest projected rate of growth, slightly behind Hispanic 
buying power. By 2011, Asian buying power will grow 46% over the current 
benchmark to reach $626 billion.
    Reflecting the Asian population distribution by state which was recently 
documented in the Census Bureau's 2005 American Community Survey (ACS),
California and New York remain in first and second place for annual Asian 
buying power, with $140.5 billion and $41.5 billion respectively. 
    New Jersey 's Asian buying power has now reached $26.8 billion, followed by 
Texas with $25.9 billion. Remaining states on the top-10 list include (in rank 
order): Hawaii ($20.4 billion), Illinois ($18.7 billion), Washington ($13 billion), 
Virginia ($12.6 billion), Florida ($12.2 billion), and Massachusetts ($10.9 billion). 
These state figures have grown significantly in the last five years. According to 
Jeff Humphreys, director of the Selig Center , only six states had more than 
$10 billion in Asian buying power in 2000, whereas 11 states have already 
reached that benchmark in 2006.
    Although the financial services, automotive, and telecommunications sectors 
have long recognized the value of Asian consumers in their marketing programs, 
many marketers in other categories have yet to consider the viability of Asian-
targeted programs. Such categories include consumer packaged goods, 
pharmaceutical, travel & leisure, retail, and consumer electronics, among others.
    The Selig data also highlights one important characteristic of the Asian 
American market that many marketers frequently overlook - namely, that Asian 
consumers wield a disproportionately larger clout in terms of their purchasing 
power than the absolute size of the Asian population would otherwise imply. 
"Most often, marketers hesitate in considering Asian programs because they 
overly focus on the comparatively smaller size of the Asian population vis--vis 
the larger Hispanic and African American audiences," said Saul Gitlin, 
Executive Vice President - Strategic Services, Kang & Lee Advertising. 
"However, while the Asian population may be only one third the size of the 
Hispanic population, Asian annual buying power already represents 53% of 
Hispanic buying power. Similarly, since 2000, the total Asian population of the 
country has grown by almost 20% (per ACS), but Asian buying power growth 
has outpaced Asian population growth three-fold in the same period. As such, 
when evaluating whether or not to consider developing an Asian American 
marketing program, many marketers should transcend a mere analysis of 
Asian population size in order to better understand the viability and potential 
bottom-line impact of the opportunity," concluded Gitlin.  

9/14/06 Sacramento Bee, p. A4: New faces, but same old voters: State's 
diversity grows, but whites account for most going to the polls,
By Aurelio Rojas
    The more the face of California changes, the more the state's electorate stays 
the same: older white voters, college graduates and homeowners still account for 
the majority of voters, according to a new study.
    Seventy-two percent of likely voters are white, 53 percent are college graduates, 
77 percent are homeowners and the majority are age 45 and older, according to 
the report by the Public Policy Institute of California.
    That profile does not square with the demographics of a state in which the 
majority of the population is nonwhite and under 45 years old, fewer than one in 
four adults are college graduates and 57 percent are homeowners.
    "We are a state that continues to experience rapid growth and demographic 
change overall in terms of our population, said Mark Baldassare, PPIC's research 
director. "But we see less growth in the voter rolls and less change in terms of the 
demographics of voters."
    Titled " California 's Exclusive Electorate," the report concluded that if nonvoters 
made their views known at the ballot box, state policies would dramatically change.
    For example, a large majority of nonvoters -- 66 percent to 26 percent -- prefer 
higher taxes with more services to lower taxes with fewer services, according to 
the survey, based on 23,000 interviews between May 2005 and May 2006.
    Baldassare said voter participation is particularly important in California  
"because our state brings democracy closer to the people through the initiative 
process."
    He said greater voting participation, for example, would improve the chances 
of the $3 billion affordable housing bond on the November ballot.
    Voter participation has been decreasing for years. Baldassare said only 8 
million of the 15 million registered voters in the state are expected to vote in 
November.
    Since 1990, California 's population has increased by 25 percent, but voter 
registration has increased by only about 15 percent.
    Only about 56 percent of adults are registered to vote, compared to a high of 
65 percent in 1994. And only a third of those who are registered voted in the June 
primary, a record low, Baldassare said.
    Immigration accounts, in part, for low voter participation, since registered 
voters must be born in the United State or be naturalized citizens.
    One in three adults in California is foreign-born, but people born in the United 
States account for nine in 10 frequent voters, according to the study.
    Still, more than half of the 12 million nonvoters in the state are eligible to vote, 
Baldassare said. He said the most common reason people give in PPIC surveys 
for not voting are "interest and time."
    "Time is one of those flexible things: If people have the interest, they find time 
to vote," Baldassare said. "(But) we find that many of our nonvoters don't find the 
political process today particularly relevant to their lives."
    Baldassare said one of the most startling findings in the report is that there is 
the same number of registered Democrats and Republicans -- about 12 million -- 
than there were in 1990.
    The growth in registration has been in voters who declined to state their 
affiliation.
    "I think the political parties have really failed to seize the day in California and 
provide a reason for new voters," Baldassare said. "I think it is a real statement 
about people's alienation from the two-party system that we haven't seen any 
growth."

9/14/06 San Francisco Chronicle: An effort to keep memories alive: Angel Island : 
Future museum puts out the call for information about the West's second-largest 
immigrant group -- 60,000 Japanese,
by Charles Burress
    It was America 's Western welcome mat, to put a positive spin on it. 
    The Angel Island Immigration Station is famous as the place where Chinese 
immigrants were processed, probed and often detained, sometimes for long 
periods. Many carved their frustration in poems still visible in the old barracks 
walls. 
    But the story of the second-largest group to pass through Angel Island is 
hardly known.
    Hoping to fill a hole in history, organizers of the emerging museum and 
education complex on Angel Island want to shed light on the experiences of 
Japanese who got their first taste of America at the immigration station in San 
Francisco Bay .
    "All we really know is about the Chinese," said Judy Yung, a UC Santa Cruz 
professor emerita conducting research for the project.
    As plans and construction move forward on restoring the historic site, 
organizers have appealed to Japanese Americans for information about the 
Japanese experience.
    "Our hope is to recover some of the memories and stories from the 
descendants," said Yung, who is co-authoring a book on the immigration 
station with University of Minnesota Associate Professor Erika Lee .
    One of the most prized finds uncovered so far is a pocket-size, leather-
bound register of "picture bride" marriages performed in San Francisco nearly 
100 years ago. Found by retired Mill Valley dentist and UCSF Professor Don 
Nakahata in the effects of his late aunt, the ledger records about 600 weddings 
performed by Nakahata's grandfather, Barnabas Hisayoshi Terasawa.
    "My grandfather was one of the first indigenous Anglican priests of Japan ," 
Nakahata said. "He came over as a missionary at the turn of the century."
    Yung is trying to match the register names with immigration records at the 
San Bruno branch of the National Archives, which house many records on 
immigrants to California .
    Like a small version of New York 's Ellis Island, which processed about 12 
million immigrants between 1892 and 1954, Angel Island served from 1910 to 
1940 as the West Coast portal to the United States . The largest group to pass 
through consisted of an estimated 175,000 Chinese immigrants, followed by 
about 60,000 Japanese. Russians were the third-largest group, followed by 
citizens of India , said Erika Gee, the foundation's education director.
    Chinese immigrants have drawn more attention not only because of their 
larger number but also because they generally endured longer stays and more 
difficulties, Yung said. Though both Chinese and Japanese faced hostility in that 
period, Chinese were subjected to tighter immigration controls and many 
resorted to using false documents, which in turn resulted in stricter screening, 
Yung said.
    The project aims to add not only the Japanese story but also the unknown 
sagas of people of other nationalities who made Angel Island one of the most 
culturally diverse way stations on the planet.
    Yung's current emphasis is on Japan , and she and Lee will gradually include 
other nations.
    "It's more than Chinese," said Daphne Kwok , executive director of the Angel 
Island Immigration Station Foundation. "It was other Asians, Australians, South 
Americans, Europeans, Mexicans, Central Americans."
    Added Yung, "There were at least 60 nationalities who went through."
    The book is to be published in 2010, when the full complex -- including a 
research center in the rebuilt hospital -- is scheduled to be completed. The 
station is now closed to the public, but the restored barracks and an outdoors 
exhibit showing the original-size "footprint" and sections of the administration 
building are scheduled to open next summer, Kwok said.
    Fear of a mother-in-law sends Japanese bride to faraway land 
    At age 16 in Japan, Hisayo Yoshino didn't know she'd have oodles of 
descendants someday in Northern California, much less that they'd recall the 
leap she was about to take.
    Nor did she realize her story would be forever retold in the emerging restoration 
of Angel Island 's immigration station.
    But the teenager living near Hiroshima in 1910 knew one thing for sure. 
    She didn't want to wed the husband arranged for her, even if he stood to inherit 
his family's wealth as the eldest son. He and his wife would also inherit the care 
of his parents.
    "In the olden days," said Yoshino's daughter, Janice Muto, 73, of Concord , 
"the mother-in-law could make a young bride's life hell." 
    A teenage friend who had married the oldest son of another family would 
regularly visit Yoshino in tears over the hardships she faced.
    Yoshino persuaded her parents to break her engagement, and she joined 
the thousands of "picture brides" who arranged through the exchange of photos 
to marry Japanese men who had come to California years earlier.
    Little did she know that her stomach-punishing voyage across the Pacific in 
the summer of 1912 would be followed by tears of her own in the first weeks at 
her new home on a remote orchard in Placer County .
    Her first ordeal in the United States , however, came as soon she stepped 
onto Angel Island .
    "A physical found she had intestinal worms," said Muto. She had to take 
daily medication and remain at the immigration station for three weeks.
    Finally she joined her new husband, Sahei Makimoto, to begin their life on the 
farm. Instead of the streets paved with gold that she dreamed of in Japan , 
Yoshino found herself alone with five men far from most comforts of civilization, 
Muto said. She cried every day for three weeks.
    But other Japanese wives arrived soon, and hardships were gradually 
overcome -- until they were all relocated into internment camps during World 
War II. Yoshino survived that, too, and lived to age 97, leaving six children, 
eighteen grandchildren and a couple dozen great-grandchildren.
    Share your memories 
    Those who have information to share about the immigrant experience at 
Angel Island are asked to contact the Angel Island Immigration Station 
Foundation at 415-561-2160 or www.aiisf.org. They can write Professor 
Yung or Professor Lee.
    Some of the records already collected are available online at 
casefiles.berkeley.edu. Others can be accessed for a fee through 
ancestry.com or for free through the National Archives' San Bruno office. 
Call the archives at 650-238-3501 or visit 
www.archives.gov/pacific/san-francisco/index.html.

9/12/06 Associated Press: Where you live linked to life expectancy,
By Lauran Neergaard
    Washington - Where you live, combined with race and income, plays a huge 
role in the nation's health disparities, differences so stark that a report issued 
Monday contends it's as if there are eight separate Americas instead of one.
    Asian-American women living in Bergen County , N.J. , lead the nation in 
longevity, typically reaching their 91st birthdays. Worst off are American Indian 
men in swaths of South Dakota , who die around age 58 three decades sooner.
    Millions of the worst-off Americans have life expectancies typical of developing 
countries, concluded Dr. Christopher Murray of the Harvard School of Public Health.
    Asian-American women can expect to live 13 years longer than low-income 
black women in the rural South, for example. That's like comparing women in 
wealthy Japan to those in poverty-ridden Nicaragua .
    Compare those longest-living women to inner-city black men, and the life-
expectancy gap is 21 years. That's similar to the life-expectancy gap between 
Iceland and Uzbekistan .
    Health disparities are widely considered an issue of minorities and the poor 
being unable to find or afford good medical care. Murray 's county-by-county 
comparison of life expectancy shows the problem is far more complex, and that 
geography plays a crucial role.
    "Although we share in the U.S. a reasonably common culture ... there's still a lot 
of variation in how people live their lives," explained Murray, who reported initial 
results of his government-funded study in the online science journal PLoS Medicine.
    Consider: The longest-living whites weren't the relatively wealthy, which Murray  
calls " Middle America ." They're edged out by low-income residents of the rural 
Northern Plains states, where the men tend to reach age 76 and the women 82.
    Yet low-income whites in Appalachia and the Mississippi Valley die four years 
sooner than their Northern neighbors.
    He cites American Indians as another example. Those who don't live on or near 
reservations in the West have life expectancies similar to whites'.
    "If it's your family involved, these are not small differences in lifespan," Murray  
said. "Yet that sense of alarm isn't there in the public."
    "If I were living in parts of the country with those sorts of life expectancies, I 
would want ... to be asking my local officials or state officials or my congressman, 
'Why is this?'"
    This more precise measure of health disparities will allow federal officials to 
better target efforts to battle inequalities, said Dr. Wayne Giles of the Centers for 
Disease Control and Prevention, which helped fund Murray 's work.
    The CDC has some county-targeted programs like one that has cut in half 
diabetes-caused amputations among black men in Charleston , S.C. , since 1999, 
largely by encouraging physical activity and the new study argues for more, he 
said.
    "It's not just telling people to be active or not to smoke," Giles said. "We need 
to create the environment which assists people in achieving a healthy lifestyle."
    The study also highlights that the complicated tapestry of local and cultural 
customs may be more important than income in driving health disparities, said 
Richard Suzman of the National Institute on Aging, which co-funded the research.
    "It's not just low income," Suzman said. "It's what people eat, it's how they 
behave, or simply what's available in supermarkets."
    Murray analyzed mortality data between 1982 and 2001 by county, race, 
gender and income. He found some distinct groupings that he named the "eight 
Americas :"
    _Asian-Americans, average per capita income of $21,566, have a life 
expectancy of 84.9 years.
    _Northland low-income rural whites, $17,758, 79 years.
    _Middle America (mostly white), $24,640, 77.9 years.
    _Low income whites in Appalachia , Mississippi Valley, $16,390, 75 years.
    _Western American Indians, $10,029, 72.7 years.
    _Black Middle America , $15,412, 72.9 years.
    _Southern low-income rural blacks, $10,463, 71.2 years.
    _High-risk urban blacks, $14,800, 71.1 years.
    Longevity disparities were most pronounced in young and middle-aged adults. 
A 15-year-old urban black man was 3.8 times as likely to die before the age of 
60 as an Asian-American, for example.
    That's key, Murray said, because this age group is left out of many government 
health programs that focus largely on children and the elderly.
    Moreover, the longevity gaps have stayed about the same for 20 years despite 
increasing national efforts to eliminate obvious racial and ethnic health disparities, 
he found.
    Murray was surprised to find that lack of health insurance explained only a small 
portion of those gaps. Instead, differences in alcohol and tobacco use, blood 
pressure, cholesterol and obesity seemed to drive death rates.
    Most important, he said, will be pinpointing geographically defined factors  
such as shared ancestry, dietary customs, local industry, what regions are more or 
less prone to physical activity that in turn influence those health risks.
    For example, scientists have long thought that the Asian longevity advantage 
would disappear once immigrant families adopted higher-fat Western diets. 
Murray 's study is the first to closely examine second-generation Asian-Americans, 
and found their advantage persists.

9/11/06 USA Today: Panda Express spreads Chinese food across USA ,
    Rosemead , Calif. Texans know their barbecue. But lots of them apparently 
don't know their Chinese food. The top question at the 10 Panda Express stores 
opened in Texas this year is "What's orange chicken?" 
    Andrew and Peggy Cherng, the husband-and-wife team who created Panda 
Express, know that answering that question and many others about their menu 
is part of the diner-education process that has turned a one-store eatery inside 
a California mall into an 820-store Chinese food empire. Orange chicken, a 
lightly sweetened fried chicken dish, is their best seller but not as familiar in 
Texas as fajitas and hamburgers.
    If they get their way, it will be. And not just on the coasts. The two are well on 
their way to cracking a frontier in fast food: creating a national Chinese fast-food 
chain.
    It's taken more than 30 years, but they are close to realizing the dream. Their 
Panda Restaurant Group has built the Panda Express chain into a powerhouse 
that spans 35 states and includes locations at places such as Dodger Stadium 
and the University of Connecticut .
    The Panda Express chain already dwarfs other Chinese fast-food chains; 
none come even close in terms of revenue or number of stores. Last year, the 
company sold $735 million worth of Chinese food, nearly triple the combined 
sales of the No. 2 and No. 3 players: Pei Wei Asian Diner and Pick Up Stix, 
says Darren Tristano, executive vice president at Technomic Information 
Services, which measures restaurant trends.
    Reaching the last 15 Panda Express-less states is a goal literally hanging in 
front of Andrew, who has a map of the USA outside his office showing the states 
the chain is in and isn't. He's confident Panda can fill in the gaps, including the 
deep-fried South and steak-loving Big Sky country such as Montana .
    Three Panda Express stores are built each week, triple the number of 
restaurants that Burger King built weekly during its last fiscal year.
    Despite their domination, the Cherngs (pronounced: Chur-ng) hardly seem 
like the conquering type. Andrew, 59, talks softly and deliberately, throwing out 
aphorisms such as "You don't think about the difficulty you face" and "You look 
at challenges one day after another day."
    But make no mistake. They have gone further and faster than anyone in trying 
to stake out one of the most attractive, yet painfully difficult, segments of fast food.
    It's been a formidable task. Chinese food doesn't quite fit the on-the-go lifestyle 
that fast food caters to. It can't be eaten in one hand by a salesman driving to an 
appointment. And it's harder to make than most other quick-serve cuisines.
    "You can make a good burger in your backyard," says Andy Puzder, CEO of 
CKE Restaurants, parent of the Carl's Jr. and Hardee's chains. "But you can screw 
up Chinese food. I know, I tried to make it."
    In the beginning
    So what is Panda's secret? Different objects in Andrew's office, including a row 
of family photos on a shelf, might sum it up. One prominent picture shows his father, 
Ming Tsai Cherng, who helped start the restaurant that inspired the empire. Andrew 
describes his father as a quiet man who taught him to take on something new only 
after mastering the last challenge. That's how Panda Express started.
    Andrew, who was born in Jiangsu , China , and moved to the USA in 1966, got into 
the restaurant business with his father. Using their savings, the two in 1973 started 
a sit-down restaurant called Panda Inn in Pasadena , Calif. It wasn't until after they 
ran Panda Inn for 10 years that Andrew gambled again and opened the first Panda 
Express in Southern California 's Glendale Galleria mall in 1983.
    That store, with just 10 employees, blossomed, and soon the company was a 
burgeoning chain of hundreds of stores. That's when Peggy, a Ph.D. in computer 
science (who will provide her age only as being in her 50s), gave up a career 
designing high-tech systems for a defense contractor to join Panda full time. She 
took over as president in 1997 and served as CEO from 1998 to 2004.
    The husband-and-wife team, while largely complementary, has had its moments 
of tension. Even the Cherngs themselves, who share the title of chairman, have 
differed on how to expand.
    Peggy resisted Andrew two years ago when he wanted to bring in an outside 
president with restaurant industry experience to replace her. As Andrew says, 
"You try telling your wife that." After all, previous attempts at hiring from the industry 
had not gone well.
    Ultimately, they agreed to try again and hired former Taco Bell executive Tom 
Davin as Panda's president and later named him CEO. Peggy says she looks back 
happily at the decision, saying she now has time to spend with Panda's philanthropic 
arm, Panda Cares, which provides money and food to local schools and 
organizations that support children.
    To this day, they keep identical offices on opposite sides of the building. 
Andrew acknowledges the difficulty of running a business while keeping family 
harmony. Yet they insist their offices are so far apart because of feng shui, a 
Chinese practice of organizing a living space in a way that emphasizes harmony 
with the environment.
    Fun is key
    Another hint at Panda's success is a statue in Andrew's office: a baby turning 
somersaults, symbolizing the importance of bliss. He says having fun and 
encouraging employees to do the same is key to how they run their business.
    A humanistic approach like Panda's might seem somewhat unusual in an industry 
not exactly known for its employee-friendly ways.
    Restaurants are famous for keeping labor costs down. Yet Panda offers subsidized 
health care coverage to all its employees, including part-time workers. The company 
pays for 80% of the health insurance premiums for the employee and 50% for 
dependents.
    Panda says it also aims to pay $1 or $2 an hour more than nearby fast-food 
restaurants, even in the same food court. Panda employees at the Apple Blossom 
Mall in Winchester , Va. , for instance, get about $8 an hour, says Gabrielle Price, 
general manager of the store. That compares with the $6 to $7 an hour paid on 
average by others in the mall, she says. Managers, Andrew says, can make 
$100,000 or more with bonuses.
    But restaurants, after all, are about food. Chinese cuisine, unlike burgers that can 
be microwaved and flipped, takes a bit of care and concern. Fried rice needs to be 
thoroughly stirred or it will clump. Multiple seasonings need to be carefully mixed in 
correct proportions. Vegetables must be chopped the same whether the chopper 
is in Hawaii or Maine . Andrew says there's no way to get one employee, much less 
14,000, to do that other than getting them to care.
    Which is why training is key. Many restaurant managers are brought to the 
company's headquarters, where there is a full-size replica of a restaurant, complete 
with the dozens of food bins common in the chain. That's where they learn how to 
make the dishes correctly. Panda's formula has the cooks constantly filling a number 
of bins filled with different food dishes. Customers can look in the bins and order 
what they want, and the servers scoop portions from them.
    Perplexed by Panda
    Even Wall Street analysts are perplexed by how Panda is able to succeed where 
others have failed, despite doing everything contrary to common wisdom. "I don't 
understand why it works for Panda," says Dennis Forst, analyst at KeyBanc. "It 
doesn't seem to work for others."
    The quest to take fried rice from sea to shining sea has eluded some of the most 
famous names in restaurants. Paul Fleming, the "PF" of P.F. Chang's China Bistro, 
in July shut down his lower-priced Paul Lee's Chinese Kitchen joint venture with 
Outback Steakhouse after opening just four locations.
    Giant restaurant chains Yum Brands, which controls Pizza Hut and Taco Bell; 
Chili's owner Brinker; and Darden, the company behind Red Lobster and Olive 
Garden, have all tried and given up trying to start Chinese chains, says Forst. 
"There have been other tries, but they always start and stop," he says.
    Manchu Wok, for instance, is in nearly as many states as Panda, 33, but has 
only 113 locations. P.F. Chang's lower-priced concept, Pei Wei Asian Diner, is 
in 15 states. And Pick Up Stix is in just three.
    Whether it's Panda or one of its competitors, whoever does finally create a truly 
nationwide fast-food Chinese chain will find a nation so comfortable with Chinese 
cuisine that it's hardly considered ethnic anymore, says Hudson Riehle of the 
National Restaurant Association. It's also a top food choice of younger eaters, 
who view Chinese as their "comfort food," much as the burger was to drive-in-
crazy baby boomers, he says.
    Still, food tastes are different in different parts of the country, says Kelvin Chen, 
CEO of Manchu Wok. "In the South, people do seem to like spicy food," he says. 
"While in the northern U.S. , if you serve something that has overly strong flavor, 
it may not go."
    Dealing with local taste differences is a challenge for any regional chain aspiring 
to go national. Chick-fil-A, a fried chicken chain based in Atlanta , in some ways 
faces Panda's challenge in reverse: It's trying to expand in the low-fat California
 culture. Tim Tassopoulos, the chain's senior vice president of operations, says 
the key is not trying to expand too fast. "When chains attempt to do it too quickly
 ... they fail from the inside out," he says.
    Panda Express, despite its name, has turned down opportunities to grow even 
faster. It has rejected sales pitches from Wall Street types and turned away venture 
capitalists' cash. It doesn't franchise locations. It owns and manages all its own 
stores.
    As Panda expands, it keeps looking for ways to work out kinks in its formula. 
It's unrolling a new design that will keep prepared dishes in woks rather than in 
flat-bottomed bins that smash the food at the bottom. It has also opened several 
drive-through locations to serve customers on the go.
    The question is what's next. Andrew has resisted an initial public offering of stock 
but says he'd consider it more seriously if he thought he could get a valuation similar 
to what McDonald's got from its hugely successful spinoff of the Chipotle Mexican 
Grill chain.
    But in the meantime, the company will slowly, but surely, take egg rolls from 
coast to coast. "We're an overnight success, 30 years in the making," Davin says.

9/9/06: The Price of Admission: How America's Ruling Class Buys Its Way into 
Elite Colleges - and Who Gets Left Outside the Gates, by Dan Golden, Education 
Editor of the Wall Street Journal, accuses colleges of making Asian applicants the 
new Jews and holding them to much higher standards than other students. 

9/7/06 The UCLA Asian American Studies Center: The New Sleeping Giant in 
California Politics: The Growth of Asian Americans
by  Letisia Marquez
    Los Angeles , CA (September 6, 2006) In the 1980s and 1990s, Hispanics were 
considered the sleeping giant in California politics because of their growing numbers. 
Asian Americans are now the new sleeping giant and are at a point where Hispanics 
were about two decades ago.(1) They have significantly increased their potential power 
at the polls in California , according to an analysis conducted by researchers affiliated 
with the UCLA Asian American Studies Center and with the UC AAPI (Asian American 
& Pacific Islander) Policy Initiative. The analysis uses data from the 2005 American 
Community Survey (ACS) released on August 15 and 29, 2006 by the U.S. Census 
Bureau, along with previously released data from the Census Bureau.(2)
    The number of Asian Americans in California eligible to register to vote (citizens who 
are 18 and older) climbed by over a half million between 2000 and 2005, from 2 million 
to 2.5 million. The Asian American share of the a proportion of the state's population 
eligible to register as voters increased from 10% to 12% during this time period.
    Two factors behind the emergence of the new sleeping giant are the overall increase 
in the total Asian American population and the higher rate of citizenship. Between 2000 
and 2005, the number of Asian Americans residing in California s households increased 
from 3.8 million to 4.7 million, accounting for 38% of the net gain of 2.2 million persons 
in California s population.(3)
    Along with population growth, Asian Americans experienced an increase in their 
citizenship rate -- 71% of Asian American adults are U.S. citizens by birth or 
naturalization, representing an increase from 67% in 2000.(4) These figures show 
that Asian Americans are not an alien population, but a population that has become 
fully integrated into American society through citizenship.
    The growth in the potential Asian American electorate over the last five years is a 
continuation of a pattern that began in the 1990s. In 1990, there were slightly more than 
one million Asian American adult citizens, comprising about 6% of all adult citizens in 
the state.(5) If recent trends continue, there will be over 3 million Asian American adults 
eligible to register to vote by the end of the decade, making up about 14% of all 
Californians eligible to register.
    The growth in the absolute number of Asian Americans and those eligible to become 
voters can have political ramifications. California State Assembly Member Judy Chu 
states that the overall growth of the Asian American population will open up new 
opportunities and challenges:
    "The incredible growth of Asian Americans in California and in the United States  
brings as much opportunity as it does challenges. Asian Americans continue to 
contribute to the cultural diversity and economic success of this nation, but the growing 
population also means that public services and elected representation will need to 
grow to accommodate the unique needs of our community."
    Community leaders point to the potential impact on a number of public policy issues. 
Vivian Huang, Legislative Advocate of Asian Americans for Civil Rights & Equality, 
states, "With increasing population growth, Asian Americans are poised to dramatically 
escalate their political representation and power in politics and highlight key issues 
important to the community, such as civil rights, immigrant rights, and access to language assistance."
    This opinion is widely shared by other community leaders, including Lisa Hasegawa 
(Executive Director of the National Coalition for Asian Pacific American Community 
Development), JD Hokoyama (President & CEO of Leadership Education for Asian 
Pacifics, Inc.), and Elena Ong (former member, California Commission for Women).
    According to Professor Don Nakanishi, a political scientist and director of UCLAs 
Asian American Studies Center,
    "This growth has contributed to the increasing number of Asian American state and 
local elected officials in California and nationwide. The Asian American political 
infrastructure of voters, donors, politicians, and community groups has also undergone 
remarkable growth and maturation, and will likely have an increasingly significant 
impact on state and national politics."
    However, there are still barriers to fully translating the population numbers into voting 
power. According to Paul Ong, an economist and professor in UCLAs School of Public 
Affairs , The challenge is to convert the growing numbers of Asian American citizens 
into voters. Previous research and data for California from the 2002 and 2004 
November Current Population Survey show that Asian American citizens are less 
likely to register and vote than non-Hispanic whites and African Americans.(6) 
(See Table 3.)
    For the upcoming November elections, community activists have focused on voter 
registration and voter-turnout drives. David Lee, Executive Director of the Chinese 
American Voters Education Committee, notes Leading Asian American scholars believe that this group can become an effective 
voting bloc by formulating a common political agenda both among Asian Americans 
and across racial lines. The Asian American population is culturally, linguistically 
and economically heterogeneous. Despite these divisions, Professor Yen Le Espiritu, 
a sociologist in the department of Ethnic Studies at UC San Diego notes that, history 
has shown that Asian Americans can overcome differences to build viable pan-Asian 
political coalitions to promote and protect both their individual and their united interests. 
Moreover, Professor Michael Omi, professor of Ethnic Studies at UC Berkeley, 
predicts, different racial and ethnic groups will increasingly see the necessity of 
defining areas of common political concern and mobilizing significant voter blocs to 
wield political power."
    The UCLA Asian American Studies Center is the nations leading research center 
in the field of Asian American Studies and houses a Census Information Center , which 
will continue to analyze data from the ACS as they become available.
    The UC AAPI Policy Initiative brings together University of California researchers 
and community organizations to conduct research focusing on the policy concerns 
of the AAPI community. Attachments: Graphs; Tables; Technical Note; Contact Sheet
    (1) In 1990, Hispanics made up 14% of adult citizens in California . In 2005, Asian 
Americans approach that level, with 12% of California s adult citizens. 
See Table 2: Percentages of California adults who are eligible to register to vote by 
race.
    (2) See technical note. 
    (3) The 2005 American Community Survey covered only individuals living in 
households, that is, it excluded those living in institutions, college dormitories, and 
other group quarters. In California , Asian Americans represented over 13.4% of the 
total population in 2005, an increase from 11.8% in 2000. California s population grew 
by 2.2 million (33 million to 35.2 million), with the Asian American population growing 
by over 850,000 (3.8 million to 4.7 million). Nationally, the Asian American percentage 
of the nation's population grew from 4% to 4.8%, an increase of over 3 million Asian 
Americans (10.8 million to 13.8 million). The national population increased by over 
14 million persons, with Asian Americans accounting for more than 20% of this 
national population increase.
    (4) See Graph 1. 
    (5) See Graph 2.
    (6) The national statistics for Asian American citizens are very similar, and there 
is very little difference in the statistics for U.S. born Asian American citizens and 
naturalized Asian Americans.

9/7/06 India-West: Indians Largest Asian Group in U.S. Outside the West,
by Richard Springer
    Asian Indians are now the largest Asian American group in the combined area of 
the Midwest, Northeast and South in the United States , according to recently released 
data from the Census Bureau's 2005 American Community Survey (I-W, Aug. 25).
    While nationwide Chinese Americans are the largest Asian American population 
with 2,882,257 - ahead of 2,319,222 Indian Americans and 2,282,872 Filipinos - 
Chinese are numerous in the West.
    The ethnic Chinese population in the Western states, including those born in Taiwan  
and Hong Kong , is 1,361,065 compared with 564,927 Asian Indians.
    But in the South, Asian Indians lead all Asian groups with 370,553, followed by 
278,590 for the Chinese. Indians are also more numerous than Chinese in the Midwest  
390,643 to 256,705, while Chinese have a larger population in the Northeast - 834,701 
to 738,676.
    Asian Indians have increased more than 640,000 from the 2000 census when they 
numbered 1,678,765 (See table). Asian Indians also jumped 73,938 from 2004, when 
the last American Community Survey was conducted. Census officials cautioned that 
the numbers in the ACS, unlike the Census, are based on estimates.
    Populations nationwide for some other Asian American groups in 2005 are: 
Vietnamese, 1,418,334; Korean, 1,246,240; and Japanese, 833,761.
    California still leads all states with the most Asian Indians with 449,722. In more 
than 20 states Asian Indians are the largest Asian group.
    In New Jersey , for example the 228,250 Asian Indians, up from 169,180 in 2000, 
far surpass the second largest Asian group, the Chinese, who number 122,931.
    In Georgia , Indians double the total of the second and third largest Asian groups 
combined, the Koreans (37,900) and the Vietnamese (37,159). In Illinois , Indian 
Americans are the largest Asian group with 157,126, followed by the Filipinos with 
103,059 and Chinese at 90,569.
    (Note: In the Aug. 25 issue of India-West, the article on the American Community 
Survey had the wrong totals of India-born for some states, counties and cities. The 
totals listed for those states, counties and cities were actually the estimates from the
ACS on all Asian Indians, not just the India-born. For the correct numbers of both the 
India-born and total Asian Indians by state in the 2005 ACS, see table. The total 
number of 1,422,492 India-born mentioned in the Aug. 25 issue in the ACS survey 
is the correct figure. -- R.S.)

9/5/06 The Berkeley Daily Planet: Katrina Wounds Slow to Heal for South 
Asian Community,
by Ashfaque Swapan, a reporter for India- West, a member of 
New American Media. 
    A day before Hurricane Katrina hit last year, New Orleans residents Quamrun 
Zinia, husband Riyad Ferdous and their little kid got into a car. At 11:00 a.m., 
they set off. They just packed stuff for their kid. Then they drove 400 miles to 
seek shelter with Zinias brother who lived in the Houston suburb of Belleville . It 
was a category five warning, and evacuation was mandatory.
    She returned about 90 days later, and thankfully, suffered virtually no material 
loss at all.
    Zinia lived in the Metairie area of New Orleans , whose high elevation kept it 
protected from the flood waters that devastated this Louisiana metropolis after 
its levees broke. Yet one year after Katrina, there is an emotional wound that is 
still raw.
    After Katrina, the one thing that has not changed at all is that awful feeling of 
fear, the Bangladesh-born doctoral student told India-West by phone. We are 
always scared. Now that the (hurricane) season has started, there is that 
constant fear that I will have to evacuate again.
    Yet, as she is the first person to acknowledge, she is among the lucky ones. 
At least I have a brother to go to, she said ruefully. Imagine the situation of 
others in far more precarious situations than mine.
    Hurricane Katrina was the costliest and one of the deadliest hurricanes in the 
history of the United States , according to the information resource Wikipedia. 
It was the sixth-strongest Atlantic hurricane ever recorded and the third-strongest 
landfalling U.S. hurricane ever recorded, according to Wikipedia. Katrina 
formed in late August during the 2005 Atlantic hurricane season and devastated 
much of the north-central Gulf Coast of the United States . Most notable in media 
coverage were the catastrophic effects on the city of New Orleans , Louisiana , 
and in coastal Mississippi . Katrinas sheer size devastated the Gulf Coast over 
100 miles (160 km) away from its center.
    South Asians also suffered considerable loss, but the nature of the loss varied. 
While professionals often came out unscathed in the longer term, because 
federal assistance was on hand after they had survived the initial onslaught, 
students faced greater challenges, and undocumented workers faced terrible 
hardships, hit as they were by the double-whammy of natural disaster and 
ineligibility to government assistance, activists told India-West.
    The vast majority of Indian American motel owners are still struggling to open 
their motels, Anil Patel, gulf director of the Asian American Hotel Owners 
Association, told India-West from Jackson , Miss. , in a phone conversation.
    He said there were 19 Indian American-owned hotels in Biloxi . Miss. , and 
Shreveport , La. In New Orleans , Indian Americans owned 20 hotels. Out of 
these only five are open, the rest are not open yet, he said.
    Zinia said while many people she knew got assistance from the much 
maligned Federal Emergency Management Agency, it was heartbreaking to 
see the suffering of people, particularly students, who werent immigrants, 
because the federal assistance spigot completely dried up for them.
    My daughter is an American citizen, and we got a $2,000 voucher, she said. 
Next door to me is a student family just like us, they have a 4-year-old kid, the 
kid was born in Bangladesh , and they didnt get it. Some got it, but had to return it.
    Personally I felt very bad about this. I know a student family who have a green 
card, their home was in knee-level water and they got $36,000 for the loss of the 
place, furniture. In another house, another family, I feel so terribly sorry for them, 
they have two kids, they lost everything too, they got nothing. FEMA rejected 
their application, because they werent immigrants.
    Partha Banerjee, executive director of the Newark, N.J.-based Immigration 
Policy Network, got involved with South Asian immigrant issues immediately 
after Katrina. He said the post-disaster circumstances of Katrina were also a 
golden opportunity lost by immigrant rights activists and the South Asian 
community.
    This was a great opportunity to show the media and the establishment that 
the traditionally underprivileged part of society, particularly African-Americans, 
and immigrants face the same problems and challenges. But we blew it 
because we immigrants dont want to work with African-Americans.
    He said the South Asian experience in the aftermath of Katrina depended 
on where they belonged in the socio-economic ladder.
    Many South Asians are students, teachers; many were ready, he said. 
The losses were great, but they later got aid. Students were relocated. So 
after they had weathered the initial hit, they got back on their feet. Those who 
work, they moved elsewhere. Many moved to Houston . Even in New Jersey  
and New York I know people who moved permanently.
    Zinia echoed Banerjees views. For the past six years she has been 
organizing a Pahela Baisakh celebration, bringing together West Bengal and 
Bangladeshi Bangla-speakers from three states: Louisiana , Mississippi and 
Alabama . She said she was really surprised when she went to the Durga Puja 
celebrations. The event had half the number of people, she said.
    They have arranged for jobs and moved out of state.
    Students faced an added layer of hassles. Many people dont know that 
foreign students can only go to the specific college referred to in their I-20 forms, 
Banerjee said. Since their academic program was suspended, they had to go 
through a lot of hassles. Here again, what one faced depended upon where 
one was. Mainstream students or privileged students were easily relocated, 
Banerjee said, while poor and immigrant students did not get that assistance. 
These poor students dont have much money to begin with, some lost 
everything, he rued to India-West. They had to work overtime to take care of 
this extra hurdle.
    Even for the affluent, there was no telling how one would be affected. Some 
have paid off their homes and they didnt take flood insurance, said Zinia. Now 
water entered up to roof level, and the entire house was ruined. Since they had 
no flood insurance, they got nothing. I know a multimillionaire who is now 
penniless.
    On the other hand, I know someone who had just bought a house. He had 
flood insurance and now he has got so much money he is thinking about getting 
into the real estate business. Its all very strange.
    For Banerjee, though, the biggest disappointment was that even a disaster 
like Katrina could not bring South Asians out of their ethnic cocoons.
    The saddest part is that local people were unable to build immigrant 
solidarity, he laments.
    Zinia agrees. They are all in their ethnic ghettoes, nothing has changed, 
she said. But maybe this is American culture. I have lived in apartment 
complexes where a person dies in one apartment and people next door have 
no idea.

8/30/06 Sacramento Bee: Filipino vets ask for full WWII honors,
by Stephen Magagnini
    Raymundo V. Seva survived the hellish Bataan Death March at the hands of his 
Japanese captors.  Seva, 85, lived long enough to become a U.S. citizen -- a privilege 
granted to thousands of Filipino World War II veterans ordered to serve under Gen. 
Douglas MacArthur's Far East Command.
    But Seva, who now resides in downtown Sacramento with his wife, Fe, wonders if 
he'll live to see the day he and his fellow Filipino warriors will finally be recognized as
U.S. veterans.
    "The Japanese bullets did not distinguish between U.S. and Filipino people," said 
Seva. "It's about fairness and justice. It was President Roosevelt who called Filipinos 
to serve in the U.S. armed forces."
    Seva and about a dozen Filipino World War II veterans came to the state Capitol 
on Tuesday to fight for HR 4574 -- the Filipino Veterans Equity Act of 2006 -- being 
pushed hard by California congressmen Bob Filner, a Democrat, and Darrell Issa, 
a Republican.
    Similar bills have died in Congress. Meanwhile, thousands of Filipino war vets have 
been claimed by old age long after they helped the United States win the war in the 
Pacific and MacArthur made good on his famous promise, "I shall return."
    Issa's press secretary, Frederick Hill, said a 2003 law authored by Filner did grant 
Filipino veterans disability benefits for war-related crimes, and access to VA hospitals 
and nursing homes.
    But laws that would grant them benefits equal to U.S. World War II vets have been 
a tough sell, said Filner, D-San Diego.
    "This is a bill I've been working on for 14 years," Filner told The Bee. "The 2003 bill 
took care of part of the problem for the population living in the U.S. , but my bill gives 
full benefits and a pension to all Filipino veterans."
    Filner said the cost would be about $200 million a year for the roughly 30,000 to 
50,000 Filipino veterans still alive, a third of whom now live in America .
    Filner said the bill is stalled in the Veterans Committee.
    "If I got it to a vote on the floor of Congress, it would pass," Filner said.
    "We spend $1 billion in Iraq every 2 1/2 days. So several hundred million a year is 
not a lot of money. We can afford it, and it's a historical and moral necessity to right this 
wrong before they all die."
    Filner added, "There is still racism that led to this problem to begin with. We don't 
think of these Asian people as somebody we ought to be helping."
    The plight of the surviving Filipino warriors has galvanized young Filipino Americans 
like no other issue.
    Student Action for Veterans Equity, a Bay Area-based coalition of students with a 
strong contingent at UC Davis, is spearheading the fight.
    "It's definitely the most important issue facing Filipino Americans," said SAVE 
spokeswoman Erin Dawn Passaporte. "We recognize we're here because of the 
World War II veterans who fought for the freedoms we're sort of tasting right now."
    Passaporte, 27, has been working with Filipino veterans in San Francisco for years 
and sees their daily struggle for better housing and medical care. Most live on $776 
a month Supplemental Security Income.
    In the Capitol basement, alongside Rick Rocamora's photo exhibit of the lives of 
Filipino war veterans, Seva and his compatriots shared war stories.
    Seva, a sergeant with the U.S. 1st Infantry Division, recalled April 10, 1942, the day 
the Japanese marched more than 70,000 Filipino and American POWs about 70 miles 
in blistering heat without food or water.
    "My God, it was hell," Seva said. "If you tried to go out of line to buy food or drink 
from villagers they just stabbed you with bayonets. Those who couldn't go on, they just 
killed them." As many as 11,000 didn't make it to the prison camp.
    Seva became a judge after the war and moved to the United States in 1993 after 
receiving a letter qualifying him for U.S. citizenship.
    Bert Arcaya, who was captured by the Japanese on the southern Filipino island of 
Mindanao , gave an impassioned speech to his comrades at the Capitol:
    "After we have fought so many battles we still have a last one to fight," said Arcaya, 
84, who lives in a Sacramento retirement home.
    "We were regularly organized military units ordered to enlist by the president of the 
U.S. " Arcaya said. "We were required to take the Pledge of Allegiance and the 
soldier's oath to defend the Constitution of the United States of America , not the 
Constitution of the Philippines ."
    Arcaya, an engineering student when he was called to active service, said he and 
many other Filipinos joined the guerrillas in the hills. "We used to sing 'God Bless 
America ' and ' America the Beautiful' -- we considered America the mother country."
    Many Filipinos saw their wives and daughters raped or bayoneted, Arcaya said. 
"My father-in-law and father were captured, tortured and finally beheaded."
    Nearly 100,000 Filipino veterans gave their lives during World War II, Arcaya said. 
"Telling us we are not U.S. veterans after we have suffered dishonors all Filipino people.
    "It's not a matter of money or benefits," Arcaya said. "It's a matter of justice and 
integrity."
    Sorcy Apostol, a Filipino American professor at Sacramento City College, said 
the 2.3 million Filipino Americans -- half of them Californians -- don't have the political 
clout to get the bill passed, but time is of the essence.
    "In five or six years from now almost all of them will be gone," she said, "and you 
want them to really taste the victory they fought for."

8/25/06 AsianWeek.com: Grace Meng Drops Out of Race,
by Heather Harlan
    The daughter of New York State Assembly member Jimmy Meng has dropped out 
of the race for his seat, meaning that the anti-establishment movement that swept Meng 
into office may be coming to an end. 
    Grace Meng said her sudden withdrawal was due to a challenge to her residency 
filed in State Supreme Court by rival candidate Ellen Young. 
    Although I believe I have the required proof, i.e., tax forms, drivers license, etc., I do 
not want my family friends, neighbors and supporters to go through a lengthy trial, Meng 
said in a statement. I also do not want my contributions to be used toward a legal battle.
    Meng also thanked her supporters and added that she would remain active on behalf 
of the community.
    Jimmy Meng was the first Asian American to win a state office in New York when he 
upset the democratic political establishment by being elected to the state Assembly in 
2004, representing the heavily Asian neighborhoods of Flushing, Queens . In May, Meng 
announced he would quit after just one term, citing a herniated disk causing severe 
headaches, blurry vision and hearing problems. Soon afterward, Meng announced that 
his daughter Grace, a 31-year-old lawyer, would run instead.
    Grace Mengs campaign, however, got off to a rocky start as local community support 
quickly shifted to Young, a former district administrator for the citys other Asian American 
elected official, City Councilman John Liu. Despite being asked to support Meng, Liu 
instead threw his considerable political weight behind Young. The Queens Democratic 
Organization also chose Young, who then picked up an endorsement from UNITE HERE, 
a large union of garment, hotel food service and laundry workers.
    In 2004, Liu also campaigned against Jimmy Meng, and supported the candidate of 
New York s Democratic Party establishment, a veteran white politician.
    Hanging over Mengs election bid was another legal problem an ongoing investigation 
by the Queens District Attorneys office into 160 voter registrations during her fathers race 
that the Board of Elections determined where illegal.
    Grace Meng has defended her fathers win, saying that the incorrect addresses were 
the result of language differences on the Chinese-language ballots, which in Chinese 
asked for address as opposed to the English-language ballots that asked for a home 
address. 
    Youngs court challenge against Grace Meng claims that she lived at other homes on 
Long Island and in another part of Queens outside her district.
    Community leaders reacted to the announcement with surprise and dismay.
    I was disappointed, but I respect her decision, said Peter Koo, president of the Flushing 
Chinese Business Association. I was also disappointed when he [her father] didnt continue. 
As a freshman, he did pretty good, but he was there less than 2 years.
    Now, Young is the last Asian American candidate left in the race. She will likely face off 
against former City Councilwoman Julia Harrison in Septembers democratic primary. 
Another candidate, Terence Park, was removed from the ballot based on invalidated 
signatures on his petition forms. Park is appealing that decision.

8/19/06  http://goldsea.com : "Two Candidates Seek to Become First Filipino in U.S. Congress,"
    Two Filipino-Americans are struggling against long odds and a crowded field of candidates - including each other -  to become the first member of the U.S. Congress from one of the country's largest immigrant groups.
    Filipino organizations nationwide are pushing for either state senator Ron Menor or Honolulu Councilman Nestor Garcia to win the Democratic primary in Hawaii 's 2nd District.
    In a race with 10 Democrats, both Menor and Garcia are hoping to gain an advantage by 
pulling votes from Hawaii 's 275,000 residents who claim Filipino ancestry. The winner of the 
Sept. 23 Democratic primary is heavily favored to take the seat.
    But both Filipino-American candidates face a difficult road to the House of Representatives.
    While no candidate has emerged as a clear front-runner, four of the Democrats in the race had raised more money than Menor or Garcia as of July 31. The winner in the Nov. 7 general election would replace Congressman Ed Case, who is trying to take the Senate seat of fellow Democrat Daniel Akaka.
    More Filipinos immigrated to the United States in 2003 than citizens of any other country except Mexico and India , according to immigration statistics. About 2.4 million Americans identified their ancestry as Filipino in the 2000 Census, more than several other national groups that have been represented in Congress for years, including Hawaiians and Japanese.
    Most Filipino-Americans live in California , Washington , New York and Hawaii .
    ``The pulse of the Filipino community is that they're really looking at it now,'' said Lynne Gutierrez, president of the Oahu Filipino Community Council. ``They're really into it.''
    Several previous Americans who trace their roots to the former U.S. colony in Southeast Asia have sought and failed to win seats in Congress, including California's Gloria Ochoa, West Virginia's Jon Amores and Tennessee's Lupo ``Sonny'' Carlota.
    That could change if Filipinos across the United States are able to unite behind Menor or Garcia, said Jon Melegrito, spokesman for the Washington, D.C.-based National Federation of Filipino American Associations, which is holding its national convention in Hawaii next month.
    ``We've been trying over the years to send Filipino Americans to the U.S. Congress,'' Melegrito said. ``They haven't been able to mobilize the kind of money and resources and votes to get them elected.''
    Former Hawaii Governor Ben Cayetano, who served two terms ending in 2002, was the nation's first and only Filipino governor and the highest Filipino American officeholder ever elected in the United States .
    ``My election will exemplify and symbolize the significant strides Filipinos in Hawaii have made in all areas of life,'' Menor said. ``On the national level, Filipinos have been underrepresented.''
    Menor said if he were elected to the House, he would draw on his experience as a consumer advocate who has served in the Hawaii Legislature since 1982.
    ``Whether it's me or Ron or someone else in the country who's running, one of these days we're going to grab that brass ring,'' Garcia said. ``I would like to think it's Hawaii who sends a Filipino to Congress.''

8/18/06 New York Times: Asian American Students Increase in Top New York Schools; 
Blacks and Hispanics Decline [re-written to remove liberal bias]
    Over the last ten years, Asian American enrollment at New York s three most elite 
specialized high schools: Stuyvesant High School , the Bronx High School of Science 
and Brooklyn Technical High School .  White enrollment has declined at two of the three 
schools.  Even though the city created a special institute ten years ago to prepare black 
and Hispanic students for the entrance exam, the percentage of such students has 
declined. 
    The drop mirrors a trend recently reported at three of the City University of New Yorks 
five most prestigious colleges, where the proportion of black students has dropped 
significantly in the six years since rigorous admissions policies were adopted. 
    Supporters of the entrance exam, which tests verbal and math skills, say it ensures 
that admissions are based on merit, while critics argue that elite colleges would never 
judge applicants on test results alone. 
    The Asian American population has reached as high as 60.6 percent at Bronx Science, 
up from 40.8 percent 11 years ago.
    During 2005-6, blacks made up 4.8 percent of the Bronx Science student body, 
according to city figures, down from 11.8 percent in 1994-95, when the institute was 
created. At Brooklyn Technical High School , the proportion of black students has declined 
to 14.9 percent from 37.3 percent 11 years ago, and at Stuyvesant, blacks now make up 
2.2 percent of the student body, down from 4.4 percent. 
    Hispanic enrollment has also declined at the three schools, as has white enrollment at 
two of the three although it has risen at Brooklyn Tech. 
    Over all, Hispanic students are the largest group in the citys schools at 36.7 percent, 
and black students are next at 34.7 percent. The 1.1 million-student system is 14.3 percent 
Asian and 14.2 percent white.
    In 1971, the State Legislature passed a law requiring that entrance to the specialized 
schools be determined by competitive examination alone. 
    For years, exclusive public schools throughout the country have been places where 
advocates of strict, color-blind standards have clashed with proponents of racial diversity. 
    Courts imposed a race-based admissions system on the Boston Latin School , but a 
federal appeals court struck the system down. In the 1990s, Chinese-American families 
whose children were rejected from San Francisco s selective Lowell High School sued; 
the resulting settlement reversed a citywide admissions system that took race into account.

8/18/06  Los Angeles Times: Young to Quit Wal-Mart Group After Racial Remarks,
by Abigail Goldman
    Andrew Young, the civil rights leader and former U.N. ambassador, said Thursday that 
he would resign as head of a Wal-Mart advocacy group, acknowledging "demagogic" 
remarks about Jewish, Asian and Arab business owners.
    Young, 74, has been lobbying minority groups and civic leaders to accept Wal-Mart 
stores in their neighborhoods, a relationship that has drawn criticism from other African 
American leaders. In an interview published in Thursday's Los Angeles Sentinel, he was 
asked about the retailer's role in displacing mom-and-pop stores.
    Well, I think they should; they ran the 'mom-and-pop' stores out of my neighborhood," 
he told the Sentinel, the oldest and largest black-owned weekly newspaper in the West.
    "But you see those are the people who have been overcharging us selling us stale 
bread, and bad meat and wilted vegetables. And they sold out and moved to Florida . I 
think they've ripped off our communities enough. First it was Jews, then it was Koreans 
and now it's Arabs, very few black people own these stores."
    Wal-Mart Stores Inc. said that although it did not ask for Young's resignation, it 
supported his decision to step down.
    "We are appalled by these comments," spokeswoman Mona Williams said. "We are 
also dismayed that they would come from someone who has worked so hard for so 
many years for equal rights in this country."
    Young, in an interview Thursday night from his Atlanta home, expressed regret.
    "I understand I've created a whole firestorm out there," Young said. "It's unfortunate 
and I should not have said it, and I apologize for it. It has not been my experience or my 
meaning."
    Community leaders condemned his remarks.
    "Paid Wal-Mart spokesman Andrew Young's racist comments are not only an affront 
to the religious and ethnic groups he attacked, but to the growing multiracial movement 
in Los Angeles and other cities that has a starkly different vision than Young and 
Wal-Mart's 'any job is a good job' mantra," said Danny Feingold, a spokesman for the 
Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy.
    The alliance was part of a coalition of activists that two years ago defeated Wal-Mart's 
bid to build a store in Inglewood .
    Amanda Susskind, regional director for the Los Angeles Anti-Defamation League, 
said that although she was disturbed by Young's comments, she was relieved to see 
his full and unequivocal apology.
    "In Los Angeles , where we're all living together in this incredibly multicultural city, it's 
not productive for us to categorize each other in such hateful ways," Susskind said. 
"Someone in his position needs to be aware of the responsibility of modeling behavior."
    The giant retailer from Bentonville , Ark. , is eager to burnish its image as it tries to 
expand in coastal and urban markets beyond its Southern and Midwestern base. It has 
been under financial pressure; just this week, it reported its first quarterly decline in 
profit in 10 years.
    Wal-Mart scored a coup in February when it hired Young an ordained minister 
and former mayor of Atlanta to head Working Families for Wal-Mart, a group funded 
by the retailer to counter rising criticism by unions and community activists.
    A group of Young's fellow pastors publicly criticized him for siding with Wal-Mart, 
saying that the company's pay and benefits do little to help the poor entry-level workers 
who form the bulk of the company's 1.3 million domestic employees.
    Still, other black leaders have held out hope that the company's plans for urban 
expansion will revitalize poor neighborhoods by offering jobs, shopping alternatives 
and low prices the reason former Los Angeles Urban League President John Mack 
gave four years ago for supporting the company's opening of a store in the Crenshaw 
district.
    Young, who was in Los Angeles last week to meet with city officials and reporters 
on Wal-Mart's behalf, has stood fast in his position that the company helps working 
people, including African Americans.
    Although Wal-Mart moved quickly Thursday to distance itself from Young's comments, 
the imbroglio offered critics another opportunity to jab at the company.
    "Andrew Young's statements are offensive and wrong," said Nu Wexler of Wal-Mart 
Watch, a union-backed group in Washington . "Wal-Mart hired Young to conduct 
outreach to minority communities, and he's insulting and demeaning them instead. 
The small, family-owned grocers that Young dismisses are the economic backbone 
of many urban neighborhoods, and they provide a valuable service to the 
communities they represent."
    On Thursday, Young said he was trying to describe the continuing generational and 
ethnic turnover of small local stores. Clarifying his remarks to the Sentinel, he asserted 
that many small stores in his neighborhood weren't shuttered because of Wal-Mart but 
were sold by elderly owners who retired.
    And although his own neighborhood's small stores weren't owned by gougers 
selling inferior goods, other urban dwellers have faced that problem, Young said  
a sentiment echoed by many urban leaders. Young said he was trying to explain that 
Wal-Mart can solve that problem.
    "I guess I was sort of being confronted and challenged for supporting the big monster 
Wal-Mart, as they call it," Young said. "I was attempting to say that these large shops 
have been good for my community, and in this meeting I said it too quick. And instead 
of giving a long explanation, it was a racist shorthand, which was wrong."

8/16/06 press release: Asian American Action Fund Condemns Senator George Allen's
Racist Remarks,
Contact: Shankar Duraiswamy (908.507.2949), Namrata Mujumdar (614.563.4530)
   Washington, D.C. / August 16, 2006 The Asian American Action Fund condemns
Senator George Allen's racist remarks to a 20-year-old Indian American University of
Virginia student, S. R. Sidarth, who was born and raised in Fairfax County.  Allen referred
to Sidarth, the only person of color who was present at a campaign rally in western Virginia ,
as a name that sounded like "Macaca."
   "The AAA-Fund strongly condemns Senator Allen's offensive, racially tinged remarks. 
It is truly disappointing to hear a national Republican leader engage in such demeaning
diatribes," said Gautum Dutta, Board Member of the Asian American Action Fund.  "We
call on Republicans and Democrats alike to hold Senator Allen accountableand to ensure
that we all remain 'welcome' in our America ."
    Congressman Mike Honda, the Democratic National Committee Vice Chairman and a
AAA-Fund Board member, called on Senator Allen to apologize for his remarks:  "The
offensive and racially-tinged comments made by Senator George Allen have no place in
our political debate, and have even less of a place in this great country of ours. As a third-
generation Japanese American, I call on Senator Allen to apologize to the young American
staff person who is of Indian decent and to apologize to the Indian and Asian American
community as a whole."
   The word "macaca" refers to a type of monkey commonly found in Africa and Asia . 
In certain French-speaking societies, it is an ethnic slur against people with dark skin;
George Allen's mother is an immigrant of French Tunisian descent.  According to the
Washington Post, Allen's remarks have thrust his pastwhich includes a youthful admiration
of the Confederate flag and an office that once displayed a nooseback into the public
spotlight in the midst of the Republican's senatorial battle against Jim Webb, a Navy
secretary during the Reagan administration.
   As of the 2000 Census, there were 48,815 Indian Americans living in Virginia . 
Nationally, 78% of South Asian Americans are registered to vote, and 93% of these
citizens voted in the 2000 elections. 
   The AAA-Fund is a Democratic political action committee whose goal is to increase
the voice of Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders on every level of local, state and
federal government in America .  To achieve this goal, we address the chronic under-
representation of Asian Pacific Americans (APAs) as campaign volunteers, campaign
contributors, and candidates for political office. The AAA-Fund has endorsed Indian
American candidates across the country including Kumar Barve, the Democratic Majority
Leader of the Maryland House of Delegates, Swati Dandekar, State Representative of
Iowa, and Jay Goyal, the Democratic candidate for the 73rd District of the Ohio State
House.

8/16/06 Washington Post: Allen on Damage Control After Remarks to Webb Aide,
by Michael D. Shear and Tim Craig
    Richmond -- Sen. George Allen on Tuesday sought to contain the political damage 
from remarks he made to a Fairfax County man that dredged up charges of racial 
insensitivity -- allegations that have dogged him for years as governor, senator and 
now presidential hopeful.
    Despite a quick apology Monday, criticism poured in about Allen's use of the word 
"Macaca" to address a volunteer for the campaign of his Democratic opponent, 
James Webb, and also about another Allen comment, "Welcome to America ." 
Democrats, left-wing bloggers and civil rights groups called him "insensitive" and 
"racist," while some conservatives called him "foolish" and "mean."
    The question was fiercely debated all day: Was "Macaca," which literally means 
a genus of monkey, a deliberate racist epithet or a weird ad-libbed word with no 
meaning? And what was Allen trying to say by singling out the young man of Indian 
descent?
    Allen's defenders rushed to his side, saying the comments, though careless, do 
not reflect what is inside the senator's heart. Sudhakar Shenoy, an Indian business 
executive from Fairfax who has known Allen for years, said he "has been an 
incredible friend to Indians" and is not a racist. "I'd stake everything I have that 
George is not that kind of a guy," Shenoy said.
    In a statement released Tuesday afternoon, Allen (R-Va.) said his remarks 
Friday to S.R. Sidarth, who at the time was videotaping an Allen campaign event 
on Webb's behalf, "have been greatly misunderstood by members of the media." 
He said Monday that "Macaca" was a play on "Mohawk," a nickname given to 
Sidarth by the Allen campaign because of his hairstyle. In Tuesday's statement, 
Allen said he "made up a nickname for the cameraman, which was in no way 
intended to be racially derogatory. Any insinuations to the contrary are completely 
false."
    The comments were made at a campaign stop in the southwestern Virginia town 
of Breaks , where Allen spoke to about 100 supporters. Moments after greeting the 
crowd, Allen repeatedly pointed at Sidarth, called him "Macaca, or whatever his 
name is" and went on to say, "Welcome to America and the real world of Virginia ," 
as the crowd laughed.
    With the video of Allen's remarks available around the globe via Youtube.com 
and other Web sites, the Virginia controversy became one of the most blogged-
about topics on the Internet, according to the Technorati Web site, which tracks 
entries on 51.3 million blogs.
    That thrust Sidarth, 20, a volunteer working as the Democratic eyes and ears on 
Allen's campaign, into the national spotlight. He was interviewed Tuesday by 
several major newspapers and appeared on CNN and other television networks.
    Meanwhile, Allen's past -- which includes a youthful admiration of the Confederate 
flag and an office that once displayed a noose -- lurched back into the public 
spotlight during the Republican's senatorial battle against Webb, a Navy secretary 
during the Reagan administration.
    During the past two years, as Allen has flirted with the idea of running for 
president in 2008, he has introduced symbolic anti-lynching legislation in the 
Senate and promised to lead the charge for an official apology for slavery. 
Political pundits who follow Allen closely said the new comments threaten that 
well-planned effort.
    "There are very few issues in American politics that are more sensitive than 
race. Senator Allen has just plunked himself down in the middle of it," said Geoffrey 
D. Garin, a leading Democratic pollster. "Allen's comments take him back to a 
place he was trying to escape from."
    Avoiding the subjects of race and Allen's history was proving unlikely in the short 
term as the odd story of the senator's comments bounced around the nation's capital.
    Sanjay Puri, the leader of the nation's largest Indian political action committee and 
a longtime Allen supporter, said he will lead a delegation of Indian business 
executives and community leaders to meet with Allen on Wednesday to express 
dismay.
    "The comments are very insensitive. That's what we want to find out: How can we 
continue working with him?" Puri said. "The senator has had a very good relationship 
with our community. I was pretty surprised -- you can say shocked."
    Mark Potok, director of the intelligence project for the Southern Poverty Law Center, 
based in Montgomery, Ala., said it was "simply impossible to believe" that Allen did 
not intend the comments as a racial insult.
    "To me, it looks like yet another case of a politician pandering to the worst instincts 
in an all-white crowd," Potok said.
    Virginia Gov. Timothy M. Kaine (D), who during his campaign last year was 
dogged by young GOP operatives with video cameras -- usually called trackers -- 
chided Allen.
    "It's insensitive," Kaine said. "Campaigns are tough. But George has been in 
campaigns. He knows there's trackers. It's just a fact of life. You should just do your 
thing and not single them out."
    Big-time campaigns often assign trackers to shadow their opponents, hoping to 
catch the candidate making a gaffe or shifting the message to accommodate 
different audiences. Virginia Republicans have tracked Webb this year. Often, 
videos can end up in campaign commercials.
    That was the job of Sidarth, a University of Virginia senior who attended Thomas  
Jefferson High School in Fairfax County . His father, Shekar Narasimhan, is a 
mortgage banker who has contributed more than $35,000 to Democratic causes in 
the past decade, according to a review of state and federal campaign finance reports.
    Sidarth joined Webb's effort this summer, initially working as a field organizer. 
Last week, when Allen kicked off his statewide "listening tour," Sidarth was asked 
to trail Allen, he said. Driving his 1996 Volvo, he followed Allen from Charlottesville  
to Richmond to the Northern Neck. He said he was "shocked" when Allen began 
talking about him.
    "I didn't believe that he had gone to using race in the political arena," he said.
    Rich Lowry, editor of the conservative National Review, wrote on the magazine's 
Web site Tuesday that he did not think Allen was "trying to speak a coded racist 
language." But Lowry said Allen showed he "has a mean streak."

8/15/06 San Jose Mercury News: India emigre named first female CEO of PepsiCo,
By Michelle Quinn
    In a move that epitomizes Indo-Americans' rise in corporate America, PepsiCo 
announced Monday that an executive born, raised and educated in India will become 
the new chief executive of the soft drink and snack company.
    Indra Nooyi, 50, who is PepsiCo's chief financial officer, will take the reins of 
PepsiCo, a multinational company with brands that include Frito-Lay, Gatorade, 
Tropicana and Quaker Foods. Nooyi also makes PepsiCo the second-largest Fortune 
500 company with a woman at the helm, behind agricultural processor Archer Daniels 
Midland.
    For some in Silicon Valley 's large Indo-American community, Nooyi's appointment 
Monday symbolizes a new era, a crack in the corporate glass ceiling that some feel 
hinders ambitious Indo-Americans from running large corporations.
    ``It's more than money, more than prestige,'' says Deepka Lalwani, founder and 
president of Indian Business and Professional Women, a Santa Clara County 
professional group. ``It means we arrive.''
    In Silicon Valley and elsewhere in the United States , Indo-Americans have a strong 
presence in fields such as engineering, science and finance. The most visible Indo-
Americans in Silicon Valley are Vinod Khosla, co-founder of Sun Microsystems and 
a powerful venture capitalist, and Vyomesh Joshi, a longtime top executive at Hewlett-
Packard who has been mentioned as a contender to run the company when past HP 
chief executives have left.
    But breaking into the top echelon of consumer product companies such as PepsiCo 
has been harder for Indo-Americans, said Tina Shah, co-founder of Indus Women 
Leaders, who has worked in sales and marketing at both Clorox and Procter & Gamble. 
``You don't see the kind of diversity there that you might see in the valley.''
    In 1998, Shah heard Nooyi (pronounced New Yee) speak in New York about the 
cultural barriers she had to overcome by studying up on baseball and picking up the 
language of her colleagues. ``It stuck in my mind,'' says Shah. ``She's an inspiration 
for many South Asian women.''
    But for some Indo-Americans, Nooyi's rise, while applauded, isn't seen in terms of 
her gender or ethnicity.
    ``I don't think of it in that sense,'' says Padmasree Warrior, Motorola's chief 
technology officer. ``I think of her as a leader.''
    Warrior knows Nooyi, who serves on Motorola's board. ``She is very strategic in her 
thinking. She is very sharp. She can get to the heart of issues. She is a very clear thinker 
and very people oriented. She has the ingredients necessary to lead Pepsi.''
    ``I'm really pleased,'' says Anu Maitra, president of Floreat, a software company 
based in Saratoga . ``But I don't think of it as something that opens a door for me. I don't 
think it signifies a world that will be more accepting of me. I have to navigate the world 
on my own terms and do the best I can.''
    Based in Purchase, N.Y., PepsiCo is the second largest soft drink company behind 
Coca-Cola.
    Nooyi, who lives in Connecticut with her husband and two children, grew up in Madras , 
India . After dinner, Nooyi's mother would present world problems to Nooyi and her sister 
to solve, such as what would you do if you were the prime minister of India , according to 
a 2004 article in India New England. At the end, her mother would decide who was the 
winner.
    After attending college and graduate school in India , Nooyi earned a master's in 
public and private management from the Yale School of Management. Prior to working 
at PepsiCo, Nooyi was a senior vice president at Asea Brown Boveri and vice 
president and director of corporate strategy and planning at Motorola.
    In 1994, Nooyi joined PepsiCo. Since 2001, she has been the company's president 
and chief financial officer, as well as a director on its board. She will be the fifth chief 
executive in the company's 41-year history.
    In a recent graduation speech at Columbia University 's business school, Nooyi asked 
the new MBAs to tread carefully in other countries and cultures. ``Remember to do your 
part to influence perception,'' she said.
    Nooyi's appointment as PepsiCo's chief signifies a shift in how corporate America  
sees itself, says Radha Basu, founder and former chief executive of SupportSoft, a
Redwood City software company.
    ``It shows that they are not just going to have a strong America home base but 
become a true global company,'' says Basu, who worked at HP for 20 years.
    Nooyi's rise is an example of the benefits to the U.S. economy and society of India  
immigration, said Seshan Rammohan, executive director of The Indus Entrepreneurs 
Silicon Valley, an Indo-American networking group.
    ``It speaks well of America and the breaking of the glass ceiling,'' he says. 
``PepsiCo is a well-known company. To become the CEO of that company is a hell of 
a coup.''

8/14/06 Sacramento Bee: Trial judges don't reflect state's diversity, bar says,
by Aurelio Rojas
    Sacramento As California has become one of the most ethnically diverse states in 
the nation, so has its Legislature. But one branch of state government has been slow to 
change: the courts. 
    Whites account for less than half the state's population, but slightly more than 82 percent 
of the lawyers and the same percentage of trial judges, according to the State Bar.
    "There is a geographic and, perhaps, a demographic inequity on the bench throughout 
California ," said Sen. Richard Alarcon, D-Sylmar.
    To Alarcon, it is not just a question of diversity. Turnover on the bench is rare. Trial 
judges are appointed by the governor. They face retention battles only if someone runs 
against them and seldom lose.
    With different motivations, the liberal Alarcon and a conservative ally, Sen. George 
Runner, R-Lancaster, teamed up this year to introduce a measure to change how judges 
are elected in Los Angeles County . 
    But last week , Senate Constitutional Amendment 16, which would have required 
judges to run in 12 judicial districts instead of countywide, died without a vote in the 
Senate Judiciary Committee.
    The authors, who plan to reintroduce the measure next year, blamed the judges' 
lobby for opposing reforms to make judicial seats more competitive and thus open to 
diversity.
    To be a judge currently requires membership in the State Bar for at least 10 years, 
a criterion met by relatively few Latinos, Asian-Americans and African-Americans.
    While nearly a third of Californians are Latino, they account for only 7 percent of the 
judges. Asians comprise about 11 percent of the population and 5 percent of the 
judiciary; African Americans 6 percent of the population and a little more than 5 
percent of the judges.
    But Mike Belote, a lobbyist for the California Judges Association, said the pool 
of judicial candidates is too small to make a comparison based on population.
    "It's not fair to say the bench doesn't reflect the diversity of the state, because you 
can't just pick anyone," Belote said.
    Without a gubernatorial appointment, it isn't easy breaking into the judicial ranks. 
Statewide, only 213 of the 1,477 judges 14 percent won a seat on the bench 
by election, according to the Judicial Council of California.
    The election route was even less traveled in Los Angeles County - home to one 
in four Californians. There, 47 of the 424 judges - 11 percent - were put on the bench 
by voters spread out across 4,061 square miles.
    "Probably the call I get the most come election time is from voters saying, Who are 
these judges?' " said Sen. George Runner, R-Lancaster, whose district is centered 
60 miles northeast of downtown Los Angeles . Voters are asked to weigh in on judges 
sitting on the other side of the county.
    Of the 429 superior court judges in Los Angeles , 116 (27 percent) are ethnic 
minorities, according to the Judicial Council.
    Runner, who was seeking to increase local control of the judiciary, knew the 
constitutional amendment to change the rules faced an uphill fight.
    "Judges don't like it because they don't like to be challenged," Runner said.
Alarcon also blamed the judges' lobby for defeating the amendment.
    "The judicial lobby is, frankly, very strong and obviously judges know a lot of 
elected officials," he said.
    SCA 16 would have required each district to "be geographically compact and 
contiguous to the extent practicable," consist of no more than 36 Superior Court 
judges, and comply with the federal Voting Rights Act.
    But opponents of the bill said the measure would have been costly by requiring 
additional court facilities - and its benefits questionable.
    June Clark, a senior attorney for the Judicial Council, said SCA 16 would have 
rolled back efficiencies resulting from a 1998 ballot measure that allowed counties 
to consolidate municipal and superior courts.
    "The judicial council is very supportive of a bench that reflects the diversity of 
Californians," Clark said. "But, well intentioned as though it may be, we do not believe 
that SCA 16 would have had a meaningful impact."
    Beloit noted the measure was opposed by the California Latino Judges 
Association, which in a letter to Runner, said SCA 16 "would have reversed years 
of recent efforts to improve the public's access to the courts."
    But the Mexican-American Bar Association of Los Angeles disagreed, arguing 
judicial districts would allow candidates to mount far less expensive campaigns 
than running countywide.
    "The judicial districts should, over a period of time, result in more diversity among 
the Superior Court judges," the association wrote in support of the measure.
    But Clark said judges are rarely challenged even in smaller counties, where the 
theory espoused by SCA 16 says there should be more competition.
    This year, there were no challenges to incumbents or open seats in Fresno, 
Sonoma, or Tulare, three counties similar to the size of judicial districts required by 
measure - about 800,000 residents.
    Governors wield far more influence than voters over who sits on the bench.
    Gov. Gray Davis' most lasting legacy may be his judicial appointments. The 
Democrat picked a greater percentage of female and minority judges than any 
other governor in state history.
    When he left office in 2003, after being recalled, Davis had appointed 360 judges. 
Women and minorities each made up about a third of his appointments.
    Latinos fared particularly well, accounting for 45 of the judges appointed by Davis .
    His successor, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, has been criticized by Latino groups 
that contend he has not been as inclusive in his appointments to the bench.
    But Sabrina Lockhart, a spokeswoman for the Republican governor, said the 
percentage of minority judges named picked by Schwarzenegger is higher than their 
representation in the State Bar.
    Of the 176 appointments the governor has made thus far, 7.4 percent identified 
themselves as Asian-Americans, 6.3 percent as Latinos and 3.4 percent as African-
Americans.
    "We welcome any applicant," Lockhart said. "We're always looking for the best 
and the brightest to serve."

8/8/06 San Jose Mercury News: Eager to make it in America ,
by K. Oanh Ha
    A common perception is that illegal immigrants are uneducated laborers with few 
opportunities at home. This family smashes that stereotype
    For many immigrants, few things represent the American dream like a home of 
their own. So it was a proud day for a Thai immigrant and her three adult children 
when they pooled their resources to buy a five-bedroom, two-story home in 
Sacramento last August.
    But their success story is in jeopardy. Two of her children -- college graduates 
who gave up promising careers in their homeland -- are illegal immigrants at risk of 
deportation.
    The family's story illustrates an often overlooked reality about immigration. A 
common perception is that illegal immigrants are uneducated laborers with few 
opportunities at home who gratefully take menial jobs in America . Yet, a quarter of 
undocumented immigrants have at least some college education, with 15 percent 
holding a bachelor's degree or better, according to a report by the Pew Hispanic  
Center .
    Their story also debunks another common assumption about undocumented 
immigrants: The Thai family didn't cross the border illegally, but entered the country 
with valid visas, like almost half of the nearly 12 million undocumented immigrants 
living in the United States . A full 90 percent of illegal immigrants who are not from 
Mexico or Central America are visitors who have overstayed their visas, according 
to another Pew report.
    Different backgrounds
    Immigrants who enter with visas often don't have the same backgrounds as those 
jumping the border, said Jeff Passel of the center.
    ``To get a tourist or student visa, you have to have assets and education and look 
middle-class,'' he said.
    Some who advocate curbing immigration, such as the Federation for American 
Immigration Reform, favor scrutinizing education and other ``merits'' of would-be 
immigrants. But when it comes to illegal immigrants, a FAIR spokesman said all 
should be discouraged to stay and deported if caught.
    ``You shouldn't get a free pass if you've got a Ph.D.,'' said Ira Mehlman of FAIR.
    The Thai family members, who requested anonymity and are identified by their 
nicknames, think America might be more welcoming if people know how eager and 
able they are to make a contribution in their adopted home.
    While the mother, Pini, and her youngest daughter are legal residents, her son and 
older daughter are not.
    ``I know I can do so much for this country,'' said Linda, 29. ``We just want America  
to give us a chance.''
    She and her brother, Nick, 31, are among an estimated 1.5 million Asians living 
illegally in the United States .
    Undocumented Asian immigrants -- most of whom come from China , the 
Philippines and India -- are rarely visible. They tend not to gather outside Home 
Depot stores offering their labor, or to take orders at the counters of a fast-food 
restaurant. Instead, many disappear into their ethnic enclaves, working in kitchens 
or small businesses.
    The Thai family's predicament underscores a deep problem in U.S. immigration 
policy. Reuniting families is the foremost priority, with nearly 60 percent of ``green 
cards'' going to relatives of U.S. citizens or permanent residents in 2005. But legally 
reuniting with family members in the United States can take decades. Families from 
Asia have the longest waits of any region -- up to 23 years for the Philippines , 
because of demand and visa limits assigned to each country.
    For Pini, eager to reunite with her children, her family is intact, but two of her 
children are lawbreakers relegated to menial jobs despite their education and skills.
    The family didn't consider moving to America until 1998, when the Asian financial 
crisis that crippled Southeast Asia ruined a once-thriving family import business.
    Pini, who is estranged from the father of her children, married a Thai-American 
living in Bangkok . She came to California with him, but they have since divorced. 
She filed immigration paperwork for Nina to immigrate, and her daughter soon 
joined her. The application received priority because Nina was under 21 at the 
time.
    Pini found work as a preschool teacher in Richmond and planned to bring Nick 
and Linda to the United States . She consulted an immigration lawyer and received 
what she now knows is bad advice -- that her kids could arrive on a tourist visa, and 
then file petitions to stay permanently.
    Nick and Linda arrived at San Francisco 's International Airport in 2001 on tourist 
visas valid for six months. By the time they realized their immigration lawyer had led 
them astray, they said, they had already broken the law by overstaying their visas. 
Pini has since filed paperwork to request permanent residency for Nick and Linda.
    Low-paying jobs
    Although they lacked work permits, they found jobs at Bay Area restaurants owned 
by Asian immigrants. Their base pay was well beneath the minimum wage. Since 
moving to Sacramento from the Bay Area two years ago, they've had a salary 
increase: $50 for a 10-hour day.
    All four family members work in restaurants. Despite the meager pay, they pool 
their earnings to achieve family goals. Last year, they bought their $405,000 home.
    Money is tight, and everyone contributes equally to pay the mortgage and bills. But 
they also enjoy a few comforts that are classically American: a big, flat-screen 
Panasonic television that hangs in a living room with modern decor, and new kitchen 
appliances -- all purchased on credit.
    Now, the family is scouting Sacramento for locations to open a restaurant. ``We are 
working so hard, we might as well do it for ourselves,'' Linda said.
    Price of success
    But their success comes at a price. Linda, who earned a bachelor's degree in 
business and wants to start an interior decorating business, said she and her brother 
detest their jobs.
    ``Every day when I wipe a table or pick up money or clean someone's dishes, I think 
`What am I doing with my life?' '' she said, her voice cracking.
    The immigration debate fills them with both hope and fear. A House bill would make 
illegal immigrants felons, and aiding them a crime. Many worry that even family 
members could be prosecuted for sheltering undocumented relatives. So once a 
month, Nick methodically checks the headlights of the family's cars to make sure 
they function properly.
    ``I'm scared always,'' said Nick, who had worked as a translator for a Japanese 
firm in Thailand . ``I don't like living like a criminal.''
    The one thing that keeps him and Linda here is their family. ``Asian people, our 
family is everything,'' said Nick. ``I have to take care of my mom. That's my duty.''
    Despite his filial obligations, Nick said he will return to Thailand next year if his 
immigration status doesn't change.
    But if Nick and Linda leave, the family faces another dilemma. Pini and Nina 
wouldn't be able to afford their home. The responsibilities weigh heavily on Nina, 
the youngest. She's the only sibling with a green card, and will become a U.S. citizen 
next year. At 23, she still studies at a community college, between working the lunch 
and dinner shifts.
    Initially, the family pressured her to drop her art major and study something ``that 
makes money, like nursing,'' she said. Her family has eased off, yet she feels the guilt. 
``If I could, I would give Linda my green card,'' she said. ``She's smart. She's the 
smartest one.''
    They say they want to make America home because they're no longer as Thai as 
they used to be. Nick is a 49ers fan who dreams of joining the U.S. Navy.
    ``I think more like an American than a Thai person,'' Nick said. ``When I'm at the 
mall, people assume I'm American. I like that. I wish that can be true.''

8/6/06 The Orange County Register: Governor gives historic flag of S. Vietnam an official 
wave: Executive order gives yellow banner with three red stripes the state's recognition,
By Natalya Shulyakovskaya
    California state buildings and parks now have the governor's blessing to fly the former 
flag of South Vietnam during holidays and special occasions.
    At an impromptu stop in Little Saigon on Saturday morning, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger 
signed the long-awaited symbolic measure that gives the yellow flag with three red stripes 
the state's official recognition. 
    About 10 states and over a dozen California cities and counties already have done so.
Schwarzenegger praised the Vietnamese immigrant community for its courage, vitality 
and cultural and economic contribution to the state.
    Most Vietnamese immigrants fled their country after the communists' victory and feel 
contempt for the country's current red flag.
    Vietnamese leaders have pushed for the traditional flag's recognition for years, said Assemblyman Van Tran, R-Westminster.
    The move gained momentum last month when Assemblywoman Lynn Daucher, 
R-Fullerton, who is running for state Senate in the district covering Little Saigon, appealed 
to the governor for help.
    Both Schwarzenegger and Tran endorsed Daucher in her bid.
    Among registered Vietnamese-born voters in Orange County , Republicans outnumber 
Democrats 2-to-1.
    On Friday, the word spread that the move was final, and hundreds of Vietnamese 
gathered at the Rose Center in Westminster to cheer.

8/4/06 Washington Post: Lawyer Killed In Stabbing At Rowhouse In Northwest,
by Allison Klein
    A lawyer known for being active in the Asian American community was stabbed to 
death Wednesday night at a townhouse in Northwest Washington , police said.
    Robert Wone, 32, who lived in Oakton, was discovered about 11:45 p.m. in the 1500 
block of Swann Street NW , on the eastern edge of the Dupont Circle neighborhood. 
Police have made no arrests.
    Detectives are looking into the possibility that Wone was killed by an intruder who 
broke into the home, which sits in the middle of the block on a narrow, tree-lined street. 
Wone was stabbed in the chest three times with a butcher knife, police said.
    For the past month, Wone had been general counsel for Radio Free Asia, a nonprofit 
group that broadcasts news in Asian countries that do not have free media. Before that, 
he had worked for six years as an associate at the law firm Covington & Burling in 
Washington .
    Wone, who grew up in New York , was president-elect of the Asian Pacific American 
Bar Association's Washington area chapter.
    "We are devastated," said Sarah Jackson-Han, communications director for Radio 
Free Asia. "He had been here since July, and he had already made a terrific impression 
on everyone. He was a self-effacing, charming, lovely guy."
    Wone lived in the 10400 block of Graystone Court with his wife, Katherine Wone, 
whom he married in 2003. She did not wish to speak with reporters yesterday, according 
to someone who answered the door at the home.
    A source familiar with the case said Wone was working late Wednesday night and had 
stayed at a friend's house rather than drive home to Oakton. The source said an intruder 
broke into the house and found Wone, who had just gone to bed, on the first floor.
    Officials would not confirm this account, saying detectives were investigating. There 
were no immediate signs of forced entry into the house, said an investigator, who did not 
want to be identified because the case is open.
    Capt. C.V. Morris, head of the police department's violent crimes unit, said yesterday 
that detectives were interviewing the other people who were in the home at the time. 
Morris did not say how many people live there.
    Nobody else in the home was attacked, Morris said. "We're trying to find out if anything 
was taken from the home," he said.
    In the hours before he was killed, Wone spent time with John Lindburg, general counsel 
of Radio Free Europe. Lindburg, who has been in the business for many years, said he 
had taken an immediate liking to Wone and was "taking him under my wing."
    "He had a very, very promising life ahead of him," Lindburg said.
    The two got sandwiches at a Subway restaurant on H Street downtown, then attended 
a course on grant law offered by the D.C. Bar Association from 6 to 9 p.m., Lindburg said.
    About 9:30 p.m., Lindburg went home, and Wone told him he was going back to the office, 
on M Street downtown. It was unclear whether Wone made it there.
    Jackson-Han said it was not unusual for Wone to be at work at unconventional hours.
    "This past weekend, he came in just to see what happened on the weekends," she said. 
"And he brought ice cream for the staff."
    Wone was raised in New York , but his family emigrated from southern China , Jackson-
Han said.
    He received a bachelor's degree in public policy from the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg , and his law degree from the University of Pennsylvania . He then got a 
clerkship in Norfolk with Raymond A. Jackson, a federal judge in the Eastern District of 
Virginia.
    Jackson performed the wedding ceremony for the Wones at the Wyndham Northwest 
Chicago Hotel in Itasca , Ill. , according to a wedding announcement published in the New 
York Times.
    In 2000, Wone joined Covington & Burling, where he was an associate focusing on 
employment law and commercial real estate. While there, he donated time to several 
community organizations, including the Asian Pacific American Legal Resource Center , 
where he offered legal advice to merchants in the District.
    Jeanne Turner, a secretary at Covington & Burling, described Wone as "an extremely 
dedicated attorney" who was efficient in the office and spent a lot of time helping people 
outside the office.
    "Robert was a very kind, gentle, caring person," Turner said. "He was well respected 
by all his colleagues. When I think of Robert, I think of a beautiful smile."

8/3/06 Los Angeles City Beat: Chinatown s Civic Conduits: No longer officially in charge, benevolent societies still have social and political juice,
by Mindy Farabee
    The roasted whole pig, Michael Cheung explains, was donated by a member. They laid 
it out right here, he says, indicating a red metal table situated just below a portrait of the 
four 2,000-year-old noblemen Messrs. Lou, Quon, Cheung, and Chu who will receive 
incidental honors throughout the evening. Lest I mistake this shindig for a sort of cult ritual, 
Cheung clarifies about the incense and bowing. It wasnt a religious thing, he says. Its 
just to show respect. They are ancestors, after all. 
    Two weekends ago, the Lung Kong Tin Yee Benevolent Association held one of its more 
low-key just because gatherings, with about 100 people stopping by. Official celebrations 
include July 4, the anniversary of the day they acquired their headquarters, and various 
birthdays of their patron nobles, often with hundreds in attendance. Lung Kong Tin Yee has, 
like most of Chinatowns Benevolent Societies, nearly 1,000 members in this case, all 
surnamed Cheung, Lou, Quon, or Chu .
    Founded on family alliances forged more than a century ago in response to L.A.s strict 
policy of targeted neglect, from the late 1800s to the end of World War II, these 
organizations functioned as a virtual parallel government, settling court cases, policing the neighborhood, even, Cheung says, issuing travelers reentry visas when the U.S. State 
Department couldnt be bothered. Times have changed, but Chinatown s benevolent 
societies have endured, mainly because, with all due respect to the Chileans, the Chinese 
might be the worlds most social people. For various reasons, not least of which is a Great 
Wall of a language barrier, many just tend to socialize with each other.
    But Michael Cheungs name opens all doors here. Seven months ago, this wiry 
fiftysomething was elected president of the Chinatown Consolidated Benevolent Association, 
a volunteer position that requires him aided by his seventysomething vice president to 
serve the more than 10,000 members of the CCBAs 26 affiliated organizations. Chief 
among his official duties is the obligation to attend all events. Chief among his 
preoccupations is helping to erase the lingering line between his constituency and the L.A. mainstream. 
    You can walk up and down these streets and never know all this is here, Cheung tells 
me as we climb to the second floor of the Kong Chow Association and, without warning, 
into an incense-soaked Buddhist temple. Most of the temples here were built in the last 
10, 20 years, he says. This one was converted over 40 years ago. Not bad by L.A.  
standards, but theres more, Cheung explains. The hand-carved wooden plaques etched 
with mazy calligraphy, the ornately storied and gilded altar pieces imported from China  
none is less than 100 years old. Its a glimpse of the difference between an increasingly 
trendy Chinatown and an historic Chinatown .
    Along with the pertinent last name, a potential benevolent association member needs 
an application and recommendations from two members to gain admission, after which 
the nominal dues (a couple dollars a year) buy weekly kung-fu and Chinese-language 
classes for the kids, a modest lending library, and your own personal communal home 
base with an unlimited supply of pai gow. During the day, the multihued star adorning 
Lung Kongs floor is cluttered over with a dozen mah-jongg tables going full bore, 
unregulated ashtrays poised for duty.
    For many, Chinatown s societies remain their de facto venue for civic engagement. 
As such, the groups have racked up a hit-and-miss record lobbying city hall losing a 
battle to protect the areas characteristic architecture with restrictive zoning codes, yet 
winning the argument to keep North Broadway a two-way street but Cheung proudly 
promotes their latter-day role as a shared conduit to and from local government. 
Assemblymember Judy Chu, he notes, is of the Lung Kong Chus, and three of Monterey 
Park s five councilmembers belong to an association. Recent primary winner Kevin de 
Len successfully enlisted the associations in his quest for the coveted 45th Assembly 
District seat. Mayor Villaraigosa began making frequent appearances at society 
banquets back when he was councilmember for CD14, which borders, but does not 
include, Chinatown . He wanted to get known, Cheung explains.
    As Friday evening deepens, Cheung and I lounge on Lung Kongs balcony. Behind 
us, a group of 25 teenagers has moved from practicing martial-arts stances to 
rehearsing a lion-dance routine for the next days event. It looks entertaining, but what 
it means is better experienced than described. When kids come here, they change 
physically and psychologically, Cheung says. When they know kung fu, they dont need 
to be afraid of what confronts them in life, they can just do what is right.
    I walk away from the Lung Kong past 10 p.m., the dancers drums quickly losing out 
to a thudding hip-hop beat from a nearby nightclub playing to a multi-ethnic crowd. Next 
door, the entrance to the Hop Sing Tong Association is propped open, and, inside, its 
members sit unflappably mah-jongg-ing their way toward midnight.

8/1/06 San Francisco Chronicle: Dr. David Ho Among First Inducteess to California 
Hall of Fame
by Kimberly Geiger
    Sacramento -- California joined the ranks of the National Football League and 
Major League Baseball on Monday, when Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and first 
lady Maria Shriver announced the creation of a hall of fame to honor great Californians. 
    The first 13 inductees into the California Hall of Fame -- the newest addition to the 
California Museum of History, Women and the Arts -- will be Cesar Chavez, Walt 
Disney, Amelia Earhart, Clint Eastwood, architect Frank Gehry, the Hearst family, 
AIDS researcher Dr. David Ho, tennis star Billie Jean King, conservationist John Muir, 
the Packard family, Ronald Reagan, astronaut Sally Ride and author Alice Walker. 
A formal induction ceremony is planned for Dec. 6. 
    "The first lady began this idea to showcase that California is a leading place of 
innovation and creativity," said Shriver spokesman Ryan Jimenez. 
    Museum spokeswoman Claudia French said the inductees were chosen through 
the input of the museum's staff and board of trustees, the California Arts Council, 
Shriver and Schwarzenegger's offices, the state librarian, state historian and state 
archivist. The governor had the final say in approving all inductees. French said 
people from many different disciplines were considered in an attempt to show the 
broad array of talent in the state.
    "These unique people are people who really transcended their field and their area 
of expertise to make an impact on California and the world," French said.
    Additional influential Californians will be inducted every year. French said the 
museum is considering setting up an Internet system to allow Californians from all 
over the state to give their input for future inductions.
    The Hall of Fame is sponsored by Bank of America, which contributed $400,000 
to the project. "We wanted to work in partnership with the first lady and her vision for 
bringing the museum to life," said bank spokesman Michael Chee. Bank of America 
did not play a role in choosing the inductees.
    The museum, located at 1020 O St. in Sacramento , will place a prominent exhibit 
of the California Hall of Fame at its entrance.  

7/28/06 AsianWeek.com: Powerful Attracted to New NorCal PAC,
By Samson Wong and Gerrye Wong
    San Jose More than 20 Northern Californian Chinese Americans met this month 
to boost Asian American state and national representation, political influence in 
policymaking and advocate policies for the APA community including China policy 
and immigration. 
    The inaugural celebration heralded the bipartisan Asian Americans for Good 
Government at the San Jose home of founder Maria Chen, host for more than 100 
supporters and candidates. Although in its infancy, AAGG drew major political figures, 
including gubernatorial candidate Phil Angelides, Congressmen Mike Honda (D-Calif.) 
and David Wu (D-Ore.). 
    Last April, AAGG had endorsed and contributed to Tammy Duckworths congressional 
race in Illinois when she toured the Bay Area. 
    The organization is now a social club, said Dr. Hsing Kung, chairman of AAGG. By 
the end of the year, we want to become a PAC.  
    For a club thats only 2 months old, we have achieved so much, he added, including 
pledges of more than $100,000 to support candidates. 
    The informal group is composed of entrepreneurs, high-tech, public officials and health professionals mostly from Silicon Valley . They have pledged to each contribute $5,000 
annually to support candidates endorse by the group. Members range from McDonalds 
franchisee and Republican C.C. Yin of Vacaville , to laser and optics entrepreneur and 
Democrat Dr. Hsing Kung of Los Altos . 
    AAGG has fostered a close relationship and proven track record with Congressmen 
Honda and Wu, and Assemblywoman Wilma Chan, whom Kung called AAGG Partners. 
    The group endorsed as AAGG Friends Illinois Tammy Duckworth, Controller John 
Chiang, Board of Equalization candidates Betty Yee and Judy Chu, state legislative 
candidates Mike Eng, Ted Lieu, Leland Yee, Warren Furutani, Mary Hayashi and Fiona 
Ma. AAGG had screened them with questionnaires and interviews before the June 6 
primary, and supported them with an endorsement and $500 contributions. 
    For me, it would be rights, protection of our rights like the Wen Ho Lee case. Theres 
a lot of high-tech people here. I am sure they would take interest in high-tech policy. 
Albert Wang 
    Obviously education [is a priority]. The Asian American community puts a significant 
emphasis on education. Then its important for the whole country. Belle Wei, SJSU 
Dean of Engineering College , where 60 percent are APA. 
    They understand one of the hurdles of Asian American candidates have to overcome 
is raising money. The membership of this organization is comprised of high-tech 
executives, health professionals and leaders in academia, are all prepared to help with 
contributing to support candidate campaigns.  Betty Yee, State Board of Equalization, 
and funded by AAGG in her first successful primary election for state office. 
    Our next step is that we want to support John Chiang [for California Controller]. We 
really want him to succeed. We will fully support him. Our group probably could [raise] 
$50,000 for him. I really appreciate what this community has brought to us as immigrants 
here, 26 years ago. Now we have family, we have whatever we want. We should pay 
back to our community. Maria Chen, host

 

7/28/06 press release
Contact: Jonathan Wilcox
Phone: 650-619-7963
It took an act of Congress to keep this immigrant IN the US
    Your audience is  bombarded with negative stories of unlawful immigrants crossing 
the borders daily. They are ready to hear the success story of a courageous, determined 
immigrant. This authors story offers a new twist to this dilemma, keeping them glued to 
your station for the duration of the interview.
    In her new book, The Love of Lotus, the author details her family's escape from Hong 
Kong to China during WWII and the struggles the family endured during the occupation 
of Hong Kong and China by Japan . Then she comes to America to attend college after 
WWII.      
    By the end of her post-college internship, the author wants to stay, but her student visa 
cannot keep her here. Just as she despairs, to the author's amazement the local 
congresswoman comes to her rescue.  
    Although the struggles that the author endures will tug at the heartstrings of your listeners, 
they will get more than an intriguing success story. The Love of Lotus is rich in detail about 
Chinese social and family customs from the turn of the century through WWII. It is also the 
heroic story of a womans valiant struggle overcoming suicidal depression, possible 
deportation, career changes, prejudice and a brief fascination with Communism. The 
experiencing of sharing with the author these trials and tribulations will mesmerize your 
audience.
    To arrange a guest appearance on your show, contact Jonathan Wilcox.

7/23/06 Los Angeles Times: Mako, 72; Actor Opened Door for Asian Americans,
by Jocelyn Y. Stewart
    In the early days of his acting career, when most roles offered to Asian 
American actors were caricatures or stereotypes, Mako took just such a part and 
used it to open the doors of Hollywood and Broadway to others.
    In the 1966 film "The Sand Pebbles," he played the Chinese character Po-han, 
who spoke pidgin English, called the white sailors in the movie "master," and 
treated them as such. But through the power of his acting, Mako transformed 
Po-han and compelled the audience to empathize and identify with the engine-
room "coolie." 
    The portrayal earned Mako an Academy Award nomination, which he used 
to continue his push for more and better roles for Asian American actors.
    Mako, who in 1965 co-founded East West Players, the nation's first Asian 
American theater company, died Friday of esophageal cancer at his home in 
the Ventura County town of Somis . He was 72.
    "What many people say is, 'If it wasn't for Mako there wouldn't have been 
Asian American theater,' " said Tim Dang, current artistic director of East West 
Players, based in the Little Tokyo district of Los Angeles. "He is revered as 
sort of the godfather of Asian American theater."
    In an acting career that spanned more than four decades, Mako was a 
familiar face in film and television. His TV roles included appearances on 
"McHale's Navy," "I Spy," "MASH," "Quincy," and " Walker , Texas Ranger." 
In films, he was a Japanese admiral in "Pearl Harbor" and a Singaporean in 
"Seven Years in Tibet ." He was Akiro the wizard in "Conan the Barbarian" 
and "Conan the Destroyer" with now-Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.
    But Mako had a larger view of the possibilities for Asian American actors.
    As artistic director of East West Players, Mako trained generations of actors 
and playwrights. He staged classics such as Shakespeare's "Twelfth Night," 
Chekhov's "Three Sisters," and lesser-known contemporary works. He 
devoted the entire 1981 season to works pertaining to the internment of 
Japanese Americans during World War II. The series coincided with the 
opening of a national discussion on internment reparations. It was a risky 
endeavor, but Mako said it was crucial.
    Though his own career was marked by moments of success, it was also 
forged by struggle.
    "Generally for him it was particularly hard, because he was an immigrant. 
There was the linguistic challenge," said George Takei, who played Sulu in 
"Star Trek." "But he recognized we needed more opportunities to practice 
our craft."
    Mako was born Makoto Iwamatsu in Kobe , Japan , on Dec. 10, 1933. 
When he was 5, his parents left Japan to study art in New York . Mako stayed 
behind to be raised by his grandparents.
    Because his parents lived on the East Coast, they were not interned during 
World War II. Instead they ended up working for the U.S. Office of War 
Information and were later granted residency. Mako joined them when he 
was 15.
    He had a plan to become an architect and enrolled at the Pratt Institute in
New York . But that plan changed when a friend asked him to design a set 
and do lighting for an off-Broadway children's play. Mako was hooked: 
"That's when the trouble began," he said. "I was out of class so much that I 
lost my draft deferment."
    During his two years in the military, he traveled to Korea and Japan and 
re-immersed himself in Japanese culture. After his discharge, he moved to 
California and studied theater at the Pasadena Playhouse.
    Mako married Shizuko Hoshi, a dancer, choreographer and actress. She 
survives him along with their daughters, Sala and Mimosa. 
    Mako had been working primarily in television and on stage when he was 
cast as Po-han in "The Sand Pebbles." The movie, which starred Steve 
McQueen, told the story of a nonconformist sailor assigned to a U.S. gunboat 
patrolling China 's Yangtze River in 1926. It was widely interpreted as a 
metaphor for U.S. involvement in Vietnam, which brought filmmaker Robert 
Wise scorn from some quarters and praise from others. In one scene, Po-han 
dons boxing gloves to fight an American sailor to save the honor of a Chinese 
woman forced to work in a brothel. The sailor, who towers over his Chinese 
opponent, lands some crushing blows, but Po-han responds to knock the 
sailor to the floor and win the fight.
    Mako used the prominence the Oscar nomination gave him to address the 
dearth of parts for Asian Americans in general. Unless a script specifically 
called for an Asian American, producers and casting directors rejected them 
for roles.
    "Of course we've been fighting against stereotypes from Day One at East 
West," Mako said in a 1986 interview with The Times. "That's the reason we 
formed: to combat that, and to show we are capable of more than just fulfilling 
the stereotypes waiter, laundryman, gardener, martial artist, villain."
    A young David Henry Hwang, author of the play "M. Butterfly," attended 
East West rehearsals at the theater with his mother, who played piano for 
productions.
    "That's how he got interested in theater," said Dang, East West Players' 
artistic director.
    In 1976, Mako appeared in the Stephen Sondheim musical "Pacific 
Overtures," playing multiple roles as reciter, shogun, emperor and an American 
businessman. Set in 1853, the play explores U.S. Commodore Matthew Perry's 
push to open Japan to foreign trade and visitors for the first time in 250 years.
    It marked the first musical for Mako, who was not a trained singer. During 
rehearsals he had trouble getting through the opening number without making a 
mistake. He flubbed it so often he offered to leave the show before opening night, 
he later recalled. That offer was rejected.
    The performance also earned Mako a Tony Award nomination for best actor 
in a musical.
    More than 75% of Asian American and Pacific Islanders in acting unions in 
Los Angeles have worked at East West, Dang said.
    "I remember Mako saying, 'Will there ever be a time when East West Players 
won't be needed, because everyone will be doing world theater?' " Dang said.
    Later Mako answered his own question. "He said, 'No, not in my lifetime.' "

7/21/06 AsianWeek.com: N.J. APA Voters Flexing Political Muscle,
By Samson Wong
    New York A study points to a highly democratic APA N.J. electorate, particularly 
among South Asian Americans, according to last months analysis of a November 2005 
election exit poll. 
    Their continued growth could factor in a tight U.S. Senate race between appointed 
democratic incumbent Robert Menendez and republican Tom Kean, Jr. The race has 
national implications as democrats attempt to wrest control of the republican-controlled 
Senate. 
    The state has the 5th largest APA community in the U.S. A 2004 U.S. Census 
estimated that more than 600,000, or 6 percent, of residents were APA, more than 
doubling the number of APAs counted under the 1990 Census. But voter registration, 
according to vcsnet.com, is small with just under 2 percent of the 4.6 million state voters.
    Although 56 percent of interviewed APA voters in the Asian American Legal Defense 
and Education Fund exit poll were registered democrats, South Asian Americans were 
the most lopsided with 83 percent democratic.
    Although APAs may be democratic, the report said that a candidates position on 
issues was a more important factor in their [voting] decision than political party. The poll 
found that 46 percent based their candidate choices on issue stance, 24 percent on 
experience, as opposed to 22 percent who based their selections on political party.
    All Americans are concerned with similar issues such as addressing health care, 
education, employment and the need to take care of ones loved ones, said Hermant 
Wadhwani, president of the Asian American Political Coalition in New Jersey.
    In the poll, ethnicity was not cited as a factor in voter decisions. Yet, Asian American 
voters last year overwhelmingly supported Korean American Jun Choi for mayor of 
Edison , New Jersey . Choi won narrowly by 273 voters in a campaign where New Jersey 
radio shock jocks made race-baiting commentary about Choi in the states fifth-largest 
town, which has the largest concentration of South Asians in the U.S.
    Among all APA voters, Choi, a democrat, won 97 percent of the mayoral vote in 
Edison . His opponent, William Stephens, won 1 percent.
    All South Asian Americans in the poll said they voted for Choi. Eighty-seven percent 
of Chinese Americans cast a ballot for the Korean American. 13 percent of Koreans 
had voted for the first time, compared to 8 percent of all New Jersey voters.
    With Jun Choi running as mayor, Asians who didnt necessarily vote or get involved 
in the political system saw that as, Hey, this is our opportunity. Theres an Asian person 
running for office, which is a rare occasion in the East Coast or New Jersey , said 
Michael Chong, president of the Korean-American Bar Association of New Jersey.
    Also on the ballot, democrat Jon Corzine defeated republican Doug Forrester in the 
New Jersey gubernatorial race. APAs by wide margins supported Corzine. South 
Asians (91 percent Corzine, 6 percent for Forrester), Korean (83 percent 17 percent) 
and Chinese (74 percent 20 percent) supported him. Filipino Americans supported 
Corzine with a narrower 64 percent 36 percent.   
    The Asian American vote is a significant vote. I think [public officials and candidates] 
realize that, said Chong, whos not aligned with either party. When Governor Corzine 
came out and met with us, he did a TV interview for the Korean American community 
[for a Northern New Jersey station]. [Senate candidate] Menendez has also done 
outreach efforts.
    During the meeting, KABA-NJ and the Korean American Association of New Jersey 
talked to Corzine about issues and appointments, said Chong. Governor Corzine has 
kept his promise of keeping his appointments very diverse. Hes appointed Kris Kolluri 
chair of the transportation department. He recently named Sue Pai Yang as a worker 
compensations judge.
    Kolluri and Yang are respectively Indian and Chinese American.

 

7/4/06 In These Times: Perpetuating the Yellow Peril,
by Lakshmi Chaudhry
    Mako, an actor who has appeared in over 90 feature films, talks about stereotypic 
portrayals he has had to struggle against.
    At first glance, Jeff Adachi's Slanted Screen is an earnest documentary that covers 
familiar ground. The shameful depiction of minoritiesin this case, Asian-American 
menin television and film is hardly news. What makes the movie special, however, 
is that it offers a rare view of Hollywood from the inside. Apart from the occasional 
talking head, the interviewees are actors, producers, directors and screenwriters. 
    Part of the movie's interest lies in their horror stories, which are likely to make even 
the most jaded viewer cringe. Producer Terence Changwhose big-budget credits 
include Mission Impossible II, Face-Off and Broken Arrow describes being told to 
change the race of the white villain in the script for the Chow Yun Fat vehicle, The 
Replacement Killers , and make him a Chinese druglord instead. The logic: "If the 
hero is Asian then the bad guys have to be Asian as well." The racism is open and 
unapologetic.
    As gruesome as such anecdotes may be, Slanted Screen is most compelling 
when its subjects explore the conflict between who they are and what they do. It may 
be hard to watch a repulsive Long Duk Dong slobbering over the girl in Sixteen 
Candles, but it's harder still to be the guy who plays him: Gedde Watanabe, a 
Japanese-American actor born and raised in Utah, who put on a fake accent to 
utter immortal lines, such as "No more yankie my wankie. The Donger need food." 
    In the seven-minute short film The Screen Testwhich was screened along with 
Slanted Screen in San Francisco actress Judy Lee sums up every Asian actor's 
moral dilemma: "Our paychecks come from stereotypes." When there are practically 
no roles for Asians, a script that calls for an "opium den mistress" is a cause for 
celebration. 
    The art of survival lies in enduring what you must, and quietly changing what you 
can within Hollywood 's stifling parameters. What may look like just another stereotype 
from the outside may in fact be a serious attempt to challenge industry norms. A good 
example is what has become Hollywood 's favorite Asian character: the martial arts 
warrior. Bruce Lee may seem to be just another uni-dimensional macho hero, but his 
rise marked an epochal shift for Asian Americans, both as actors and as men. After 
decades of being demonized as sly yet effeminate "yellow peril" in the post-World 
War II era, Lee represented a positive, vigorous version of masculinity. And it's this 
consolation that actors like Cary -Hiroyuki Tagawa cling to when they play similar 
roles in movies like Mortal Kombat, even when they're negative. "If the choice is 
between playing wimpy business men and the bad guy," Tagawa tells Adachi, "I'd 
rather play the bad guy. I want kids to know that Asian men have balls."
    When Hollywood allows Asian leading men to be macho, it rarely gives them the 
privilege of being "American." "Asian Americans tend to be looked at as perpetual 
aliens," says author and poet David Mura. "In other words, an Asian-American male 
can't be seen as representative of all Americans in the way Tom Cruise or Tom 
Hanks or even Denzel Washington can."
    According to University of Delaware English professor Peter X. Feng, the benefit 
of safely foreign heroes such as Jet Li or Chow Yun Fat is that "they come to these 
shores to solve a problem and then they leave. So there is never any question of 
integrating them into the American body politic." In this sense, Mura argues, Asian-
American men are worse off than women, who "are more easily assimilated by the 
white psyche in part because they are seen as sexually available to white men." 
Hence Lucy Liu can be one of Charlie's Angels, but no one would cast, say, Jason 
Scott Lee in a remake of Starsky and Hutchthough Hollywood execs were only too 
happy to cast him as an Indian in The Jungle Book . 
    While there have been exceptions to this depressing normDustin Nguyen as 
Officer Harry Ioki in "21 Jump Street" or more recently, Harold and Kumar Go to 
White Castlethe predicament facing Asian male actors today is grim compared 
to Hollywood's silent era, when Sessue Hayakawa rivaled Douglas Fairbanks, 
Charlie Chaplin and John Barrymore in popularity as a leading man. But despite 
his Rudolf Valentino-esque persona, even Hayakawa almost never got the girl
not unless she was played by his own Japanese wife, Aoki. His present-day 
counterparts are no better off. Chow Yun Fat never gets to kiss Mira Sorvino in 
Replacement Killers, while the creators of Romeo Must Die edited out the sole 
kiss between Aaliyah and Jet Li. "To say it doesn't affect us is bullshit," declares 
Tagawa, the anguish bubbling to the surface as he exclaims, "We're not eunuchs!"
    The stark contrast between the sexual images of Asian men and women on-
screen follows the dictates of age-old colonialist logic, where the sexual 
appropriation of women is accompanied by the emasculation of the men. That 
the documentary never includes a discussion of women, or their perspective, is a 
glaring omission. The very action hero roles that seem to affirm Asian masculinity 
can be deeply problematic from a feminist perspective. Is a Schwarzenegger-like 
machismo really the kind of Asian male identity that we want to promote?
    The sexual politics are even more complicated. Take, for example, the 
comments of Gene Cajayon, who directed one of the first Filipino-American 
movies, The Debut (2000). Cajayon says it was important for him to make his 
lead character "someone who is attractive to white girls" so as to establish his 
credentials as a bona fide "cool kid." But how subversive is this character if his 
masculinity requires a white seal of sexual approval and treats white women as 
mere markers of his prowess?
    A more compassionate interpretation of this desire is to see it instead as a 
hunger to be seen as sexual, period. That it entails white affirmation is merely a 
sad acknowledgement of the requirements of the broader culture we live in. "It 
seems to me unfair to question the desire of Asian-American men to feel 
sexually attractive," says Mura. "If an African-American man were to say, for 
instance, that he wanted to be appreciated for his intelligence and not just 
stereotyped for sexual or athletic prowess, would we say he was succumbing to 
a trap which defined real male worth by intelligence?"
    Mura argues that Asian men "desire a complete picture of ourselves and to 
be valued as complete individuals. We desire respect in those areas where we 
feel we are disrespected. We don't get to pick and choose where those areas 
are." But we are more likely to see a more "complete" picture of Asian men if 
we portray them as they are rather than as ethnic versions of Hollywood  
gender-laden fantasies of manhood that haven't served white men well. In fact, 
those kind of movies will be just as valuable for the rest of us, male or female, 
Asian or otherwise.
    Lakshmi Chaudhry has been a reporter and an editor for independent 
publications for more than six years, and is a senior editor at In These Times, 
where she covers the cross-section of culture and politics.

6/30/06 WSJ: Torn on the Fourth of July: Amid a divisive immigration debate, Jeffrey 
Zaslow on how some newcomers to the U.S. plan to honor the country on Independence Day
    Next week, Hispanic, Asian and Islamic groups are planning a range of events to 
demonstrate their patriotism. The 80-20 Initiative, an Asian-American activist group, is
emailing more than 700,000 other Asian-Americans, encouraging them to fly U.S. flags 
outside their homes and businesses. The group hopes "a sea of flags" in Asian 
neighborhoods will erase Asians' image as "perpetual foreigners."
    Fremont , Calif.
    In recent years, this city southeast of San Francisco has become one of America 's most 
culturally diverse communities: Its 210,000 residents come from dozens of ethnic groups. 
Thousands of immigrants from Afghanistan came after the Soviet invasion there in 1979, and thousands more are from Gujarat , India , which suffered a devastating earthquake in 2001. 
Fremont also has large numbers of Mexican, Japanese and Chinese.
    It seemed natural then, in 2004, for city organizers to plan a July Fourth parade in which 
Boy Scouts would help carry dozens of American and foreign flags, representing Fremont's 
diversity.
    Once word got out, however, some nonimmigrants were upset that a July Fourth celebration 
would display foreign flags. Parade organizers hadn't expected the backlash. "Our perception 
was, we're a place with so many different cultures, and we're all together, celebrating a 
uniquely American event -- but some people felt threatened and offended by that," says Lt. Col. Garrett Yee, 40, an Army reservist, who as a Boy Scout leader helped plan the flag procession.
    To avoid controversy, the Scouts opted not to carry foreign flags; instead, adult marchers held them aloft. Lt. Col. Yee, whose ethnic background is half Chinese and half Japanese, asked his 
wife, Maria, who was born in Mexico, to carry the Mexican flag. Cheering drowned out any jeering 
on the parade route, they say.
    "It's a flag of our culture, not our country," Ms. Yee says. "We're not willing to give up the culture." As she walked with the flag that July Fourth, she says, Mexican-Americans along the route kept saying, "Carry it higher!" They were showing pride for their origins, not disrespect for the U.S. flag, she says.
    In any case, last year's parade left out the procession of foreign flags. They'll also be absent this year, but many immigrant communities will contribute floats. And Lt. Col. Yee, who heads to Iraq  
next month, has arranged for a U.S. Army color guard to march, also.
    Lt. Col. Yee has also participated in the 80-20 Initiative's July Fourth "sea of flags" campaign, helping to decorate Asian areas of Fremont with American flags. (80-20 got its name because its founders believe that if 80% of Asian Americans became a voting bloc, they would be a powerful political force. The group supported John Kerry in 2004.)
    Over lunch recently in Fremont , three generations of the Yee family discussed their sense of patriotism. They're the American melting-pot in microcosm, with roots in Japan , China and Mexico . Both of Lt. Col. Yee's grandmothers were born in the U.S. , but lost their U.S. citizenship when they married immigrants from China and Japan in the 1920s. They were victims of federal "exclusion laws" against Asians that weren't lifted until the 1940s.
    During World War II, Lt. Col. Yee's mother, Michiko Yee, now 71, was sent with her family to an internment camp for Japanese-Americans. After ordering the family to leave their California home 
in 1942, authorities took them first to a racetrack and put them up in a horse stall for several weeks. Seven-year-old Michiko worried about a doll she left behind. The family then spent three years at a detention camp in Arizona . The government released them in 1945 and gave them $182.25 to start their new lives.
    Michiko's Chinese-American husband, Gilbert, 79, spent World War II reminding people that he wasn't Japanese. "I wore a button every day that said, 'I'm Chinese.' "
    In the 1980s, Michiko and other Japanese-Americans who had been interned received government reparations of $20,000. That couldn't compensate for the upheaval in their lives, she says, "but to harbor bad feelings, what's the purpose? Things were the way they were."
    She believes Americans have learned a lot since then. After Sept. 11, 2001, she points out, Arab-Americans weren't rounded up and put into camps. "Our country has matured," she says.
    Lt. Col. Yee's in-laws, Miguel and Guadalupe Vera, came here legally from Mexico in 1967. Guadalupe tells of the day in the mid-1980s when she applied to be a U.S. citizen. She passed the oral test, but struggled with the English on the written exam. "I got so nervous," she says. The Immigration and Naturalization Service test administrator suggested that she take a break outside for a few minutes, clear her head, and then return and try to pass. Guadalupe went outside feeling overwhelmed -- and didn't return for 15 years. She finally became a U.S. citizen in 2001.
    Lt. Col. Yee expects that this will be a very emotional Independence Day for him, because by the end of July he'll be headed for Iraq . Friends have asked him if he's upset about being sent to war. "On the right shoulder of my uniform, there's an American-flag patch," he says. "I'm reminded every day that I'm serving to protect that flag. I'm proud to do it."

6/29/06 National Review: Kings Way: Full disclosure,
By Peter Kirsanow
    Students and their parents spend millions of dollars annually on college-application fees and the ancillary costs of applying to colleges and graduate schools without having the slightest idea of the particular students chances of admission or even how a given school evaluates applicants. Moreover, students and parents spend billions annually on college tuition completely ignorant of the students probabilities upon matriculation of graduating or getting jobs as a result of attending their respective colleges. Consumers arguably get more useful information about the effectiveness of a product from the back of a tube of toothpaste than from a college brochure.
    Rep. Steven King (R., Iowa) introduced a bill a couple of months ago designed to change that. Entitled the Racial and Ethnic Preference Disclosure Act. The bill would require institutions of higher learning that receive federal dollars to disclose to the Office of Civil Rights in the Department of Education and the Civil Rights Division in the Department of Justice various items of information related to the use of race, color and national origin in the admissions process.
    Specifically, the bill would require a school to reveal, among other things, (1) how much weight its admissions process gives to an applicants race, ethnicity, etc; (2) the probability that a student given preferred consideration on account of race or ethnicity will have to enroll in a remediation program; (3) graduation rates for preferred students vs. that of non-preferred students; and (4) the probability that preferred students will default on student loans.
    The bill was defeated when first introduced. The opponents of the bill argued that it was unnecessary, asserting that institutions of higher learning would happily provide such information without a governmental mandate to do so.
    That assertion is, to put it politely, wholly unsupported by the facts. The information required by the King bill is closely guarded by every institution that employs preferences. Shortly after the Supreme Court decided Grutter v. Bollinger and Gratz v. Bollinger my counsel sent a survey to 40 colleges requesting much of the same information required under the King bill. We received no responses whatsoever. The Center for Equal Opportunity and the National Association of Scholars also found that getting such information was about as easy as getting Jack Bauer to spill CTU access codes.
    The information disclosed pursuant to the King bill could be enormously useful to students and their parents. Applicants could better assess their probabilities of admission to and graduation from specific schools. They could make more rational financial decisions also.
    The information would be valuable to students regardless of race. Non-preferred students would know whether their chances of admission to particular schools approach futility. Preferred but underqualified students could gauge their probabilities of graduating.
    As demonstrated by the testimony of UCLA law professor Richard Sander before the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights earlier this month, this could greatly improve the graduation rates of black law students in particular. Professor Sander identified a profound disconnect between the actual operation of law schools preferential admissions policies and how black law students perceive them. Whereas in reality, black law-school applicants are up to 100 times more likely to be admitted than their similarly situated white comparatives,    
    blacks tend to assume that they are more qualified than their white classmates, because they are so assiduously courted by the schools that admit them. Data from the [Law School Admissions Council Bar Passage Study] shows clearly that blacks entering law school had higher expectations for their first year grades than did whites. Testimony of Professor Richard Sander before the U.S. Commission Civil Rights, June 2006. (Emphasis added.) 
    These misconceptions have disastrous effects. They contribute to the tendency of many black students to enroll at schools at which they cant compete. The result is that half of black law students are in the bottom 10 percent of their respective classes and are two and a half times as likely as whites never to graduate. Further, Professor David Bernstein of George Mason University Law School testified that more than 50 percent of black law-school matriculants never become lawyers. These figures signal not just lots of wasted tuition fees, but disrupted careers as well.
    All of the witnesses at the hearing, regardless of ideology, supported greater disclosure by institutions of higher learning. Professor Sander points out that the King bill simply requires colleges do what financial institutions have been required to do for years under the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act and the Community Reinvestment Act. In fact, some witnesses advocated more expansive disclosure than even the King bill requires, adding, e.g., bar passage rates and correlations between bar passage and GPAs.
    Mounting evidence shows that the racial-preference shell game hurts both the preferred and the non-preferred. Time for some transparency.
    Peter Kirsanow is a member of the National Labor relations Board. He is also a member of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. These comments do not necessarily reflect the positions of either organization  



6/28/06 Associated Press: Widow thanks police after 2 arrested in NYC deliveryman's death,
by Samantha Gross
    New York -- Speaking haltingly, her eyes fixed on the pavement, the widow of a Chinese food     deliveryman thanked authorities Wednesday for arresting the two youths accused of shooting him in the face as he worked.
    "It's been eight months and 17 days since my husband was killed," XiuMei Wei, from the Fujian province of China , said in a near-whisper in her native language. "I hope to see justice be served and punish the murderers."
    Police on Wednesday announced the arrests of David Robinson, 15, of East Harlem, and Gerald Gordon, 20, of the Bronx , on charges of murder and weapons possession.
    They are accused of killing FaHua Chen, a 52-year-old trained as a medical technician in China who had been working as a deliveryman in New York to support his family overseas. No information was immediately available on whether they had been appointed lawyers.
    City Councilman John Liu, who has been an advocate for the slain man's family, said the arrests were a relief to the local Chinese community.
    "We have time and time again seen delivery workers targeted," he said.
    In October, Chen was robbed while making a food delivery in the Mott Haven section of the Bronx . After calling police, he held the building's front door shut in an attempt to trap the robbers until officers arrived. Instead, one of his attackers shot him through the Plexiglas.
    Chen was shot a day after hearing that he was to be reunited with his daughter for the first time in about a decade. Ting Chen, a 24-year-old graduate student in England , called him to say she had made plans to travel to New York to see him. The family had been separated for years, with Wei in China and the couple's daughter in school.
    On Wednesday, Wei joined Liu on the steps of City Hall, speaking through an interpreter who gripped her hand tightly.
    "I am speechless today because his murderers were just arrested," she said, her voice barely audible even with the help of a microphone. "I have very touching feelings right now."
    The couple's daughter has already returned to England , where she is completing a thesis in business management at the University of Leicester , about 70 miles north of London . Liu said that Wei would return to her home in China following the resolution of the case.
    The attack hit hard in the immigrant community, said Saru Jayaraman, executive director of the Restaurant Opportunities Center of New York, which advocates for workers' rights and operates the Chinese Restaurant Workers' Project.
    "It was one of a string of attacks last year," she said. "It was definitely very much felt."
    The City Council's Black, Latino and Asian Caucus, along with the New York Police Department and Crime Stoppers, had offered $13,000 in rewards for information leading to an arrest and conviction. But a police spokesman said Wednesday it appeared that police investigation, rather than a tip, led to the arrests.

6/23/06 San Jose Mercury News: Bush praises departing Mineta for `integrity, dedication'
By Sharon Noguchi
    Norman Mineta, the former San Jose mayor and Silicon Valley congressman who has been the lone Democrat in President Bush's Cabinet, announced today that he will resign as transportation secretary.
    In a letter to the president, Mineta said he will step down July 7 to pursue other challenges.
In response, President Bush said in a statement: ``Norman Mineta has served America with integrity, dedication, and distinction.''
    Although Mineta, 74, has been plagued by back problems, health concerns didn't influence his decision, his spokesman Robert Johnson said. Mineta remains energetic and often gets to work at 6:30 a.m. and continues until 9 or 10 at night, Johnson said.
    White House spokesman Tony Snow told reporters that Mineta is not being pushed out. ``As a matter of fact, the president and the vice president and others were happy with him. He put in five and half years -- that's enough time.''
    Bush tried to get the secretary to stay, if not until the end of his term, until November, Mineta told his friend Rod Diridon, director of the Mineta Transportation Institute at San Jose State University .
    After the Sept. 11 hijackings, Mineta oversaw the hasty creation of the much-maligned Transportation Security Administration, which took over responsibility for aviation security from the airlines.
    Under orders from Congress, the agency hired tens of thousands of airport screeners, put air marshals on commercial flights and installed high-tech equipment to screen air travelers and their luggage for bombs -- all within a year.
    The effort involved huge cost overruns, and allegations of wasteful spending, and long lines at some big airports and too many screeners at some small ones.
    In his letter to the president, Mineta said he has been engaged in transportation issues during his four-decade career in government. ``I love the subject matter and feel passionately about transportation,'' he wrote.
    Last year, he shepherded through Congress a long-stalled $256 billion highway spending bill.
Colleagues and officials say Mineta will be missed not only because he knows transportation, but also because he has been an ethical and hardworking official who could bring divergent views together.
    ``Norm has provided a steady thoughtful, bipartisan presence to the administration and to the department. He has often remarked there is no partisan pothole, and he's absolutely right,'' said Carl Guardino, president and chief executive of the Silicon Valley Leadership Group, a business association.
    Mineta has been a visionary leader, said Randy Rentschler, a spokesman for the Metropolitan Transportation Commission, which parcels out federal transportation dollars in the Bay Area. Under his leadership, Congress looked beyond highway building, into roads and transit that benefited urban areas, and bestowed authority on regions rather than states to make transportation decisions.
    Mineta was instrumental in getting grants for highways 237, 101 and 85 and for relieving traffic bottlenecks, Santa Clara County Supervisor Jim Beall said.
    But transportation advocates say that as secretary, Mineta was too ethical to overtly pull federal dollars to pet projects. Instead, Guardino said, Mineta ``brought the right values and right emphasis on transportation improvements, knowing that solely new roads are not the answer.''
    However, some environmentalists criticized the Mineta-led Transportation Department for failing to raise automobile mileage standards. ``Secretary Mineta has unfortunately failed to carry out his responsibility to substantially raise fuel economy standards to curb America 's oil addiction,'' wrote Dan Becker of the Sierra Club. The group sued Mineta, and also criticized him for widening a program that has largely failed to switch vehicles from gasoline to ethanol.
    Mineta's career has been a series of firsts for Asian-Americans: first to serve as a Cabinet secretary when Clinton appointed him secretary of Commerce in 2000; first to serve as mayor of a major city; and first to chair a congressional committee, the House Transportation Committee.
    ``He set a benchmark for everybody,'' said Rep. Mike Honda, D-San Jose, one of many politicians mentored by Mineta. ``He's kick-started a lot of things that the rest of us have to continue.''
    Mineta joined Bush's Cabinet on Jan. 25, 2001, and became Transportation's longest-serving secretary. Bush's only other two original Cabinet members still serving are Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and Labor Secretary Elaine Chao.
    In 1971, Mineta was elected mayor of San Jose . In the 20 years he represented Silicon Valley in Congress, he served as chairman of the House Public Works and Transportation Committee.
    Later, Mineta became a vice president of Lockheed Martin.
    In 2001, San Jose renamed its airport after him, in honor of his impact on the community and his leadership in transportation.
    In his resignation letter, Mineta praised the Transportation Department workers' response to the Sept. 11 terror attacks in creating Transportation Security Administration and in rebuilding the transportation infrastructure in Afghanistan an