12/31/10
Poughkeepsie Journal: "Cops: Burglaries near NYC target Asians, like
local string over summer
by Emily Stewart
Town of Poughkeepsie police are warning residents about a
series of burglaries in Westchester County
and Stamford, Conn., apparently targeted at Asian-Americans.
There have been no recent reports of similar incidents in
Dutchess County, but over the summer town
police investigated a string of burglaries involving victims with Asian
surnames. Five burglaries were
reported in June and July in a large housing development off Spackenkill Road,
town Police Chief Thomas
Mauro said.
There were 10 additional burglaries in nearby towns,
including East Fishkill, Union Vale, LaGrange,
Beekman and Wappinger involving victims with Asian surnames. In most cases,
thieves took cash, jewelry
and identification documents, Mauro said.
Similar thefts have occurred elsewhere in the greater New
York area. Most incidents took place during
the daytime when residents were not at home, he said.
In September, the New York Police Department arrested a
Queens man authorities believe was involved
in break-ins targeted at Asian-Americans, according to police and written
reports.
Town of Greenburgh police in Westchester confirmed Tuesday
they are investigating a series of
burglaries apparently targeting people of South Asian descent. However, not all
of the burglaries have
specifically targeted South Asians.
Mauro advises residents to follow "simple crime
prevention tips" to reduce the odds of being targeted.
• Lock all doors and windows properly.
• Secure valuables in a safe or safe-deposit box.
• Install exterior lights with motion detectors.
• Consider a home alarm system.
• If you are away from home for a period of time, have the driveway cleared of
snow and mail retrieved
from the box.
http://www.poughkeepsiejournal.com/article/20101231/NEWS05/12310331/Cops-Burglaries-near-NYC-target-Asians-like-local-string-over-summer
12/29/2010 Pasadena Star-News: "Chinese Mexicans: The first illegal
immigrants,"
by Luis Torres
For full story, see http://www.pasadenastarnews.com/ci_16961133
The first "illegal immigrants" to cross into the
United States from Mexico weren't Mexicans.
They were Chinese.
A new book by a professor of Chicano studies at UCLA reveals
that and other salient and startling
anecdotes about borderland history.
"The Chinese in Mexico 1882-1940", Robert Chao
Romero examines a little known realm of
United States-Mexico social history.
There was a substantial wave of immigration from China to
Mexico in the late 19th century. As a minor,
benign example of that, ever wonder why the best Chinese restaurants in North
America are arguably
not in San Francisco but in Mexicali?
The Chinese in the United States, of course, provided
valuable service in building the transcontinental
railroad. The Chinese were encouraged to come here for their cheap labor. There
were organized
commercial recruitment campaigns, championed by the governments of both the
United States and
China. But anti-Chinese resentment soon built to a crescendo in the late 1880s.
Finally the U.S. sought
to ban all Chinese immigration when it passed the nefarious Chinese Exclusion
Act of 1882. It made it
illegal for Chinese to come to the United States.
But the turmoil and landlessness in such regions as Guangdong
(Canton) still forced Chinese
immigrants to seek new opportunities outside China. So, many shifted their
target from California to
Mexico. Streams of immigrants poured into Mexico, beginning in 1882.
Some immigrants intended to seek their fortunes in Mexico,
but many used the passage to Mexico
as a stop on their clandestine way into the United States. Romero argues that
those Chinese, who paid
smugglers to get them into the United States and used a variety of sophisticated
ruses to enter the U.S.,
became the first "illegal immigrants" making their way into this
country.
Romero writes, "Unknown to most people, the Chinese were
the first `undocumented immigrants'
from Mexico, and they created the first organized system of human smuggling from
Mexico to the
United States. As part of their efforts to circumvent the U.S. Chinese Exclusion
Laws, Chinese
immigrants created a vast transnational smuggling business that involved agents
and collaborators in
China, Mexico, Cuba and various cities throughout the United States."
Throughout their history in the Americas, Chinese immigrants
were victims of virulent racism and
violent attacks. It is a shameful part of Los Angeles history that saw lynchings
and wanton murders of
Chinese. The most egregious example of that is the infamous Los Angeles massacre
of
October 24, 1871.
As quoted in Jean Pfaelzer's seminal book "Driven
Out," the "Alta California" newspaper of the
period printed this account: "Twelve hours ago...15 staring corpses hung
ghastly in the moonlight, while
seven or eight others, mutilated, torn and crushed, lay in our streets, all of
them Chinamen."
Actually, 17 Chinese were lynched and two others were knifed
to death on the night of Oct. 24, 1871.
Pfaelzer writes: "Their mangled bodies were found hanging from a wooden
awning over a carriage
shop, from the sides of two prairie schooners parked around the corner, from a
gutter spout, and from
a beam across the wide gate of a lumberyard. One of the victims wore no trousers
and a finger had
been severed from his left hand."
A hostile lynch mob attacked the residents of L.A.'s
Chinatown, which was then located where Union
Station stands today. The Chinese were accused of spreading crime and disease.
They were accused
of "taking our jobs" and of unfair competition in business.
But anti-Chinese bigotry reared its ugly head not only in the
United States, but in Mexico as well.
Romero documents the pernicious case of the Torreon Massacre of 1911 in the
northern Mexican state
of Coahuila.
More than 300 Chinese were summarily and brutally murdered by
soldiers of the Mexican revolution.
Their only "crime" was that they were Chinese. Romero writes,
"The massacre of Torreon was the worst
act of violence committed against any Chinese diasporic community of the
Americas during the
twentieth century."
One significant difference between the Chinese experience in
Mexico and in the United States
involves intermarriage. Eventually in Mexico, many Chinese men married Mexican
women. Families of
"chino/mexicanos" thrive in Mexico today. By contrast, because of
strictly enforced anti-miscegenation
laws, mixed race marriages were almost non-existent in the U.S.
THE CHINESE IN MEXICO 1882-1940
By Robert Chao Romero
University of Arizona Press,
$50
12/18/10: the Senate by unanimous consent confirmed Edmond E-Min Chang to be
United States
District Judge for the Northern District of Illinois, and Leslie Kobayashi to be
United States District
Judge for the District of Hawaii.
12/15/10
New York Times: "As Koreans Pour In, a Town Is Remade,"
By Richard Perez-Pena
For full story, see http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/16/nyregion/16palisades.html?src=twrhp
Palisades Park, N.J. — Jason Kim, an elected borough
councilman, strolls along Broad Avenue, this
town’s bustling commercial spine, past storefront signs that are mostly in
Korean, chatting in Korean
and English with business owners and shoppers. A generation of Korean-Americans
has grown up
here, many people switch readily between languages, and the police force has
three Korean-American
officers.
Since the 1980s, the towns of eastern Bergen County —
Edgewater, Englewood Cliffs, Leonia, Fort
Lee and others — seem to have exerted a magnetic pull on Asian immigrants,
particularly Koreans. But
none more so than Palisades Park, whose population is now 54 percent
Asian-American and 44 percent
Korean-American, the Census Bureau reported this week.
Major population centers like Queens and Los Angeles have
more Koreans, but Palisades Park, with
fewer than 20,000 people, is, proportionally, the most heavily Korean
municipality in the country, according
to Pyong Gap Min, a distinguished professor of sociology at Queens College.
66 percent of the town’s population is foreign-born,
including many Guatemalans and smaller numbers
from several other countries.
The Korean presence is growing fast; the 2000 census found
that 31 percent of Palisades Park residents
were Korean-American. The 44 percent figure came from surveys taken from 2005 to
2009, and local
Korean leaders predict that the figure will be higher when 2010 census numbers
are released next year.
Mr. Kim, 54, teaches math and computer science at Bronx
Community College and also has a business
preparing students to take the SAT.
Until the 1980s, the town was overwhelmingly white, a mix of
blue-collar workers and professionals whose
families had come predominantly from Italy, Croatia, Germany and Greece. Its
houses were inexpensive, and
it had a number of vacant shops and offices.
A pattern had started to emerge by then, of Asian immigrants
moving from New York City to Bergen
County. They were drawn by the area’s relative safety and highly regarded
schools, and by its proximity to
the George Washington Bridge, for commuting to jobs in the city.
The influx made the town more prosperous, as Korean
businesses moved in, renovating buildings and
erecting new ones. But for the old-timers, it made the place alien, and property
more expensive. Today,
39 percent of the population is white, but few businesses are white-owned.
The Koreans’ numbers have been slow to translate into
clout; only about one-quarter of the voters are
Korean. Mr. Kim was the first Asian-American elected to a seat on the school
board, in 1995 — his third
try — and the first to win a seat on the council, in 2004. A second Korean
immigrant, Jong Chul Lee, was
elected to the council last year, and two others sit on the school board.
12/9/10 Wall Street Journal: "Mayoral Hopeful Ready for Scrutiny,"
by Stu Woo
Last month, State Sen. Leland Yee launched an exploratory bid
for San Francisco's 2011 mayoral
election, becoming a leading candidate for the office.
Political observers consider Mr. Yee a formidable candidate
because he is proven fund-raiser with
strong backing from the city's Chinese-American community, which could help make
him the city's first
Asian-American mayor. The 62-year-old Democrat also boasts support from an array
of labor and
liberal groups.
To win, Mr. Yee must appeal to a broad constituency. He also
will have to address concerns about
his personal conduct, including a 1992 arrest for shoplifting suntan oil in
Hawaii. No charges were filed
in the incident.
Mr. Yee isn't seeking the interim mayor position. He joins
other declared candidates for that includes
city attorney Dennis Herrera, Supervisor Bevan Dufty, city assessor-recorder
Phil Ting and venture
capitalist Joanna Rees.
Board of Supervisors President David Chiu, if he becomes
interim mayor, could become
a favorite if he enters the race.
A native of China's Guangdong province, Mr. Yee moved to San
Francisco with his family when he
was 3 years old. He attended Mission High School and earned a Ph.D. in
child psychology from the
University of Hawaii in 1975.
After returning to the Bay Area to work in child psychology,
he got involved in politics. Mr. Yee won
a seat on San Francisco's school board in 1988, became a city supervisor in 1996
and entered the
state legislature in 2002.
Earlier this year, Mr. Yee irritated Democratic state Senate
colleagues when he refused to vote for
a budget that would have closed an $18 billion shortfall, in part through steep
cuts to education and
social services. His Democratic colleagues said they disliked the proposal, too,
but bit the bullet
because they had to close the big budget gap.
Mr. Yee wrote a bill to ban the sale of ultraviolent
videogames to minors. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger
signed the bill into law in 2005, but the U.S. Supreme Court is looking at
whether it violates First
Amendment laws.
One challenge Mr. Yee must overcome are personal
controversies. During his successful 2000 race
for supervisor, two well-documented episodes—being arrested in Hawaii for
shoplifting and being
stopped twice by police in 1999 for suspicion of soliciting prostitutes in the
Mission District—became
campaign issues.
Mr. Yee said that in the Hawaii incident, he absentmindedly
walked out of a supermarket with the
suntan-oil bottle in his pocket. He said the Mission pullovers were a case of
mistaken identity, and
no charges were filed.
Those personal travails might not matter. Mr. Newsom was
re-elected mayor with 74% support in
November 2007, less than a year after he admitted to an affair with a top aide's
wife and an alcohol
problem.
12/8/10 Asian Journal: "52 Fil-Am employees sue hospital for discrimination
and harassment,"
by Cynthia De Castro
52 former and current Filipino-American hospital employees
filed a lawsuit against their employer,
Delano Regional Medical Center (located in the Central Valley) for
discrimination and harassment
on the basis of national origin.
The complaint was filed in the United States District Court,
Eastern District of California last
December 7, 2010.The action was filed against Central California Foundation for
Health/ Delano
Regional Medical Center and Delano Health Associates, Inc. (collectively
referred to as “DRMC”
or “Defendants”). The employees are represented by the Asian Pacific
American Legal Center
(APALC), a member of the Asian American Center for Advancing Justice.
The complaint states that DRMC discriminated against its
Filipino-American employees because
of their national origin and subjected the Filipino-American workers to severe
and pervasive
workplace harassment. DRMC prohibited Filipino-American employees from speaking
Tagalog
and other Filipino languages under a broad-reaching, English-only policy. DRMC
singled out only
Filipino-American employees in enforcing the policy.
Among all their employees of various ethnicities, defendants
required only Filipino-American
employees to attend mandatory meetings with management.
During these meetings, DRMC management told the
Filipino-American employees that they were
prohibited from speaking Tagalog and other Filipino languages at the workplace.
DRMC reprimanded them, threatened to monitor them with audio
surveillance and threatened
to discipline and suspend employees who will be caught speaking Tagalog.
Defendants also
encouraged other employees to report Filipino-American employees to supervisors,
which created
tension and hostility among employees. Filipino-American employees were
monitored, chastised
and threatened by supervisors and other co-workers who constantly told them to
speak English.
During the press conference held at the APALC office in Los
Angeles December 7, two of the
plaintiffs, Wilma Lamug and Elnora Cayme, spoke about the unfair treatment they
received from
DRMC management.
“DRMC’s actions made us feel humiliated, isolated, and
unvalued as employees. Many of us,
including myself, had worked hard for DRMC for ten or twenty years. Despite our
loyalty and years
of service, we were shocked that DRMC singled out Filipino-American workers and
blatantly
discriminated against us,” said Plaintiff Wilma Lamug, a Licensed Vocational
Nurse at DRMC for
more than ten years.
Elnora Cayme, a licensed vocational nurse and respiratory
therapist who has worked for DRMC
for 27 years, said amid tears, “I have lived in Delano since I immigrated to
the States in 1978 with
my parents and siblings. DRMC is our community hospital. A majority of the
hospital’s staff was
made up of Filipino health care professionals. I don’t know why they treated
us so unjustly, even if
we were all so loyal and devoted to our jobs.”
“DRMC enforced an overly restrictive and draconian
English-only policy against only its Filipino-
American employees that cannot be justified by a business necessity. As a
result, DRMC created
a workplace environment that was hostile towards its Filipino-American employees
and
unfortunately increased tensions between Filipino and non-Filipino employees,”
said Julie A. Su,
Litigation Director at APALC.
APALC, on behalf of the employees, is moving to intervene in
a lawsuit that was filed by the
US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) on August 18, 2010. The
EEOC’s lawsuit
alleges that DRMC’s acts of national origin discrimination and harassment
violate federal law
(Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964).
APALC’s complaint alleges that DRMC violated federal law as
well as California state law,
specifically California ’s Fair Employment and Housing Act. The lawsuit seeks
an injunction to
prevent future discrimination, as well as financial compensation from defendants
for the employees.
According to EEOC, the hospital prohibited Filipino staff
from speaking Tagalog while allowing
non-Filipino employees to speak other languages, such as Spanish.
“Employers must ensure that company policies are applied
equally,” said Anna Park, regional
attorney of the EEOC’s Los Angeles Dustrict Office. “Targeting workers of a
particular national
origin is not only illegal, it also erodes company morale – pitting groups
against one another.”
12/7/10 United Press International: "Study: Asian-American men in U.S. pay
gap"
Lawrence, Kansas -- U.S. employers don't pay Asian-American
men as much as they pay
similarly qualified white men, a University of Kansas study found.
Researchers analyzed data from the 2003 National Survey of
College Graduates to investigate
earnings, a university release said Tuesday.
"The most striking result is that native-born Asian
Americans -- who were born in the U.S. and speak
English perfectly -- their income is 8 percent lower than whites after
controlling for their college majors,
their places of residence and their level of education," ChangHwan Kim,
assistant professor of
sociology and study leader, said.
The findings show the United States has a way to go toward
the goal of becoming a colorblind
society, Kim says.
"As an individual, you can reach as high as
president," he says. "But as an ethnic group, no group
has reached full parity with whites. That's the current status of racial
equality in the United States."
Despite the disparity in income levels, Asian-American men
fare better than they did before the
Civil Rights era in the United States, Kim says.
"The 8 percent difference is large, but it is small
compared to previous Asian-American generations,"
Kim said. "Previous generations had income levels much lower, so in this
sense we've made progress."
The research appears in the December issue of the American
Sociological Review.
11/21/10 Los Angeles Times: “The party that wins Asian voters may benefit for
decades: A poll published
last week held a glimmer of hope for the California GOP: Asian voters, unlike
other minorities, are willing
to consider Republican candidates,”
By Cathleen Decker
One of the few glimmers of hope for the GOP in a poll
published last week by the Los Angeles Times
and the USC College of Letters, Arts and Sciences was the openness among Asian
voters to consider Republican candidates whom many in the state, particularly
other minority groups, have spurned.
Among the state's two ascendant ethnic voter groups, Latinos
and Asians, the poll found plenty of agreement. Both backed Democrat Jerry Brown
over Whitman in the governor's race, and both
supported Democrat Barbara Boxer over Republican Carly Fiorina in the U.S.
Senate race. Both
supported an activist role for government in regulating businesses, protecting
minorities and aiding the
poor.
But
there were key distinctions as well. The poll provided a rare look at Asian
voters, whose numbers among voters, estimated at 7% of the California
electorate.
Jane Junn, a USC professor of political science helped design
the survey.
Asian
voters tended to be more sympathetic to Republican policies on two fronts —
fiscal and social issues — which served to emphasize their potential as swing
voters.
When asked whether the state's giant budget deficit should be
pared through tax hikes or decreased spending, 51% of Asian voters cited
spending, well above the 35% among Latinos and the 46% among
white voters.
On social issues, the distinctions were most pronounced on
same-sex marriage. Thirty-eight percent of Asians said same-sex couples deserved
no legal recognition, and only 29% backed the right to marriage. Among Latinos,
19% opted for no recognition and 45% backed marriage; among whites 12% opposed
legal recognition and 53% supported marriage.
On immigration, Asians agreed with Latinos on backing a
temporary worker program and allowing undocumented residents to gain citizenship
if they fulfilled certain dictates. And they favored a measure
that would allow citizenship for those who graduate from college or serve in the
military.
But
they differed sharply on whether employers who hire illegal immigrants should be
fined: Latinos disagreed and Asians strongly agreed. And on the emotional matter
of whether illegal immigrants should
be barred from services like emergency room care or public school admission,
Latinos strongly
disagreed and Asians narrowly agreed.
Just
as striking, Asians had a far more positive view of Whitman, who alienated
Latinos with her
handling of immigration and her treatment of an undocumented housekeeper. While
71% of Latinos had
an unfavorable impression of Whitman, only 39% of Asians did. Thirty-three
percent of Asians thought
well of her, double the percentage of Latinos.
Analysts said the distinctions rested on demographic
differences between the two groups. Latinos
were younger, with 71% under age 50 to 59% for Asian voters. Latinos included
more women, 60% to
48% for Asians. Latinos were less likely to be college graduates, 22% to 56% for
Asians.
Most
important, Latinos were far more likely to have been born in this country —
63% to only 27% for
Asian voters.
For the full story, see http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-me-theweek-20101121,0,7103119.story?track=rss
11/19/10: Conrado "Bobby" Gempesaw, a Filipino-American, was named
Provost of Miami University.
http://www.udel.edu/udaily/2011/nov/gempesaw-provost-miami111910.html
11/15/2010 San Jose Mercury
News: "Vietnamese-American returns to Vietnam as U.S. general consul,"
by John Boudreau
HO CHI MINH CITY, Vietnam
-- When Vietnamese first meet An T. Le, they don't know quite what to make of
the new U.S. consul general in this bustling commercial center.
"They are curious,
'Who is this guy? Why is he so tall?' " the broad-shouldered, 6-foot-2-inch
diplomat recalled in his office at the American compound on Le Duan Boulevard.
"They think I'm a Korean-American
or Japanese-American or Chinese-American. I say, 'I must have ate Wonder Bread.'
"http://www.mercurynews.com/business/ci_16619467?nclick_check=1
11/10/10
FoxNews.com: "Get Your Affirmative Action Cupcakes Here!"
By John Stossel
This week, I held a bake sale -- a racist bake sale. I stood
in midtown Manhattan shouting, “Cupcakes
for sale.” My price list read:
Asians -- $1.50
Whites -- $1.00
Blacks/Latinos -- 50 cents
People stared. One yelled, “What is funny to you about
people who are less privileged?” A black
woman said, angrily, “It’s very offensive, very demeaning!” One black man
accused me of poisoning the
cupcakes.
I understand why people got angry. What I did was hurtful to
some. My bake sale mimicked what some
conservative college students did at Bucknell University. The students wanted to
satirize their school’s
affirmative action policy, which makes it easier for blacks and Hispanics to get
admitted.
I think affirmative action is racism -- and therefore wrong.
If a private school like Bucknell wants to have
such policies to increase diversity, fine. But government-imposed affirmative
action is offensive. Equality
before the law means government should treat citizens equally.
But it doesn’t. Our racist government says that any school
receiving federal tax dollars, even if only in
the form of federal aid to students, must comply with affirmative action rules,
and some states have
enacted their own policies.
Advocates of affirmative action argue it is needed because of
historic discrimination. Maybe that was
true in 1970, but it’s no longer true. Affirmative action is now part of the
minority special privilege
machine, an indispensable component of which is perpetual victimhood.
All the Bucknell students wanted was a campus discussion
about that. Why not? A university is
supposed to be a place for open discussion, but some topics are apparently
off-limits. On my Fox
Business show this week, I’ll discuss this with a member of the Bucknell
Conservative Club who
participated in the bake sale.
About an hour after the students began their “affirmative
action” sale, the associate dean of students
shut it down. He said it was because the prices charged were different from
those listed on the
permissions application. An offer to change the prices was rejected. Then the
club’s application to
hold another sale was rejected. Ironically, the associate dean said it would
violate the schools
nondiscrimination policy! He would authorize a debate on affirmative action, but
nothing else.
How ridiculous! Fortunately, the Foundation for Individual
Rights in Education (FIRE) has come to
the students’ defense:
“Using this absurd logic, Bucknell would have to require
its College Democrats to say nothing
political on campus unless they give equal time to Republican candidates at
their events, or its Catholic
Campus Ministry to remain silent about abortion unless it holds a debate and
invites pro-choice
activists to speak,” FIRE’s Adam Kissel said. “While students are free to
host debates, they must not
be required to provide a platform for their ideological opponents. Rather, those
opponents must be
free to spread their own messages and host their own events.”
Right. My affirmative action cupcake “event” led to some
interesting discussions. One young woman
began by criticizing me, “It’s absolutely wrong.”
But after I raised the parallel with college admissions, she
said: “No race of people is worth more
than another. Or less.”
But do you believe in affirmative action in colleges? I
asked.
“I used to,” she replied.
Those are the kind discussions students should have.
Affirmative action wasn’t the only issue that brought
conservative Bucknell students grief. When
they tried to protest President Obama’s $787 billion “stimulus” spending
last year by handing out
fake dollar bills, the school stopped them for violating rules against
soliciting! According to FIRE,
Bucknell’s solicitation policy covers only sales and fundraising, which the
students were not engaged
in, but the school rejected the students’ appeal, saying permission was needed
to distribute “anything,
from Bibles to other matter.”
Absurd! The Bucknell administration tells me it stopped the
anti-stimulus protest because the
students had not registered to use that busy campus space. FIRE disputes that.
“Distributing protest literature is an American free-speech
tradition that dates to before the founding
of the United States,” Kissel said. “Why is Bucknell so afraid of students
handing out ‘Bibles [or] other
matter' that might provide challenging perspectives? Colleges are supposed to be
marketplaces of
ideas, but Bucknell is betraying this ideal.”
It is, indeed. Why are America’s institutions of higher
learning so fearful?
John Stossel is host of "Stossel" on the Fox
Business Network.
http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2010/11/10/john-stossel-affirmative-action-cupcakes-asians-whites-blacks-latinos-bucknell/
11/3/10 Chronicle of Higher Education: “Arizona’s Affirmative Action Ban,”
By Richard Kahlenberg
Yesterday,
voters in Arizona approved Proposition 107, which bans the use of preferences
based
on race, ethnicity, and gender at public colleges and universities, among other
institutions. Voters
supported the referendum by an overwhelming margin (60 percent-40 percent).
The Arizona vote follows the passage of similar initiatives
in both blue and red states, including
California (1996), Washington (1998), Michigan (2006), and Nebraska (2008). The
Arizona vote gives California businessman Ward Connerly’s American Civil
Rights Institute a 5-1 record on anti-affirmative action referenda. (A 2008
initiative in Colorado narrowly lost).
In addition, Connerly’s threat of an
anti-affirmative-action initiative in Florida in 1999 prompted then-Governor Jeb
Bush to ban racial preferences at public colleges and universities as a
preemptive measure. (Racial affirmative action has also been discontinued at
individual institutions, such as the University of Georgia and Texas A&M.)
In all, six states, with 80 million residents, more than one
quarter of the American population, have now barred affirmative action at public
colleges and universities.
If polling finds that preferences based on race are
unpopular, however, public opinion research has long found that American support
preferences for low-income and economically disadvantaged students of all races.
In 2003, for example, a Los Angeles Times survey found that by 56-26 percent,
American opposed
the University of Michigan’s racial preference policy but those same Americans
supported preferences for low-income students by 59-31 percent. A Newsweek poll
around that same time likewise found that Americans opposed preferences for
blacks in university admissions by 68-26 percent, but supported preferences for
economically disadvantaged students by 65-28 percent.
Recent
Century Foundation research finds that the most socioeconomically disadvantaged
student is predicted to score 399 SAT points lower than for the most
socioeconomically advantaged student. By contrast, the average black student is
predicted to score 56 points lower than the average white student (controlling
for socioeconomic status).
11/4/10 press release: "Over 3,500 Asian American Voters Participate in
AALDEF Multilingual Exit Poll
for 2010 Midterm Elections: Asian Americans Demonstrate Strong Approval for Dems
in Northeast,
Support for Republican Govs in the South,"
New York...While Asian Americans strongly supported
Democratic gubernatorial candidates in New
York, Massachusetts, and Pennsylvania, Asian American voters in Georgia and
Texas mirrored the
broader electorate by favoring Republican candidates for Governor, according to
preliminary results of
the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund (AALDEF) exit poll released
today. AALDEF conducted the five-state multilingual exit poll of over 3,500
Asian American voters in collaboration with 30 national and local community
groups, the largest nonpartisan poll of its kind in the nation.
The 2010 exit poll was conducted in five states with large or
fast-growing Asian American populations:
New York, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Texas and Georgia. The five largest Asian
ethnic groups polled were Chinese (42%), South Asian (25%), Korean (17%),
Filipino (6%), and Vietnamese (3%). Among
those polled, 60% of Asian Americans were registered Democrats, 19% were not
enrolled in any political party, and 14% of Asian Americans were registered
Republicans.
In the traditionally Democratic northeastern states of New
York and Massachusetts, Asian Americans
voted overwhelmingly for Democratic candidates Andrew Cuomo in NY (Cuomo-82%,
Paladino-13%) and Deval Patrick in MA (Patrick-84%, Baker-14%). Cuomo won the
election 61% to 34%, and Patrick was re-elected with a 6-point margin, 48% to
42%. In New York, AALDEF's exit poll was conducted at 18 poll
sites in Manhattan, Queens and Brooklyn. In Massachusetts, AALDEF polled voters
at 4 sites in Boston
and Lowell.
In a carefully-watched New York State Senate race, Democratic
candidate Tony Avella unseated long-
time Republican incumbent Frank Padavan in Senate District 11 in Queens. Padavan
had been criticized
by community groups for his anti-immigrant positions. According to a local poll
conducted by AALDEF community partner MinKwon Center for Community Action, 89%
of Korean American voters favored Democratic candidate Avella, and 11% of those
polled supported Padavan. Avella defeated Padavan by 53% to 47% of all district
voters.
In Pennsylvania, among Asian American voters polled at 4
sites in Philadelphia's Chinatown and Upper Darby, PA, 78% voted for Democratic
gubernatorial candidate Dan Onorato, with 18% supporting Republican candidate
Tom Corbett. Corbett won 54% of the Pennsylvania vote, with 45% for Onorato.
Asian American voter preferences in Texas and Georgia more
closely reflected the broader state electorates that have traditionally favored
Republicans. Asian American voters favored the re-election of Republican
Governor Rick Perry by a small margin (Perry-50%, White-48%); Perry was
re-elected by a vote of 55% to 42%. In Georgia, Asian American voters favored
Republican candidate Nathan Deal (50%) over Democratic candidate Roy Barnes
(46%). Deal won the gubernatorial election 53% to 43%. Asian American voters in
Texas were surveyed at 7 poll sites in Houston and Sugar Land. In Georgia, the
AALDEF exit poll was conducted at 4 sites in the Atlanta area: Suwanee,
Doraville, Norcross and Duluth.
AALDEF also monitored almost 50 poll sites for compliance
with the Voting Rights Act and Help America Vote Act (HAVA). Volunteer attorneys
checked the provision of Asian-language ballots, interpreters, signs and voting
materials, which are required in certain districts; improper requests for voter
identification, and whether provision ballots were offered to Asian Americans
whose names did not appear on voter lists. Examples of voting problems observed
on Election Day included:
New York
-Widespread complaints about the illegible paper ballots in New York City,
because Chinese/Korean characters and English-language fonts were too small
-In Manhattan's Chinatown, I.S. 131 had only English and Korean-language voting
instructions available for the predominantly Chinese American voters at this
site.
-Asian American voters complained about rude conduct by poll workers at I.S. 131
in Manhattan's Chinatown and P.S. 94 in Sunset Park, Brooklyn
-Despite federal mandates under the Voting Rights Act, several interpreter
shortages were reported, including at P.S. 20 in Manhattan's Lower East Side (no
Chinese interpreters; 3 required); P.S. 12 in Woodside, Queens (2 Chinese
interpreters; 4 required)
Pennsylvania
-At Benjamin Franklin House in Philadelphia, an Asian American couple came to
vote; the wife's name was on the voter list, her husband's name was not. Poll
workers turned away the husband and did not give him a provisional ballot, as
required under HAVA.
-At Lowell Elementary School in Philadelphia, Khmer and Vietnamese translators
were not present at the poll site. When Cambodian American voters asked for
assistance, poll workers did not know what to do or referred them to some
hotline without any instructions.
-Also at Lowell Elementary School in Philadelphia, an Asian American voter
needed her son to help her vote because she was limited English proficient. She
was told to wait over an hour until after several others voted.
The 2010 multilingual exit poll was conducted at 34 poll
sites in 8 languages and dialects: Chinese, Korean, Vietnamese, Khmer, Bengali,
Punjabi, Urdu, and Gujarati. AALDEF has conducted exit polls of Asian American
voters in every major election since 1988. In the 2008 Presidential elections,
AALDEF polled 16,665 Asian American voters in 11 states. Copies of AALDEF's past
exit poll and election monitoring reports can be found at http://www.aaldef.org/publications/
under "Voting Rights."
The co-sponsors of the multilingual exit poll and Asian
American election protection project include: National: APIA Vote, Lawyers'
Committee for Civil Rights, National Asian Pacific American Bar Association, OCA,
South Asian Americans Leading Together. New York: Asian American Bar Association
of New York, Asian American Studies Program-Hunter College, Chhaya CDC, Korean
American Voters' Council, Filipino American Human Services, Inc., Filipino
American Legal Defense and Education Fund, MinKwon Center for Community Action,
Muslim Bar Association of New York, National Federation of Filipino American
Associations-Region One, SEVA, South Asian Bar Association of New York, South
Asian Youth Action. Pennsylvania: Asian Pacific American Bar Association of
Pennsylvania, Asian Pacific American Law Student Association at UPenn Law, OCA
Greater Philadelphia Chapter, Philadelphia Chinatown Development Corporation.
Massachusetts: Asian Outreach Unit, Greater Boston Legal Services, Asian
Community Development Corporation, Asian American Lawyers Association of
Massachusetts, Chinese Progressive Association, Mass Vote. Georgia: Asian
American Legal Advocacy Center of Georgia, Center for Pan Asian Community
Services, Georgia Asian Pacific American Bar Association, OCA Georgia Chapter.
Texas: OCA Greater Houston.
10/19/10
Skokie Patch: “Chang Looks for Victory, for him and GOP; First time candidate
Hamilton Chang is seeking to win the Republican seat as he bids to
become the first Asian-American member of the Illinois Legislature,”
http://skokie.patch.com/articles/chang-looks-for-victory-for-him-and-gop
10/19/10 Townhall.com: "Van
Tran's Unlikely Insurgency in CA-47"
http://townhall.com/columnists/GuyBenson/2010/10/19/on_the_road_van_trans_unlikely_insurgency_in_ca-47
10/18/10 Sacramento Bee: "Jerry Brown touts Asian-Pacific Islander
support,"
http://blogs.sacbee.com/capitolalertlatest/2010/10/jerry-brown-touts-asian-pacifi.html#ixzz12oEn8mFI
TO: VAN TRAN FOR CONGRESS CAMPAIGN
FROM: ROB AUTRY
RE: CALIFORNIA CD 47 SURVEY FINDINGS
DATE: OCTOBER 15, 2010
Public Opinion Strategies is pleased to present the key
findings from a survey of 300 likely general election voters in California’s
Forty-Seventh Congressional District. The telephone survey was conducted October
13-14, 2010 and has a margin of error of +/- 5.66%.
THE BOTTOM LINE
With 18 days to go, Congresswoman Loretta Sanchez is in the
fight of her political life. Van Tran has closed the image gap and now has
comparable favorables with Sanchez, yet carries far fewer negatives. More
importantly, this race is tied with Tran and Sanchez each getting 39% of the
vote – an extremely precarious position for an incumbent Member of Congress to
be with less than three weeks to go.
KEY FINDINGS
Van Tran is tied with Loretta Sanchez on the ballot test.
Fully 39% of likely voters say they are supporting Van Tran, while 39% are
backing Sanchez and 5% siding with Ceci Iglesias (17% undecided). Moreover,
Tran’s definite support level is higher than that of Congresswoman Sanchez
(30% definitely voting for Tran – 28% definitely voting for Sanchez).
- While there are certainly solid ethnic coalitions in this
race – Asian and Vietnamese voters siding with Tran, Latinos favoring Sanchez
– Tran enjoys a commanding 34-point lead with White voters in the district
(60% Tran – 26% Sanchez).
- Van Tran also polls strongly with Independent voters (42%
Tran – 28% Sanchez) and older voters (50% Tran – 30% Sanchez) – two groups
that are likely going to determine the victor here.
- Van Tran has a commanding 22-point lead over Sanchez (52% -
30%) among voters who say they are “extremely interested” in the upcoming
elections (rate their interest a “10”on a one-to-ten scale). Among a broader
high interest segment of the electorate – the “8-10s” – Tran is up eight
points (44% - 38%).
Van Tran is better positioned from an image perspective.
Overall, 43% of voters have a favorable image of Van Tran and 18% are
unfavorable towards him (+25 net favorable image rating). By comparison, Loretta
Sanchez has a 45% favorable – 36% unfavorable image rating (+9 net favorable).
The fact that Sanchez has twice the unfavorables as Tran (with about the same
favorables) explains why voters who have an opinion of both candidates are
voting for Van Tran by an 18-point margin (54% Tran – 36% Sanchez).
10/4/10 San Francisco Chronicle: "O'Donnell said China plotting to take
over US,"
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2010/10/04/politics/p091000D64.DTL
3/31/2010:
"More violence and failure at South Philadelphia High School: What hasn't
changed at all,"
by Helen Gym
It's been almost four months since the Dec. 3 violence at
South Philadelphia High School. How are things going?
Two weeks ago, a recent immigrant Chinese student testified
at the School Reform Commission about ongoing violence at the school. He and his
brother had arrived at Southern post-Dec. 3, but heard about the violence on
their very first day. Earlier this month, his brother’s head cracked against a
wall after two students at the school kicked a bathroom door into his face as he
was coming out. The boy’s parents received an urgent call from their son
inside the school, but were turned away by school security while they struggled
to explain why they were there.
Following the testimony at the SRC the parents got a call
from the school to return. Although they were at the school for more than two
hours, the parents never once saw South Philly High Principal LaGreta Brown, who
was in the building, nor did they get a follow-up call about their son from
anyone at the school.
So this boy travels thousands of miles to go to school at
South Philly and hears about anti-Asian violence on his very first day. But no
one at the school ever bothered to orientate the boy or his family toward any
policies for new immigrant students; no one ever discussed a safety plan in case
of harassment or introduced the boy and his family to concerned personnel at the
school who could address any concerns the boy or his family had. Instead, the
boy becomes yet another on-going stat in the litany of continued negligence of
school and District officials at South Philadelphia.
Meanwhile, the tragic suicide of a young Irish immigrant girl
in Massachusetts earlier this year has school and local officials across the
country rethinking their responsibilities around bullying and harassment.
The case bears terrible similarities to what’s been
happening at South Philadelphia High School for years. Most of the bullying was
during school hours and on school grounds. The girl was targeted because she was
from a different country, according to one peer. There was physical harassment
as well as verbal. And the harassment was done in full view of school officials:
"The investigation revealed relentless activities
directed toward Phoebe to make it impossible for her to stay at school,"
Ms. Scheibel said. The conduct of those charged, she said, "far exceeded
the limits of normal teenage relationship-related quarrels."
It was particularly alarming, the district attorney said, that some teachers,
administrators and other staff members at the school were aware of the
harassment but did not stop it. "The actions or inactions of some adults at
the school were troublesome," Ms. Scheibel said, but did not violate any
laws.
As a result of her suicide and a recent civil lawsuit by a
gay teenager who was also tormented until he was forced to leave his school, the
Massachusetts legislature is moving on an anti-bullying law; the D.A. just this
week moved to issue felony indictments against nine of the girl’s high school
classmates this week; and serious dialogue is had in the school and District
about their responsibilities.
Let’s contrast that with what’s happened at South
Philadelphia since the Dec. 3 violence: denial and scoldings toward community
advocates who had made this issue take up "too much time" for Supt.
Arlene Ackerman; a $100,000 "investigation" that left us with little
new information; retaliation against specific students; and an entrenched
administration which has protected the irresponsible actions of Principal
LaGreta Brown, Regional Supt. Michael Silverman and others; and a complete lack
of dialogue with Asian community advocates and student boycotters who have been
active for more than a year in addressing violence at South Philly High.
It’s not just the school district. The silence from any
city and state agency on the on-going violence has been deafening as well. Not
the Mayor. The D.A. Not a single state legislator, nor the governor (this is a
state run school system after all). Only the Pennsylvania Human Relations
Commission has made some initial forays into tackling the issue head on.
What’s remarkable about what’s happening here is how
localized violence becomes institutionalized. School and city officials have a
clear responsibility for the welfare of children in our schools and a moral
imperative to send a strong message about anti-immigrant, anti-Asian hate in our
city. They sent an unequivocal message around flash mobs. But there’s been not
a word when it comes to anti-Asian, anti-immigrant hate and the failure of
school officials to do anything about it. Instead, there’s been public support
issued for the District from both city and state officials.
It’s telling that the District report released last month
declared that things had improved at S. Philadelphia HS, and as its measure said
that nothing on the scale of Dec. 3 had happened since – as if that is now the
new standard.
But as one new family now knows, despite all the claims by
District officials, not enough has changed for Asian immigrant students.
3/30/10 Philadelphia Inquirer: "Asians find Phila. schools an unexpected
experience,"
By Jeff Gammage
In the years before Ming Chen came to the United States, he
imagined his American education:
His school would be a place of learning and knowledge, where
students helped one another achieve.
Chen arrived here from China in August and enrolled at South
Philadelphia High School the next month. On Dec. 3, he was attacked in the
lunchroom during a daylong assault on Asian students by groups of mostly African
American classmates.
Today, he struggles to reconcile how he could be physically
assaulted - he suffered a bloody mouth and bruises - in what he was certain
would be a center of scholarship and friendship. "School should be a place
to learn, to study, not a place to fight," Chen, 21, said through a
translator.
The Dec. 3 violence has spawned three separate, official
investigations by federal, Philadelphia School District, and human-relations
officials. Asian immigrant students say what has not been discussed is their
profound sense of shock, the disconnect and disparity between the reception they
envisioned from a far shore and what they actually experienced in school.
In interviews with The Inquirer, eight students described
that chasm between expectation and reality.
"Sometimes, I wonder what's wrong with me, that I don't
get accepted," said Bach Tong, a 16-year-old 10th grader from Vietnam.
"School is supposed to be the safest place, besides home."
Tong, like most others interviewed, has been in the United
States less than three years, his parents having left behind everything in hope
their son could snare the gold ring of a U.S. education. Before immigrating,
students said, their knowledge of U.S. schools came from watching movies and TV.
Mu Lin Liu, 18, had no idea what he was walking into when he
arrived at South Philadelphia High on what he said was either Dec. 6 or 7.
He expected he and the American students would "all
become friends." It never entered his mind he might be a target. But on his
first day, in the aftermath of the Dec. 3 violence, the building practically
vibrated with anxiety.
"I was very, very surprised and shocked," the ninth
grader said through a translator.
His father had left Fuzhou, China, for the United States, to work and save money
so the family could follow, when Liu was 3. Liu was 16 when they met again. That
kind of separation is typical among families of Chinese immigrant students.
In countries such as China, many struggle to pay school fees
and view free public education as an exceptional benefit.
Through the first months of school, Liu said, he and his
brother managed to avoid trouble. But this month, he said, his brother was
exiting a bathroom stall when a student on the outside deliberately kicked the
door inward, slamming it into the youth.
Regarding Dec. 3, the School District inquiry attributed the
violence to rumors that sprang from an altercation involving Asian and African
American students the previous day. It said most of the victims were recent
immigrants, but found insufficient proof to conclude Asians were attacked solely
because of that status.
Community advocates and student leaders, however, say that
Asian and particularly Asian immigrant students are routinely slapped, tripped,
and punched - and that administrators ignored years of complaints.
The Dec. 3 violence sent seven Asians to hospitals and led to
a seven-day boycott of classes by about 50 students. Nineteen students were
suspended, and 14 transferred to alternative schools. Five transfers were
overturned.
In Philadelphia, Asians comprise a small minority, 5.7
percent of the population, and they account for roughly the same percentage of
total district enrollment. But that figure more than triples inside Southern, as
the high school is known, to 18 percent.
The neighborhood has been changing since the 1980s, when
large numbers of Southeast Asian refugees resettled. Now it's a frequent first
stop for Asian newcomers, who enter a school that is 70 percent African
American, 6 percent Hispanic, and 5 percent white.
Some Asian students traveled here to be reunited with parents
they barely knew. Others found themselves largely on their own, their sponsoring
relatives having left for other cities.
"In some sense, they have a great deal more opportunity
than they did at home. In some cases, they face barriers here they never thought
they'd face," Amanda Bergson-Shilcock of the Welcoming Center for New
Pennsylvanians said of the Asian students.
She supervises the agency's five-year-old program at
Southern, which helps 200 students, 60 percent of them born overseas. Most of
the foreign students have been in the country less than two years.
They are simultaneously trying to learn English, grasp the
content of their studies, and adapt to a new culture where the slightest social
interactions can be fraught: How much eye contact is polite? How close should
they stand to someone?
The act of leaving everything - country, language, food,
family - is itself traumatic, said Godelive Muttu, a coordinator for Lutheran
Children and Family Services.
"When they're in school and experience violence, that is
re-traumatizing," Muttu said. "There is no safe place. That is the
message to them. There is no safe place."
Experts say that these days, the United States offers a harsh
climate for immigrants of all ethnicities. Groups such as the Southern Poverty
Law Center say immigrants often are victims of violence and routinely are blamed
for crime, unemployment, and terrorism.
"First-generation Asian kids really, really work hard -
there's no other way to say it," said Fariborz Ghadar, a Pennsylvania State
University professor who directs the Center for Global Business Studies.
"Their SAT scores are good, their grades are good. And there is backlash by
American kids who see these guys as major competitors in the classroom.
"All of a sudden, here are kids that work their butts
off, don't really play well on their Xboxes, are not particularly athletic -
criteria that our teenagers think are important."
The district inquiry, issued last month, said race was a
factor in the attacks. Other investigations are proceeding through the Justice
Department, the result of a complaint filed by an Asian legal group, and the
state Human Relations Commission.
"We went to America to get an education, not to be in
violence, not to be victims," said Duong Nghe Ly, an 18-year-old junior
from Vietnam.
Ly's parents fled from Vietnam in 1990, making their way to
Thailand. Ly was born there, in a refugee camp, two years later. When he was 4,
the United Nations cut off funding for the camps and his family was forced to
return to Vietnam.
In Ho Chi Minh City, formerly Saigon, Ly's parents survived
by running a noodle stand in front of their home. They scraped to pay for their
son's schooling, while undertaking a 12-year effort to move to the United
States.
"I expected I would have a lot of American friends as my
English improved, like I saw on TV," he said. "I found it was not that
easy."
In interviews, students said that they generally believed
their teachers cared about them - and that they were learning. Several cited the
English-language teachers as particularly kind and helpful.
The second floor of Southern, where those classes are
centered, has been a refuge, students said. They fear district officials will
pursue discussions about breaking it up.
Phuong Truong, a 17-year-old junior, said that on his first
day in school he saw Asians in the lunchroom pelted with anything that could be
thrown - food, trays, oranges, milk.
In an interview, he struggled to convey his disbelief.
"I thought of it as someplace very safe, with friendly
teachers and friendly friends," said Truong, who came from Vietnam in 2008.
Before immigrating, Tong, the 10th grader, lived in Tra Vinh,
a city in the Mekong Delta region. His father was a farmer, his mother a
cashier.
His parents told him they were moving to the United States
the night before the family got on the plane. The couple had feared that
alerting their son in advance would upset his schoolwork.
The family arrived in April 2008, and Tong enrolled at
Southern that fall. He sought American friends, but found language a barrier.
Then, in October, several Asians were attacked at the Snyder Avenue subway stop.
Tong was astonished. His parents were so upset they scouted
possible new homes in New Jersey.
Now Tong doesn't tell his parents when Asians are harassed.
He worries they'll move, and he wants to stay with his Vietnamese friends. He
just wishes his school was more what he had imagined: "Nearly
perfect."
3/29/10 Los
Angeles Times: "In Berkeley, Yoo feels at home as a stranger in a strange
land: The Bush administration lawyer who gave legal cover to enhanced
interrogation methods says he's happy teaching at Boalt Hall School of Law,
despite calls for his ouster and protests by liberal groups,"
By Carol J. Williams
Reporting from Berkeley - In his slate-blue suit and
Republican-red tie, John Yoo stands out as discordantly formal among the denim-
and turtleneck-clad faculty at Boalt Hall School of Law. Never mind how his
politics play in what he derides as "the People's Republic of
Berkeley."
The former Bush administration lawyer who drafted what his
critics call the "torture memos" is reviled by many in this liberal
East Bay academic enclave, a feeling that is mutual though not, Yoo insists,
wholly unpleasant.
"I think of myself as being West Berlin during the Cold
War, a shining beacon of capitalism and democracy surrounded by a sea of
Marxism," Yoo observes, sipping iced tea in the faculty club lounge, a wan
smile registering the discomfort of colleagues walking by en route to the bar.
He sees his neighbors as the human figures of "a natural
history museum of the 1960s," the Telegraph Avenue tableau of a graying,
long-haired, pot-smoking counterculture stuck in the ideology's half-century-old
heyday.
"It's like looking at the panoramic displays of
troglodytes sitting around the campfire with their clubs. Here, it's tie-dye and
marijuana. It's just like the 1960s, with the Vietnam War still to
protest."
Yoo, 42, is unrepentant about his role in providing the CIA
and other agencies with legal cover to conduct harsh interrogation of terror
suspects with techniques such as water-boarding, which simulates drowning. In
legal guidance he provided to the past administration, Yoo redefined torture as
pain resulting in organ failure or death.
Calls for his ouster haven't subsided despite a Department of
Justice decision in February that neither Yoo nor his former boss in the Bush
administration Office of Legal Counsel, federal Circuit Judge Jay S. Bybee, will
face prosecution for advice to the administration that showed "poor
judgment" but not willful breaking of the law.
Liberal civil rights advocates like the Center for
Constitutional Rights, the American Civil Liberties Union and the Alliance for
Justice have demanded a full, independent investigation of Yoo and Bybee for
their roles in the sanctioning of interrogation tactics the Obama administration
has outlawed as violations of international treaties and U.S. moral values.
"I feel vindicated," Yoo said of the Justice
Department internal affairs report that concluded a five-year investigation and
dropped an earlier recommendation that he and Bybee be subjected to disciplinary
action by their respective state bar associations.
Yoo sees the investigation as political score-settling by
those who disagreed with the tough war-on-terror policies of the Bush White
House.
"Someday the Republicans will be in charge again, and
would you want to see them conducting ethics and criminal investigations into
the Obama administration?" he says. "I wouldn't want to see that. So I
hope that this closes this chapter in trying to use criminal and ethical charges
to carry out political fights against the policy of a past administration."
He sees the persistent protests of his fitness to teach law
as the campaign of a radical community intolerant of views that don't accord
with their own.
After disclosure of the memos last year, Christopher Edley,
the law school's dean, deflected demands that he fire Yoo, saying that he and
other university administrators would wait for the Justice Department's Office
of Professional Responsibilities report and then "review it carefully and
consider whether there are implications for this campus."
Edley has said little since the Feb. 19 report that both
detailed Yoo's and Bybee's misdeeds and eliminated an earlier finding that the
lawyers had engaged in professional misconduct.
"I hope these new developments will end the arguments
about faculty sanctions, but we should and will continue to argue about what is
right or wrong, legal or illegal, in combating terrorism. That's why we are
here," Edley said in a statement after the report was released.
Though Berkeley's faculty remains predominantly liberal, it
has become more ideologically diverse over the years as the best minds,
regardless of political bent, have been picked to build the nation's
well-respected computer science program, engineering school and law school,
which is considered one of the best in the country. Many of Yoo's faculty
colleagues have spoken out on the need for representing a wide range of
viewpoints. Among those deflecting calls for Yoo's dismissal was fellow law
professor Goodwin Liu, whom Obama has nominated for the U.S. 9th Circuit Court
of Appeals.
Students also represent a broad array of political outlooks,
although critics of Yoo's work for the Bush administration have dominated the
debate over his tenured position.
"We don't want someone like that teaching us about the
law and how to apply the law. It's a humiliation for the law school and a huge
disservice to the law students," said Liz Jackson, co-chair of the Boalt
Hall chapter of the National Lawyers Guild. "We are a very prestigious
place to be, and he gets a lot of legitimacy from being here and having a
respected platform from which to speak."
Yoo carries on cheerfully with his constitutional law class
and a seminar on which he has bestowed the assignment to write a manual for
delegates to a state constitutional convention, should one be called. He points
out that 180 students enrolled in his civil procedure class last semester, as
evidence that he is hardly being shunned by the students. Critics contend,
though, that only two professors offered the course and that it was the last
opportunity for this year's graduates to take the class.
Yoo seems more amused than uncomfortable as the center of
controversy.
He speculates that much of the student body leans left as
well, having "self-selected" UC Berkeley for its reputation as a
liberal bastion.
He doesn't detect open resistance to his position, the
occasional protest or invasion of his classroom notwithstanding.
"Maybe they have the idea that it would be interesting
to see what a conservative professor is like," he says of the law school
students who take his classes. "Then they can always say, 'I've met a
conservative.' They can tell their family and friends."
He doesn't seek to change his students' thinking, he says.
"I don't really care whether they agree with me or not.
I don't care whether they follow me or not. Our mission is to make them better
thinkers," he says. "I would be just as pleased if one of my students
became a Democratic [appointed] Supreme Court justice."
Despite his rocky passage from government back to Berkeley,
where he has taught off and on since 1993, Yoo doesn't rule out a return to
public service should Republican conservatives regain the White House.
Though he says he much prefers the freedom and intellectual
stimulation of a college campus, he says he believes anyone called to serve the
country should do so.
"My parents were immigrants. I could have been a
convenience store manager," the South Korean-born professor says of the
opportunities afforded by his adopted country. "I feel very fortunate to
have a job like this one."
In addition to his legal work for the Bush administration,
Yoo served as general counsel for the Senate Judiciary Committee and was a law
clerk for U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.
Having experience in all three branches of government has
given him a solid background from which to draw in his teachings, he said.
"Besides, my wife has forbidden us from moving. She
likes it here," he says of Elsa Arnett, a writer he met at Harvard
University while studying for his undergraduate degree in American history.
She is the daughter of Pulitzer Prize-winning former foreign
correspondent Peter Arnett, whose political views make for spirited family
get-togethers, Yoo says of his opinionated father-in-law.
Yoo seems at peace living in Berkeley, even though he
disparages the community as an enclave of self-satisfied extremists intolerant
of those who think outside the liberal mind-set.
"But that doesn't mean I don't like it here," he
says.
3/28/10 San Francisco Chronicle: "Ivy League schools' barrier to Asian
Americans,"
by Jules Older
Somewhere in hell, at this very moment, industrious devils
are preparing a particularly hot fire. A busload of VIP sinners is on its way
down.
They're from America's leading universities. And even better
... their grandparents are already there.
Both generations are from Ivy League college admissions
offices. Both are guilty of sins against humanity and the American way.
The grandparents are still searing for discrimination against
Jews. The new crop will be charbroiled throughout eternity for the same crimes
against Asians.
Amazed by the lack of learning at prestigious institutions of
learning, the denizens of hell can't get over their good fortune.
The grandparents ran the admissions offices of American
universities during the 1930s and '40s. One of their jobs was to keep their
institutions from being "overwhelmed" by Jewish kids from New York.
The New Yorkers had heroic stories. They were poor and
hardworking, and their parents were new American immigrants, escaping
oppression, even death. The kids got into college because their mothers made
them do their homework.
Only they didn't get in.
They were kept out by the quota system, by a newfound
interest in "geographic diversity" and by plain old bigotry. They
weren't wanted, and those who did squeeze through the barriers (in that pushy
way of theirs) were simply too smart to keep out.
But surely, lessons have been learned since then.
No.
In her carefully researched article in the Boston Globe,
"Do colleges redline Asian Americans?," adjunct Professor Kara Miller
clearly demonstrates that, yes, they do. Here's the most damning piece of
evidence: "Princeton sociologist Thomas Espenshade, who reviewed data from
10 elite colleges, writes ... that Asian applicants typically need an extra 140
points [on their SATs] to compete with white students."
140 extra points? Try carrying that weight in your high school backpack. Like
the predominantly Eastern Jews of the past century, the mostly Western Asians of
this one are being routinely, systematically and almost openly discriminated
against by America's leading educational institutions.
"Indeed," Miller writes, "most elite
universities appear determined to keep their Asian American totals in a narrow
range. Yale's class of 2013 is 15.5 percent Asian American, compared with 16.1
percent at Dartmouth, 19.1 percent at Harvard and 17.6 percent at
Princeton."
And these practices aren't just at East Coast universities.
Espenshade's research included institutions from all over the country.
Two facts are particularly galling: Our best and brightest
halls of higher education have apparently learned nothing from their past sins.
Nothing.
Even worse, the kids these schools reject are once again
exemplars of the American dream. They come from poor, immigrant families. Many
narrowly escaped from horrors at home. They're being rejected in favor of the
wealthy offspring of already privileged white Americans who presumably look more
like the alumni than they do.
In 1958, Pete Seeger recorded "The Ballad of Sherman
Wu." To the tune of "Streets of Laredo," it recounted the tale of
a student at Northwestern University who was "depledged" from a
fraternity because he was Asian. Here's the key line, spoken by the fraternity
president:
If he were just Jewish,
Or Spanish or German,
But he's so damned Chinese,
The whole campus would know.
What's happened between the 1950s and the 2010s? Back then,
Sherman Wu couldn't get into a fraternity. Now he might not get into college.
That's why the furnaces of hell are going full blast.
Jules Older, julesolder.com, lives and writes in San
Francisco.
3/26/10 Philadelphia Inquirer: "Commentary: Reaction to violence muted by
stereotypes; Racism all around distorts South Phila. school strife,"
by Jonathan Zimmerman
If you live in the Delaware Valley, you've surely heard about
the brutal December attacks on Asian students at South Philadelphia High School.
Seven kids were hospitalized with injuries sustained mostly at the hands of
African American students, who beat Asians in classrooms, hallways, the
cafeteria, and the streets outside the school.
But the incident has barely registered outside the area. To
understand why, try a small thought experiment: Imagine if the victims were
black and the attackers were white.
The whole nation - indeed, the whole world - would know. The
president would denounce the episode on television and demand a speedy remedy.
Members of Congress would eagerly join in, competing with each other to condemn
the racism in our midst. And hordes of reporters would descend on the school.
But, hey, they're only Asian kids getting beaten. And the
attackers are black; we don't expect a whole lot from them anyway.
There's plenty of racism to go around here, and it's not just
at South Philadelphia High. It's all around us, in the bigoted double standards
we use to judge events like this.
Sadly, the behavior of African American students involved in
the melee fits neatly into media-fed stereotypes of black hoodlums, drug
dealers, and gangbangers. We see these images wherever we look, from movies and
TV dramas to advertisements and music videos. So if we see it in real life, we
shrug; it's what "they" do.
Most don't, of course. Yet when we refrain from criticizing
black troublemakers as loudly as we do miscreants of other races, we reinforce
the idea that African Americans are somehow prone to such acts. What could be
more racist than that?
Ditto for our tepid reaction to the injuries inflicted on
Asian kids. If they had been black, and the attackers white, we would have
witnessed a national outpouring of concern for the victims. For centuries,
African Americans have endured violence and vitriol at the hands of white
people, we'd say. And now this.
News flash: Asians have suffered their share of hatred in
America, too. We don't know or talk about it as much. But it's true, and
pretending otherwise shows another stark racial inconsistency.
In the West especially, Asian immigrants encountered rabid
prejudice and brutality. White mobs in Los Angeles hanged, shot, and burned 21
Chinese residents in 1871. Nine years later, another mob destroyed most of
Denver's Chinatown. In Wyoming, whites killed 28 Chinese railroad workers; in
Oregon, they murdered and mutilated the bodies of 31 Chinese miners.
Congress responded with a series of measures to keep Asians
off our shores. In 1882, it prohibited Chinese workers from immigrating; a 1907
agreement with Japan effectively barred laborers from that country, too.
The states instituted their own discrimination. In
California, a 1913 law prohibited Japanese immigrants from owning land.
"All about us the Asiatics are gaining a foothold," warned one
supporter of the measure. "It is a germ of the mightiest problem that ever
faced this state, a problem that will make the black problem of the South look
white."
During the Second World War, 120,000 Japanese Americans would
be interned in concentration camps. Defending the current detention of accused
terrorists at Guantánamo Bay, some contemporary conservatives have tried to
justify the Japanese internment as a necessary war measure. But racism was at
its core. "A Jap's a Jap," West Coast military commander John DeWitt
declared in 1943. "The Japanese race is an enemy race."
After the 1970s, as Asians developed businesses in America's
inner cities, African Americans became the latest entry on a long list of
tormentors. Across urban America, blacks accosted Asians with taunts of "ching
chong," "chow mein," and other slurs. Rapper Ice Cube denounced
"Oriental one-penny-counting" Korean shopkeepers in a 1991 song,
warning Koreans to "pay respect to the black fist" or "we'll burn
your store right down to a crisp."
The same mix of violence and prejudice was on display at
South Philadelphia High long before the December attacks. In 2008-09 alone, a
legal complaint alleges, Asian students suffered 26 separate assaults at the
school, mostly at the hands of African Americans.
But the school district's recent report on the melee makes no
mention of this ugly past, providing an apt metaphor for our shared racial blind
spots.
It's high time we held African Americans to the same moral
standards as everyone else, lest we confirm the worst stereotypes of recent
history. And it's also time we acknowledged that Asian Americans have a history,
full of anguish and - yes - discrimination. Anything less will yield more of the
same.
Jonathan Zimmerman teaches history at New York University and lives
in Narberth. He is the author, most recently, of "Small Wonder: The Little
Red Schoolhouse in History and Memory" (Yale University Press).
3/22/10 Washington Post: "Law professor Goodwin Liu may be test case for
Obama judicial picks,"
By Robert Barnes
Liberal legal activists came away from last summer's
confirmation hearings on Sonia Sotomayor with an empty feeling. It's not so much
that they had a beef with Sotomayor, whom they supported. But her pragmatic
discourses on judging and her vague remarks on constitutional interpretation
were far from the soaring progressive vision of the Constitution that they had
waited for years to hear from a Democratic nominee.
The activists are likely to get the debate they were looking
for soon enough. President Obama's nomination of Goodwin Liu, a law professor at
the University of California at Berkeley, to a spot on the U.S. Court of Appeals
for the 9th Circuit has energized the left and outraged the right. His hearing
and the battle over his nomination could tell much about the Obama
administration's willingness to appoint controversial nominees to the bench,
including the Supreme Court.
"I think people are viewing this as a test for the
Supreme Court nomination that will be coming up" if Justice John Paul
Stevens steps down at the end of this term, said Curt Levey, executive director
of the conservative Committee for Justice.
It also might be the beginning of an examination of Liu's
eventual fitness for a place on the high court. The Senate Judiciary Committee's
hearing, scheduled for Wednesday, might serve "as an initial referendum on
Goodwin Liu as a Supreme Court nominee," said Michael Gerhardt, a
University of North Carolina law professor who advised committee Chairman
Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.) during the Sotomayor hearings.
Liu, 39, brings an impressive story. Born to Taiwanese
immigrants, he learned English at schools in the South before attending
Stanford, where he was a Rhodes Scholar, and Yale Law School. He clerked for
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, worked in the Clinton administration and became
active in education reform. Liu won a distinguished teaching award at the
University of California's Berkeley School of Law and was promoted to associate
dean.
He has no judicial experience and worked only a few years in
private practice, but the American Bar Association has given him its highest
approval rating. He would be a rarity on the appeals courts, where not one of
the 175 active judges is Asian-American.
He is an outspoken advocate of liberal causes, including
same-sex marriage and affirmative action. He infuriated conservatives by
opposing the nomination of Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., whom he said had a
"right-wing vision antagonistic to important rights and protections we
currently enjoy." He urged senators to oppose Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr.;
Alito had an "exceptionally talented legal mind," Liu said, but his
deference to government intrusion on individual rights "is at the margin of
the judicial spectrum, not the mainstream."
Sen. Jeff Sessions (Ala.), the ranking Republican on the
Judiciary Committee, returned the compliment when Liu was named. "Instead
of nominating an individual who has demonstrated an impartial commitment to
following the Constitution and the rule of law, President Obama has selected
someone far outside the mainstream of American jurisprudence," Sessions
said.
Conservative legal activists agreed. "This calls for
pull-out-the-stops opposition," wrote Kent Scheidegger of the
pro-death-penalty Criminal Justice Legal Foundation. As of last week, Edward
Whelan III, a scalding critic of Obama's legal and judicial policies, had posted
15 items about Liu in his blog for National Review Online in little more than
three weeks since he was nominated.
Liu is different in several ways from Obama's other choices
for the appeals court. For the most part, they are older and more moderate, and
bring judicial experience. Although some have raised opposition because of
decisions made on the bench, Liu presents a direct challenge to a conservative
view of constitutional interpretation.
The "originalist" views of justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence
Thomas, centered on the original meaning of the Constitution when it was written
and amended, are "seriously flawed," Liu has said.
In a book, he and fellow liberal professors Pamela S. Karlan
and Christopher H. Schroeder described their approach as "constitutional
fidelity."
"Original understandings are an important source of
constitutional meaning, but so too are the other sources that judges, elected
officials, and everyday citizens regularly invoke: the purpose and structure of
the Constitution, the lessons of precedent and historical experience, the
practical consequences of legal rules, and the evolving norms and traditions of
our society," they wrote in "Keeping Faith With the
Constitution."
Liberal law professor Geoffrey Stone of the University of
Chicago says those views "are much closer to the mainstream of legal
thought than Scalia or Thomas."
The Senate hasn't had such a debate over any of Obama's other
nominees. Some are wondering if the White House has the heart for an extended
battle for Liu, when even its relatively noncontroversial nominees are having a
hard time getting through.
Still, Obama supporters such as Stone said it should not be a
surprise the administration has finally nominated someone such as Liu.
"The surprise is why it took so long," he said.
"The District's South Philly High story unravels"
3/19/2010
http://youngphillypolitics.com/district039s_south_philly_high_story_unravels
by Helen Gym
It’s hard to imagine that a story that first comes to
public light exposing a day-long series of attacks against dozens of Asian
immigrant kids can get any worse with time. But indeed, somehow the story about
anti-Asian violence at South Philadelphia High School keeps getting more and
more outrageous as a relentless pattern of school and District misrepresentation
becomes more apparent.
In riveting testimony earlier this week at the School Reform
Commission, the grandmother of one of the Asian student victims wept as she
described the calculated efforts of school personnel who had scapegoated and
unjustly forced out her grandson following a brutal assault upon him December 2.
Her grandson was harassed in school then severely beaten
outside of school the day before the December 3 attacks at South Philadelphia
High School. The school never investigated the incident yet somehow punished the
student, arguing first that the student had attacked a “disabled” African
American student thereby triggering the December 3 violence. When that story
unraveled he was then cast as a gang member by school officials as part of their
new narrative that December 3 was located in gang violence and a broader
pandemic of violence throughout the city.
He was one of the students suspended then transferred out of
South Philly High as part of the story that December 3 was a “multiracial
assault” “reminiscent of street gang conflict.” It was a story that made
it to highest levels of the School District and referenced by Superintendent
Arlene Ackerman and an official District investigation.
Who therefore evades scrutiny? Anyone at the school or
District despite the fact that community advocates had documented for more than
a year a dozen meetings about on-going anti-Asian violence at Southern and pleas
that went unheeded by school and District officials.
As Isaiah Thompson points out here in this week’s cover
story at the City Paper:
Though never mentioned by name, this student, who speaks little English, became
part of a convenient narrative for a District that wanted to paint these events
as being less about the long-standing victimization of a targeted ethnic
minority than the result of a feud gone haywire. After all, with the latter
explanation, school officials couldn't be blamed for ignoring the powder keg
that was about to blow.
In the process, a young boy became the central focus of a
relentless campaign by the District who first painted him as a troublemaker then
a gang member in order to fit their narrative. Not only did the District fail in
its due process (failures in communication, lack of translation) they also
accused him of participating in an attack the previous year – even though he
was living in another state.
It’s belated gratification to note that District officials
are today announcing steps to clear the boy's name. It took a family that
wouldn’t accept the abuse, a hard hitting cover in the City Paper, weeks of
front page stories at the Inquirer and other media coverage to make happen what
three months of meetings could not.
But it’s an indication to what lengths the school and
District have gone in order to avoid assumption of responsibility for the
violence at South Philadelphia High. Since Dec. 3, the District and school have
engaged in a deliberate pattern of behavior to misrepresent what's been
happening at South Philadelphia High School and who's been responsible. It’s
why Asian community advocates have not been able to “move forward” as
Superintendent Arlene Ackerman has declared we ought to.
Consider the testimony of the numerous youth and advocates
who testified yesterday about why the District’s actions post-December 3 have
been as just as shocking and shameful as what happened on that day.
• Failing to acknowledge that the attacks reflected
anti-Asian, anti-immigrant violence: "The students who were attacked on
December 3 were targeted because of the color of their skin, the shape of their
eyes, and the accents in their voices. Period. . . Rather than rush to the scene
and decry racial violence, express concern for the victims, and commit to
combatting bias, the District response has been to distort and minimize -
dismiss, deny, and obscure the scale and nature of these attacks." - Ellen
Somekawa, Asian Americans United
• Not listening to students: Tram Nguyen of Victim Witness
Services of South Philadelphia said one of the key elements to crisis response
is to provide "ventilation and validation" to victims, but testified
that there were "repeated obstacles put in place to make it almost
impossible for the students to share their stories. When they were allowed to
talk they were also told how much their story was hurting other students at the
school."
• Failing to act against staff who behaved inappropriately:
Student after student detailed failures of school staff from security personnel
who ordered students out of the building, to a principal who escorted students
into a dangerous situation to a school nurse who didn't want to call an
ambulance. Student Dong Chen said: "We can identify those who ordered us to
leave" but students weren't asked about the failures of adults.
You can read more student perspectives here.
While the violence at South Philly made the headlines on Dec.
3, the real story has been in the appalling way the District has handled the
situation since. Unfolding before us is how localized violence becomes
institutionalized: the silence of the District around racial and ethnic hate,
the retaliation against specific students, and the denial of student voices.
When the District remains silent about racism and racially
motivated violence, then it is telling us to do the same by default. To move on.
To bury the voices of the hurt, the fearful, the silenced, the victimized. The
line between the message of “move on” and “get over it” to “get used
to it” has become indiscernible.
3/19/10 Philadelphia Inquirer: "District clears S. Phila. student of gang
charge,"
by Jeff Gammage
City school district officials formally acknowledged
yesterday that 17-year-old Hao Luu was not connected to a street gang - an
allegation that was used to ban him from South Philadelphia High.
Evelyn Sample-Oates, the district's vice president for
communications, said a letter had been placed in Luu's file to acknowledge his
innocence and clear his name of the charge.
"If there's any wrongdoing on the school district's
part," she said, promising a full review, "we certainly will apologize
to him and his family."
The district, at the request of the School Reform Commission,
will examine the actions and decisions that led to Luu's suspension and ban from
the school, which was convulsed by racial violence Dec. 3.
Luu's grandmother Suong Nguyen testified tearfully before the
commission Wednesday, insisting on her grandson's innocence and pleading with
officials to "reveal Hao's case and help him clear from the wrongful
accusations."
Her words prompted Commissioner Johnny Irizarry to seek an
explanation from the district staff, a request that Chairman Robert Archie
obliged.
The case of Luu, an immigrant from Vietnam, has become a
focal point for Asian activists critical of how the district has disciplined
students accused of playing a role in the violence.
In an interview last night, Luu said he was thrilled to hear
he'd been cleared of gang affiliation and relieved for his family. He had not
received any official notification from school officials.
"Before, I was really worried, especially when I heard
they were saying I was from a gang," he said through a translator. "I
was worried how it would affect if I could go to college or get a job. My family
was so concerned that the school wasn't treating me right. My grandmother, my
mom, and my dad and especially me are so relieved and so happy."
Luu's grandmother said in a separate interview that she was
"amazed and happy," pleased that the commission had listened and
acted.
Still, Nguyen said, she and her grandson deserve a letter of
apology. Both can reclaim their dignity, and "my soul can be at
peace," she said.
"I can finally sleep well and not worry about my
grandson," Nguyen said through a translator. Her grandson will not return
to South Philadelphia High, she said.
Luu was among the students suspended as a result of the
violence that enveloped the school Dec. 3, when Asians faced a daylong series of
assaults by groups of mostly African American classmates. A district inquiry
blamed the violence on rumors that sprang from an after-school altercation
between Asian and African American students the previous day.
Luu's supporters say he was not involved in a fight Dec. 2
but was the victim of a beating.
During the school day, another student accosted him in a hall
and yanked the earphones out of his ears. After school, he was followed by 10 to
15 students, attacked, and beaten so badly that he vomited.
During the next two months, his attorney and other advocates
said, Luu was ordered transferred from the school despite having won his case at
a disciplinary hearing. He was accused of being in a gang, an allegation his
family strongly denied. At one point, officials accused him of taking part in a
fight in 2008 - a time when he was living in Virginia.
Luu's attorney, Cecilia Chen of the Asian American Legal
Defense and Education Fund, said she was gratified that the commission had
quickly sought an accounting of what she called "the wrongdoing of district
personnel."
But Luu and his family still "are facing long-term
consequences of the false accusations and reckless disciplinary action taken
against him by the school and district," Chen said.
Chen said those actions fit a pattern in which the district
"has misrepresented what happened and who was responsible for the violence
at South Philadelphia High School on Dec. 3."
The Legal Defense Fund has filed a complaint with the
Department of Justice accusing the district of being "indifferent" to
the welfare and safety of Asian students.
Luu, banned from the high school and with his academic year
slipping away, enrolled in a private religious school in mid-February.
"Chairman Archie asked the staff to do a full
investigation into this, and find out exactly what happened," Sample-Oates
said. "We're trying to do our due diligence and find out exactly what
happened."
That review will encompass all the suspended students but
specifically Luu, as his case has evolved from Dec. 2 until now.
"We found no gang relation in his file. We've cleared
his record on that," she said.
Sample-Oates said any kind of disruption to Luu's education had been because
"we were trying to make sure there would be no harm to him or to the school
climate in South Philadelphia. Any actions we've taken would be for his own
safety."
On Feb. 5, after the school failed in an effort to transfer
Luu for disciplinary reasons, his attorney was told that Luu was part of a gang.
If Luu returned to school, he would suffer gang retaliation.
The district, Chen was told, did not believe Luu would be safe at South
Philadelphia High.
3/18/10 Philadelphia Inquirer: "Philadelphia Schools Superintendent Arlene
Ackerman ignores African Americans assaulting Asian Americans; now wants reverse
discrimination against Asian Americans," [politically correct headline: Top
city schools' criteria in flux? Admissions rules should widen geographic and
income diversity, a draft report says,"
By Susan Snyder
Concerned that its top academic schools are not racially and
economically diverse enough, Philadelphia Schools Superintendent Arlene Ackerman
is proposing major changes in how students are admitted to them.
The plan would take admissions decisions away from principals
and their committees, and select students for magnet and citywide-admissions
schools centrally, using a computerized system, according to a "draft"
obtained by The Inquirer.
District officials suggested a 1,000-point system, 600 points
of which would be based on test scores and grades, according to the draft that
was distributed to high school principals. Other factors would include behavior
and attendance, and, for the first time, 200 points for "diversity" as
measured by a student's neighborhood or zip code and income level.
The proposal could upend a decades-old selection system for
the magnet schools, long an educational refuge for the city's middle class where
many powerful and influential leaders send their children.
The district canceled a meeting scheduled for tonight to roll
out the proposed changes to parents, following concerns from some principals and
parents.
Warning that such moves could drive more middle-class families out of the city,
some parents and school leaders said they feared that standards would be watered
down and that nuances in applications would be missed by a computerized system.
"This admission policy threatens the very existence of
special-admission schools," said Amy Ashbridge, a parent on the Home and
School Council at Masterman, the district's top-performing school, where
admission is very selective. "If our children were not in these
special-selection schools, we would be taking ourselves and our tax dollars out
of the city. You have to provide a way for middle-class people to be able to
live in the city and not have to pay $25,000 a year in tuition."
John Frangipani, chief of school operations, said that a plan
would be rolled out in the coming weeks or months and that the draft document
was just a proposal for discussion.
"These were just ideas we were floating, and we got some
feedback," he said.
District officials, he said, want all neighborhoods and zip codes - from the
richest to the poorest - to be fairly represented in magnet schools such as
Masterman and Central, where student test scores are among the highest in the
state.
"We're concerned about making sure students have all the
opportunities afforded to them," Frangipani said.
District officials said they could not provide current
economic and racial profiles for magnets overall.
But individual school profiles on the district's Web site -
as well as a report by Research for Action, a Philadelphia-based think tank -
show that white, Asian, and female students, and those from more affluent
families, are overrepresented at magnets as compared with the overall district
population.
At Masterman last school year, 28 percent of students were
black, compared with 60 percent districtwide. Whites made up 44 percent of
students, compared with 13 percent districtwide.
Districtwide, 76 percent come from low-income families, while
at Masterman the number is 44 percent. Other magnets also show differences, but
not as large.
At the High School for Creative and Performing Arts, 49 percent of students are
black, 34.5 percent white, and 48 percent from low-income families.
Officials at Research for Action say the district should look
at modifications to its high-school admission system. Students from high-poverty
areas with more learning needs tend to be concentrated in certain schools, said
Eva Gold, founder and senior research fellow.
"While some students whose parents or other relations
know how to navigate the system can obtain adequate information to make informed
choices - and even 'game' the system - the lack of information from the district
shortchanges more disadvantaged students," Gold wrote in a policy brief
issued in January. "Often there are 'late' admissions to selective schools
when parents or influential advocates pressure for admittance."
Currently, the district's 19 "special-admission"
high schools set their admission standards, covering test scores, grades,
attendance, behavior, and other factors. Teams of principals select.
At the 12 "citywide-admission" schools, students
enter a lottery if they meet standards.
For years, the district's academic magnet system has
attracted the offspring of the city's powerbrokers.
Mayor Nutter's daughter, Olivia, attends Masterman. Others
who have or have had children there include former Philadelphia School Board
President Pedro Ramos; former Mayor John F. Street, and Fire Commissioner Lloyd
M. Ayers.
Under the draft proposal, admission criteria would include
sixth- and seventh-grade marks in major subjects and standardized-test scores.
Auditions also would count or replace test scores at "performance"
schools, such as Creative and Performing Arts.
Under the 1,000-point system, student scores would be entered
into a computerized selection system. Schools would have a minimum point
requirement.
It also proposes to allot 70 percent of seats by geographic
area or zip code and the other 30 percent to children from charter and parochial
schools and for students new to the city.
The system is similar to one in Chicago, Frangipani said.
District officials looked at systems in other cities, including San Francisco,
where Ackerman made changes to magnet admissions as superintendent.
Michael Horwits, a social science teacher at Central, said
the current system, in which a school committee pores over applications and
selects, works. The committee looks at grades, test scores, recommendations, and
other details.
"When you have a team like Central that goes to the
Super Bowl every year, why mess with it?" asked Horwits, referring to the
school's top test scores.
He also asserted that Central is one of the most diverse
schools: 32 percent black, 29 percent Asian, 30 percent white, and 7 percent
Latino. Nearly 48 percent are low-income.
Central principal Sheldon Pavel declined to comment on the
proposal, but said "we've been satisfied" with the current process.
At Science Leadership Academy, parents are circulating
e-mails, encouraging opposition. William W. Felinski, an Edison High science
teacher whose son is at the academy, objected to letting zip code be an
admissions criterion, saying, "People who are qualified from any zip code
in the city are invited to compete to get into that school."
He said he likes that the Science Academy interviews applicants to find those
who share the school's goals and interests.
His son, William IV, agreed. "A student has to be
qualified or have a passion for being in that learning environment in order for
the school to succeed," he said.
Ashbridge, whose 11th-grade twins attend Masterman, asked how
a centralized system would measure the rigor of a student's prior curriculum.
Many students admitted to the high school had gotten an advanced curriculum at
Masterman's middle school.
The district, she said, should increase spots at top-notch schools rather than
"dumb down the good schools we have."
Emily Ashbridge, 17, a junior, said she worried a change in
standards would hurt the quality of the student body and harm the strong
attitude toward high achievement.
"At school, everyone wants to learn and getting bad grades isn't
cool," she said.
Shelly Yanoff, executive director of Public Citizens for Children and Youth -
long worried about equity - said the district's goal was good, but success would
depend on implementation.
"At first blush, it certainly is of concern that some
schools don't have enough diversity," she said. "On the other hand,
one wonders if a major centralized system will really help."
3/17/10 CityPaper.net: "The Fall Guy: The student
the School District blamed for the violence at South Philadelphia High School
shares his story. It's not the same one District officials have been
telling,"
by Isaiah Thompson
EDITOR'S NOTE: In the print edition of this story, City Paper
protected the identity of the South Philadelphia High School student
("Guy") at his request, and at the request of his grandmother, Suong
Nguyen. However, on Wednesday, March 17, 2010 — after this article went to
press — Nguyen chose to use her grandson's name, Hao Luu, in her public
testimony before the Philadelphia School Reform Commission.
By now, you've heard the story: On Thursday, Dec. 3, more
than 20 Asian students were attacked on their way home from South Philadelphia
High School (SPHS) by a mob of as many as 100 of their peers, most of them
African-American. The incident — which is still under investigation by the
Pennsylvania Human Rights Commission, and is the subject of a complaint
Asian-American activists filed with the U.S. Department of Justice — dominated
the daily papers' front pages, and drew national, even international, media
attention. It was, to be sure, an ugly affair that sent seven students to the
hospital, and ultimately led to 19 suspensions and 14 transfers to alternative
schools. Earlier that day, security guards had locked down an entire floor of
the school to prevent a surge of primarily black students from threatening
Asians; in another incident, Asian students were attacked en masse in the
lunchroom. After the attacks, Asian students boycotted SPHS for seven days,
saying they wouldn't go back until the School District of Philadelphia could
guarantee their safety.
For Asian-American community advocates, this racially charged
violence represented just the tip of the iceberg, the culmination of years of
hostility that Asian SPHS students had faced — a problem, they say, that
school officials simply failed to acknowledge.
The School District was slow to respond to the attacks. It
took Superintendent Arlene Ackerman six days to comment publicly. And when she
did, she had a decidedly different interpretation: "What began as an
unwarranted off-campus attack on a disabled African-American student," she
told the School Reform Commission on Dec. 9, "quickly escalated into a
retaliatory multi-racial attack on primarily Chinese students."
Her implication was clear: The black students were retaliating against an
alleged attack that took place the previous day, Dec. 2, on a black student,
presumably by an Asian. A month later, Ackerman suggested the fight was
"gang-related," and penned an op-ed in The Philadelphia Inquirer to
say that preventing school violence was "everyone's problem."
In painting the attacks this way, Ackerman's critics say, the
superintendent was glossing over a pattern of neglect and letting school
officials off the hook by blaming an endemic, citywide "culture of
violence."
Three weeks ago, retired U.S. District Court Judge James T.
Giles released a 37-page report — which had been commissioned by the District
for $99,553 — that largely echoed Ackerman's take on the situation: Whether
the report of an assault on a disabled black student was true or not — the
evidence is ambiguous at best — the rumors amplified the wave of violence,
Giles told reporters in late February. While his report doesn't mention any
violence against Asian students before December 2009, it focuses heavily on the
events that took place the day before the infamous Dec. 3 attack, and speculates
further that those attacks may have stemmed from "street gang
influences." (UPDATE: The day after City Paper broke this story, the School
District reversed its initial claim and stated for the record that Hau Luu —
"Guy" — is not in a street gang.)
Ackerman greeted the report with satisfaction, saying it was
time to "move forward, because we'll never be able to really get a handle
on what happened in the past" — a tidy conclusion to a messy situation.
Of course, it wasn't that tidy, nor was it the conclusion.
Ackerman may be ready to put this unpleasantness behind her, but neither Asian
students nor community activists seem willing to follow suit. On March 14, the
Inquirer published the accounts of six Asian students who say that Giles ignored
key elements of their stories in compiling his report. (Giles insisted to the
Inquirer that his report was balanced. He said he focused on Dec. 2 and Dec. 3
because that was all his budget allowed.)
Also, critics say, Ackerman and school officials relied on a
thinly sourced narrative that dwelled on the supposed actions of a single
Vietnamese student. That student, it turns out, was among those suspended from
South Philly High. He was identified in the Giles report as a possible
instigator of the Dec. 2 violence that supposedly led up to the Dec. 3 mêlée.
Though never mentioned by name, this student, who speaks little English, became
part of a convenient narrative for a District that wanted to paint these events
as being less about the long-standing victimization of a targeted ethnic
minority than the result of a feud gone haywire. After all, with the latter
explanation, school officials couldn't be blamed for ignoring the powder keg
that was about to blow.
But that Vietnamese student has his own story to tell — and
so far, it's one that hasn't been told, because neither Giles, the police nor
any school official has ever bothered to ask him what happened. He denies being
in a gang. He says that on Wed., Dec. 2, he was the victim, not the aggressor,
in a beating that left him bruised and vomiting — and contrary to both
Ackerman's assertion and the school's rumor mill, that incident had nothing to
do with any disabled student. He says that he and his family shared his story
with school officials not once, but twice, but they weren't interested in what
he had to say.
Instead, he was suspended and ultimately pushed out of SPHS.
His Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund (AALDEF) attorney, Cecilia
Chen — who also represents, separately, other Asian SPHS students in the
complaint filed with the Justice Department — says the District used the
teenager's alleged misdeeds to absolve itself of charges of "deliberate
indifference" and "intentional disregard for the welfare of Asian
students."
This student recently spoke to a City Paper reporter, on the
condition that his name be withheld. So, we'll just call him "Guy" —
as in, perhaps, the fall guy, for a school's troubled reputation.
Just Lay Low
Guy came to the United States from Vietnam with his parents a
year and a half ago. They were brought over by Guy's grandmother, Suong Nguyen,
65, a member of the Vietnamese diaspora known as Viet Kieu — many of whom left
North Vietnam as refugees after the fall of Saigon. Nguyen fled the country
stowed in a boat piloted by her husband, and eventually made her way to Orlando,
Fla., where she worked assembling electronic parts for eight years before
relocating to Northern Virginia, where she spent another eight years working at
Dulles International Airport, preparing airline meals.
Nguyen retired last year, the same year her husband passed
away. Last fall, the reunited family moved to South Philadelphia, into a modest
house near Broad Street. In September, Guy, a soft-spoken, lanky 17-year-old,
began attending South Philadelphia High School, just a few blocks from his
house. Guy liked the school. The teachers were good, the bilingual counselors
and English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) instructors were helpful, and
he made friends quickly, mostly among Vietnamese students who, like him, were
immigrants and spoke limited English.
But there was one problem, Guy says: He and his friends got
picked on, a lot — mostly by African-American students.
This isn't a new problem. Since 2008, AALDEF has documented
at least 28 incidents in which Asian-American students were attacked, threatened
or harassed by other students at SPHS, including robberies, assaults, racial
slurs and episodes ominously reminiscent of the Dec. 3 eruption.
"These kids would yell at us, but I'm not sure what they
said," Guy says through an interpreter provided by Boat People SOS, an
organization that assists refugee families. "They would laugh really loud
in front of us. When I walked by in the hallways, sometimes they'd put out their
leg and try to trip me."
It wasn't just him and his friends: Many of the students of
Asian descent, who constitute 18 percent of the school's population, were
targets. (That many of these attacks came at the hands of black students is
likely the product of simple demography: 70 percent of the student body is
black.) Guy says he and his friends tried to ignore the taunting and keep a low
profile, a tactic that many immigrant students' parents and school officials
encouraged.
"They usually say to the kids, and I myself say to my
grandson ... just try to not find any trouble," says Nguyen, also through
the interpreter. "Ignore the teasing, your English isn't good, if they say
stuff to you, you don't even know what they're saying, so just lay low."
And that's what they did, Guy says. Most of the time, the
bullying stopped at teasing. But not on Dec. 2, 2009.
December 2: The fuse
As Guy tells the story, that afternoon he was walking down a
hallway on SPHS's fourth floor with some friends, listening to music on his
headphones, when the trouble started. A black male student plucked out his ear
bud and said something to him. He couldn't tell what, so he kept walking. By the
time he reached the end of the hallway, the black student and his friends were
following them. Guy and a friend, "V," headed down the stairs to the
second floor — pursued, they say, by a growing crowd of black students.
A school police officer intervened and separated the two groups. The officer
handcuffed and detained both the black male who Guy says harassed him and
another black student who, according to a police report, displayed "extra
aggressive behavior." Those two students were taken to the school's police
office. Guy and his friends went to class. They were never questioned.
Guy says that, on their own, he and V filed written
statements about the incident with the school's security office.
After school, things got worse. Guy and five friends were
just leaving the campus, on Broad Street at Snyder Avenue, when they saw a group
of more than 10 students, mostly black and both male and female, running across
the street, directly toward them. Some of the kids, Guy says, were the same ones
who had chased him earlier that day.
"They started taking off their backpacks, like they were getting ready to
fight," he says. "They surrounded us, and they started beating
us."
One of Guy's friends managed to escape; Guy wasn't so
fortunate. When he made his break, he lost his shoe. As he reached down to grab
it, he was punched in the head from behind. He says he swung his shoe blindly,
connecting with someone, he thinks — though he's not sure. He tried to flee
again, only to be overtaken by another, smaller group of assailants. He was
punched in the head again, and after he fell forward, he says, four males
pummeled him with their fists. They did not stop until an employee of a nearby
Walgreens chased the attackers away. Guy limped home with the help of his
friends. Along the way, he threw up. By the time he got home, the side of his
face was badly bruised.
His story is largely supported by testimony included in
Giles' report — but only as one possible version of what happened. In another
iteration, which is also described in that report, Guy is alleged to have
confronted the African-American student in the hallway and been among the
Vietnamese aggressors who "jumped" a "crippled/disabled
African-American student." He is also alleged to have been part of a street
gang.
Ackerman picked up the latter version and ran with it, and the idea of the
Vietnamese instigators who beat up a disabled black student the day before the
Dec. 3 chaos became the de facto official story. (She and other school officials
declined to be interviewed for this story.)
Calling the evidence that supports this theory of the events
of Dec. 2 "flimsy" would be generous. The notion of Guy-as-instigator,
according to Giles' report, is largely based on a single incident report filed
that day by school police officers. Although Giles' report says that both the
black and Asian students involved in that incident were interviewed, the
officers' incident report contains only interviews with the two African-American
males who were detained that afternoon. Guy says the school police never spoke
to him or his friends.
According to that incident report, one of the black students
told school police that Guy had "bumped" him, and said "something
smart." It describes the incident as a "fight," although Giles'
report says the police officers saw no punches thrown. The contradictory version
Guy and V gave in statements to the school security office that day are not
included in this document. In his report, Giles says, "None of the Asian
students reported any fear or concern for their safety," even though they
say they did.
The basis for these accounts, according to Giles' report, are "hearsay
statements," none of which were taken from the students involved. Giles
never interviewed any of the school's African-American students, nor did he
speak with Guy or the other Asian students who claimed they were attacked the
afternoon of Dec. 2.
"I did not do an interview of students," Giles
tells City Paper, citing concerns over students' due process in disciplinary
hearings. "I looked at incident reports."
A valuable statistic
On the morning of Dec. 3, with the help of a bilingual
translator, Guy's grandmother filed a report to SPHS on the attack on her
grandson. "Just tell your grandson not to cause any trouble with those
kids," Nguyen says the counselor told her. "I said, 'My grandson
hadn't caused any trouble, he had been attacked.'"
Nguyen wanted action taken: inquiries, discipline, something.
But neither she nor Guy nor — as far as they know — any of his friends who
witnessed the attack were ever contacted by school officials. The school did
take one action, though: On Dec. 3, Guy was suspended for 10 days for
"disrupting school" — though neither Guy nor his grandmother would
know of the suspension for another two weeks.
The next day, the school's Asian students did something
completely unprecedented: They boycotted the school and refused to return until
school officials could guarantee their safety. Guy, still unaware of his
suspension, joined them."We all felt that we were victims, and we were in
it together," he says. "I thought that I was like all the other kids,
and that I was going back to school."
That same day, Dec. 4, the day the violence grabbed
headlines, District Regional Superintendent Michael Silverman announced that 10
students, four of whom were Asian — including Guy, who stayed home from school
Dec. 3 — had been suspended. That detail lent credence to the narrative of a
two-way racial feud, rather than the victimization of one race of students by
another.
It was only after the boycott ended on Dec. 16, when Guy
tried to return to class and a school official told him to leave, that he
learned of his punishment. And it was only that day, after he returned home,
that Guy and his family found a suspension notice in the mail. (The notice was
dated Dec. 3, but was postmarked Dec. 16.) That notice informed Guy that he
could argue his innocence at a Dec. 9 hearing, which, obviously, he'd already
missed.
Documents obtained by City Paper suggest that Guy's
suspension resulted from the police incident report — which, again, was based
solely on the statements of the two black males who had the run-in with Guy on
Dec. 2.
Guy and his family were upset. But, it was only a 10-day
suspension, and Guy returned to school two days later prepared to resume his
studies. That evening, however, his family discovered another piece of mail, a
notice for a "disciplinary transfer hearing."
The School District wanted to expel Guy from SPHS.
Even as Guy's transfer hearing was pending, school officials
again emphasized publicly that Asian, as well as black, students were being
punished for the Dec. 3 violence. For anyone hoping to smooth the ugly racial
edge to the attacks, Guy had become a valuable statistic.
"They were looking for a scapegoat," says Helen
Gym, a board member of Asian Americans United, an advocacy group. "And they
were willing to go to any length, including potentially ruining this young man's
life, to do it."
Gang member
Guy appealed his transfer, and when District officials failed
to show at the hearing, the transfer was overturned. But the District, it seems,
was adamant: On Feb. 2, Regional Superintendent Silverman authorized and SPHS
principal LeGreta Brown signed a "transfer request," which meant that
Guy would be booted from SPHS and into an alternative school without ever
getting the chance to confront his accuser.
"There was no opportunity [for the Asian students who
were disciplined] to tell their side of the story before they were
disciplined," says Cecilia Chen, Guy's attorney. "There was no effort
on the part of the school to investigate what happened."
At one point during this process, Chen says, a School
District attorney told her that Guy would, in fact, be allowed back. But the
next day, the attorney called Chen again and said the District had received word
that Guy was a "gang member," and that he would not be safe at SPHS.
That implication outraged his family: "[Guy] was beaten by students after
school. Then he was suspended, and then he was told he could not go to the
school anymore. And now I am told you believe he is in a gang," his
grandmother wrote in a Feb. 5 letter to District officials. "If you say
that he is in a gang, where's your proof? ... You have not spoken to my
grandson. ... I cannot believe that a school in this country would treat my
family this way."
In a March 12 statement, the School District tells City Paper
that Guy is, in fact, welcome at South Philadelphia High School: "The
school delayed his return due to the need to fully investigate information the
school received from a community partner regarding the safety of the student and
the overall climate of the school. This student is now permitted to return;
however, the student decided not to return to District-managed school."
Indeed, on Feb. 4, the District rescinded Guy's transfer. But
by then, his family had had enough: They enrolled him in a private Christian
school.
The District, meanwhile, maintains that its disciplinary
process was fair: "The school and the District followed the required
procedures throughout the disciplinary process. The District's investigative and
appeal processes provided students and their families with the opportunity to
question the disciplinary actions taken by the school."
Of course, that's of little consolation to Guy, who — if
you believe his version of events — was taunted and beaten by fellow
classmates, had his pleas for help ignored, was punished by the very school
officials who were supposed to protect him, and, his lawyers say, was used as a
pawn in the District's PR battle.
The District may say he can come back to SPHS, but, it seems,
he feels less than welcome.
2/8/10 Boston Globe: "Do colleges redline Asian-Americans?"
by Kara Miller
SAT Scores aren’t everything. But they can tell some
fascinating stories.
Take 1,623, for instance. That’s the average score of
Asian-Americans, a group that Daniel Golden - editor at large of Bloomberg News
and author of “The Price of Admission’’ - has labeled “The New
Jews.’’ After all, much like Jews a century ago, Asian-Americans tend to
earn good grades and high scores. And now they too face serious discrimination
in the college admissions process.
Notably, 1,623 - out of a possible 2,400 - not only separates
Asians from other minorities (Hispanics and blacks average 1,364 and 1,276 on
the SAT, respectively). The score also puts them ahead of Caucasians, who
average 1,581. And the consequences of this are stark.
Princeton sociologist Thomas Espenshade, who reviewed data
from 10 elite colleges, writes in “No Longer Separate, Not Yet Equal’’
that Asian applicants typically need an extra 140 points to compete with white
students. In fact, according to Princeton lecturer Russell Nieli, there may be
an “Asian ceiling’’ at Princeton, a number above which the admissions
office refuses to venture.
Emily Aronson, a Princeton spokeswoman, insists “the
university does not admit students in categories. In the admission process, no
particular factor is assigned a fixed weight and there is no formula for
weighing the various aspects of the application.’’
A few years ago, however, when I worked as a reader for
Yale’s Office of Undergraduate Admissions, it became immediately clear to me
that Asians - who constitute 5 percent of the US population - faced an uphill
slog. They tended to get excellent scores, take advantage of AP offerings, and
shine in extracurricular activities. Frequently, they also had hard-knock
stories: families that had immigrated to America under difficult circumstances,
parents working as kitchen assistants and store clerks, and households in which
no English was spoken.
But would Yale be willing to make 50 percent of its freshman
class Asian? Probably not.
Indeed, as Princeton’s Nieli suggests, most elite
universities appear determined to keep their Asian-American totals in a narrow
range. Yale’s class of 2013 is 15.5 percent Asian-American, compared with 16.1
percent at Dartmouth, 19.1 percent at Harvard, and 17.6 percent at Princeton.
“There are a lot of poor Asians, immigrant kids,’’ says
University of Oregon physics professor Stephen Hsu, who has written about the
admissions process. “But generally that story doesn’t do as much as it would
for a non-Asian student. Statistically, it’s true that Asians generally have
to get higher scores than others to get in.’’
In a country built on individual liberty and promise, that
feels deeply unfair. If a teenager spends much time studying, excels at an
instrument or sport, and garners wonderful teacher recommendations, should he be
punished for being part of a high-achieving group? Are his accomplishments
diminished by the fact that people he has never met - but who look somewhat like
him - also work hard?
“When you look at the private Ivy Leagues, some of them are
looking at Asian-American applicants with a different eye than they are white
applicants,’’ says Oiyan Poon, the 2007 president of the University of
California Students Association. “I do strongly believe in diversity, but I
don’t agree with increasing white numbers over historically oppressed
populations like Asian-Americans, a group that has been denied civil rights and
property rights.’’ But Poon, now a research associate at the University of
Massachusetts Boston, warns that there are downsides to having huge numbers of
Asian-Americans on a campus.
In California, where passage of a 1996 referendum banned
government institutions from discriminating on the basis of race, Asians make up
about 40 percent of public university students, though they account for only 13
percent of residents. “Some Asian-American students feel that they lost
something by going to school at a place where almost half of their classmates
look like themselves - a campus like UCLA. The students said they didn’t feel
as well prepared in intercultural skills for the real world.’’
But what do you do if you’re an elite college facing
tremendous numbers of qualified Asian applicants? At the 2006 meeting of the
National Association for College Admission Counseling, a panel entitled “Too
Asian?’’ looked at the growing tendency of teachers, college counselors, and
admissions officers to see Asians as a unit, rather than as individuals.
Hsu argues it’s time to tackle this issue, rather than
defer it, as Asians’ superior performance will likely persist. “This
doesn’t seem to be changing. You can see the same thing with Jews. They’ve
outperformed other ethnic groups for the past 100 years.’’
Which leaves us with two vexing questions: Are we willing to
trade personal empowerment for a more palatable group dynamic? And when - if
ever - should we give credit where credit is due?
Kara Miller teaches at Babson College.
2/4/10 www.minnesota.publicradio.org:
"A look at "Yellow Face" in American entertainment,"
by Marianne Combs
Do you remember the show "Kung Fu" starring David
Carradine? You know the one where he has to walk on rice paper and pass all
sorts of tests to be a true shaolin monk? And then he goes on a quest in the
West to find his half-brother?
Did you know Bruce Lee was passed over for the part?
I didn't. Of course it doesn't really surprise me. "Sign
of the times... that was the early 70s... wouldn't happen today." Or at
least, so I thought, until I read David Henry Hwang's play "Yellow
Face."
The play, which opens this weekend at the Guthrie theater (in
a production staged by Theater Mu) is based in part on true tales from Hwang's
own career. And it reveals just how much race continues to play a very
frustrating role in casting in American media... especially for Asian-Americans.
A quick survey of American media reveals the truth to this.
Both Asian-American males and females tend to be relegated to the role of
"side-kick." Typically they are cast as the computer expert, or the
doctor. They are quiet, good-looking, and have excellent skills in the martial
arts.
So what's wrong with that, you ask? Heck, I'd love to be
good-looking, have a high paying job and a black belt to boot!
The problem is that our portrayal of Asian-Americans is
extremely narrow. There is no "average Asian-American family" on TV.
What Bill Cosby did for African-Americans (which, regardless of what you think
of the show, was to put their lives center stage) has yet to be accomplished for
Asian-Americans.
Margaret Cho gave it a shot with her 1994 TV program
"All American Girl." Complaints from network executives that her face
was "too round" led her to practically starve herself in the weeks
leading up to production (resulting in kidney failure), and at various stages
she was told she was being either "too asian" or "not asian
enough." The show lasted barely a year.
Today we're faced with a new version of type-casting.
Japanese-Americans and Korean-Americans are being roped in to play the roles of
"exotic" Japanese or Korean characters, as network television attempts
to appear more worldly.
Daniel Dae Kim was raised in both South Korea and
Pennsylvania, and trained in acting at New York University, but his character on
"Lost" spent most of the first two seasons speaking only Korean.
Actor Masi Oka has lived in Los Angeles since he was six, but
you'll only hear him speaking Japanese or English with a strong Japanese accent
on the show "Heroes"(except for a couple of rare exceptions involving
"alternate realities").
So while Warner Bros executives justified passing over Bruce
Lee for the lead in "Kung Fu" because his accent was too thick, we now
demand fluent english speakers to mix up their "L"s with their "R"s.
What gives?
This Saturday at 4pm, in conjunction with the opening of
"Yellow Face," I'll be moderating a panel discussion on just this
topic at the Guthrie Theater. On the panel will be playwright David Henry Hwang,
actor Randy Reyes, journalist Tom Lee, Josephine Lee from the Asian American
Studies Department at the University of Minnesota, and Star Tribune theater
critic Graydon Royce.
I'm sure it's going to be a fascinating conversation.
1/22/10
San Francisco Chronicle: "Obama picks Korean American for federal
bench,"
by Bob Egelko
President Obama has nominated Lucy Koh, a Santa Clara County
Superior Court judge, to the federal bench in San Jose. If confirmed, she would
be the nation's second Korean American federal judge.
Koh, 41, a Harvard law graduate, was a U.S. Justice
Department attorney on legislative affairs for three years, a federal prosecutor
in Los Angeles for three years and a lawyer with a Silicon Valley firm for six
years before Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger appointed her to the county court in
January 2008. Obama nominated her Wednesday.
She is the daughter of Korean immigrants. Her mother escaped
North Korea after the 1945 division of Korea by walking south for two weeks
while suffering from yellow fever, and her father fought against the Communists
in the Korean War, then opposed a military dictatorship in South Korea and
immigrated to the United States, according to the Asian American Justice Center,
a civil rights group.
Koh "brings a wide range of experience - not only as a
judge, but as a federal prosecutor and in private practice - that makes her an
outstanding nominee," said Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., who recommended
Koh to Obama.
Koh would succeed U.S. District Judge Ronald Whyte, who took
semi-retired senior status in March.
The only other Korean American federal judge was Herbert
Choy, who served on the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco
from 1971 until his death in 2004.
Obama also announced the renomination of U.S. Magistrate
Edward Chen to a federal judgeship in San Francisco. He first nominated Chen in
August, but Senate Republicans blocked confirmation, citing some of Chen's
statements on the benefits of judicial diversity and his background as an
American Civil Liberties Union lawyer from 1985 to 2001.
Chen's prospects for confirmation may have been hurt by
Tuesday's election of Republican Scott Brown to a Senate seat in Massachusetts,
which will leave Democrats one vote short of the 60 needed to overcome a Senate
filibuster.
No Asian American has ever served as a federal judge in the
Northern District of California, which extends along the coast from Monterey
County to the Oregon border.
1/21/10 Associated Press: "Racial bullying roils a Philadelphia high
school,"
by Patrick Walters
Philadelphia -- The blocks surrounding South Philadelphia
High School are a melting pot of pizzerias fronted by Italian flags, African
hair-braiding salons and a growing number of Chinese, Vietnamese and Indonesian
restaurants.
Inside is a cauldron of cultural discontent that erupted in
violence last month - off-campus and lunchroom attacks on about 50 Asian
students, injuring 30, primarily at the hands of blacks. The Asian students, who
boycotted classes for more than a week afterward, say they've endured relentless
bullying by black students while school officials turned a blind eye to their
complaints.
"We have suffered a lot to get to America and we didn't
come here to fight," Wei Chen, president of the Chinese American Student
Association, told the school board in one of several hearings on the violence.
"We just want a safe environment to learn and make more friends. That's my
dream."
Philadelphia school officials suspended 10 students,
increased police patrols and installed dozens of new security cameras to watch
the halls, where 70 percent of the students are black and 18 percent Asian. The
Vietnamese embassy complained to the U.S. State Department about the attacks and
numerous groups are investigating, including the Pennsylvania Human Relations
Commission.
The New York-based Asian American Legal Defense and Education
Fund joined the fray this week with a civil rights complaint to the U.S. Justice
Department.
The Philadelphia school district acted with "deliberate
indifference" toward the harassment and failed to prevent the Dec. 3
attacks, according to the complaint. It says Asian students' pleas for help and
protection were ignored by school employees.
Asian students say black students routinely pelt them with
food, beat, punch and kick them in school hallways and bathrooms, and hurl
racial epithets like "Hey, Chinese!" and "Yo, Dragon Ball!"
Community advocates repeatedly told school and district
administrators of that bullying, according to the legal defense fund's
complaint, which was based on accounts and statements by unidentified students
and teachers.
Black students say they all are unfairly being blamed for the
actions of a few.
"They just want to look at everybody" for blame,
said Ali Bailey, 15, a sophomore. "That's not cool."
Principal LaGreta Brown, the school's fourth principal in
five years, was cited for a discriminatory attitude, particularly for referring
to the advocacy groups' efforts as "the Asian agenda." On the morning
of the attacks, the complaint says, she escorted about 10 frightened Vietnamese
students past a large group of youths on a sidewalk.
"If you are afraid, then I will walk with you," the
advocacy group says she told the students. But she soon walked away and returned
to school, the complaint says, and the Vietnamese students were assaulted by 40
students, most of them black.
In response to this week's legal filing, the school district
said it had not discriminated against anyone and pointed to increased security
efforts since the attacks.
"The claim of 'intentional discrimination' makes no
sense," a district statement said.
Brown did not immediately respond to a message requesting
comment.
Students, administrators and community leaders say many
factors are to blame, including language barriers and cultural differences that
escalate smaller conflicts into fights. Many of the Asians are ESL students who
speak little English and often must use interpreters.
Superintendent Arlene Ackerman and other school officials say
the assaults followed an attack on a disabled black student by two Asian
students the day before. But students say the violence goes back even further.
Trung Tran, a 17-year-old Vietnamese-American student who
joined the boycott, said the bullying is rooted in a lack of understanding
between the groups. He said then that he feared going to school and is at a loss
to explain the conflict.
"It's just violence," he said.
South Philadelphia has been growing more diverse for decades,
but the last 20 years have seen the greatest influx of Asian and Hispanic
families. Many of the city's nearly 60,000 residents who report being born in
China live in the neighborhoods, said David Elesh, an urban sociologist at
Temple University.
Cecilia Chen, staff attorney for the Asian American Legal
Defense and Education Fund, said her group has investigated similar conflicts in
Brooklyn, Quincy, Mass., and Long Island in recent years.
"A lot of times, there is a new community that's
developing in a neighborhood and that changes the dynamic and creates
tension," Chen said. "It's a change. It's different."
Duyngoc Truong, a South Philadelphia High student who was
bruised in the attacks, told the school board the students feel they were
targeted just because they are Asian.
"It hurt our bodies, it also hurt our hearts," he
wrote in testimony. "I don't believe that everybody is bad and I wish there
is a place where racism doesn't exist."
At one district meeting, students held signs that said
"Grown-Ups Let Us Down" and "It's not a question of who beat
whom, but who let it happen."
Ackerman apologized to the students but was criticized for
bringing a busload of black "student ambassadors" to one hearing -
students who were not involved in the strife. She also stirred tensions when she
complained that the cultural crisis was "taking up a lot of my time."
District spokeswoman Evelyn Sample-Oates said the school is
investigating and that some of the suspended students could be expelled. She
also said the district is cooperating with police, though no criminal charges
have been brought.
The district has transferred one security officer, brought in
more bilingual staffers and added diversity training.
Still, many students are reluctant to speak about the
conflicts because they fear retribution. A few have spoken out.
"School districts are supposed to be protecting
us," said Chaofei Zhenge, 19.
1/20/10 Philadelphia Inquirer: "Rights complaint filed in South Phila. High
case,"
by Jeff Gammage
A legal group filed a federal civil-rights complaint against
the Philadelphia schools yesterday, claiming the district discriminated against
Asian students at South Philadelphia High School.
The complaint, lodged with the Justice Department by the
Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund, claims the district acted with
"deliberate indifference" to the harassment of Asian students and with
"intentional disregard" of their welfare.
Time after time for more than a year, according to the
complaint, community advocates told school and district administrators that
Asian students were being punched, mocked, and cursed. That treatment was so
common that it seemed like part of the school climate, the complaint says.
The schools' inaction, the complaint says, led to the
violence on Dec. 3, when large groups of mostly African American students
attacked about 30 Asian students. The assaults sent at least 11 students to
hospitals and sparked a boycott by about 50 Asian students.
The district said in a written response that "the claim
of 'intentional discrimination' makes no sense. Asserting that the district
would have 'intentional disregard' for the welfare of its students is as
outrageous as it is hurtful to so many professionals, students, and others who
have been devoted to addressing these issues in a meaningful manner."
Civil-rights complaints do not result in criminal penalties.
They are aimed at obtaining broad, systemic reforms, provided the Justice
Department finds that violations have occurred.
The district said it would cooperate with the Justice
Department.
The legal defense fund laid out its allegations in a
detailed, 11-page letter, a copy of which was obtained by The Inquirer. Much of
the complaint is based on statements and eyewitness accounts from students,
teachers, and others at the school. None is identified.
"We will review the letter to determine what action, if
any, is appropriate," Justice Department spokesperson Alejandro Miyar said
yesterday.
Typically, if allegations warrant, the department conducts a
preliminary investigation, with a full inquiry to follow if necessary.
The complaint portrays the events of Dec. 3 as a complete
breakdown of adult leadership, saying Asian students pleaded for help and
protection and were generally ignored by school staff.
The complaint says one teacher reported the students' fears
to principal LaGreta Brown after seeing that Asian students were reluctant to
enter the cafeteria. "Today is dangerous," a student told the teacher.
The complaint says Brown refused the teacher's request to let
Asian students remain in classrooms, where they felt safe, and instead ordered a
security guard to escort them into the cafeteria.
The complaint singles Brown out for alleged indifference to
the danger Asian students faced. She could not be reached yesterday. Her office
referred inquiries to the district.
On Dec. 3, the complaint says, Brown encountered about 10 Vietnamese students
outside the school. They told her they were frightened to walk past large groups
of youths gathered on the sidewalk.
Brown responded, "If you are afraid, then I will walk
with you," and told the students to follow her, the complaint says.
She led the group forward, but the Asian students soon lost
sight of her, the complaint says. "Apparently, principal Brown walked the
Vietnamese students partially into the public walkway and then decided to return
to school."
As the 10 students reached Mifflin Street, they were
surrounded and assaulted by 40 students, mostly African American, the complaint
says.
The complaint claims that Brown, who became principal in fall
2009, has shown a discriminatory attitude toward Asian students.
Teachers reported that at a staff meeting before the start of
the school year, Brown called the English-learners program, which is centered on
the second floor, "That dynasty," the complaint says. Teachers
believed she was disparagingly referring to Chinese dynasties, the document
says.
In the days after the Dec. 3 assaults, the complaint says,
Brown described the community advocacy on behalf of the students as "the
Asian agenda." She repeated the phrase in front of teachers before the
School Reform Commission meeting on Dec. 9, the complaint says.
Brown is the school's fourth principal in five years. The
school, at Broad Street and Snyder Avenue, serves 900 students. About 70 percent
are African American, 18 percent Asian, 6 percent Hispanic, and 5 percent white.
The district says it has been "working diligently to
address racial tensions and reduce violence." An outside investigator is
expected to submit a report later this week.
1/19/2010
San Jose Mercury News: "With reflection and tears, Angel Island turns
100,"
By Joe Rodriguez
Malin Tom is an "emotional man," which explains why
he kept his journey through Angel Island mostly to himself for 60 years.
"I did not want to cry in front of people," says
Tom, now 81 and living in Santa Clara. "It is a sad story. I was so scared
and poor. I was ashamed, and Chinese don't talk about their shame."
But he could not resist a granddaughter's plea a few years
ago. Would he talk to her classmates about passing through the "Ellis
Island of the West"?
"My granddaughter gave me courage."
And when Tom finally spoke it was as if a dam holding back
immigrant tears had cracked, replenishing the soil of American history with
bittersweet truth.
On Thursday, a ceremony in San Francisco will commemorate —
100 years to the date — the opening of Angel Island's immigration station. The
government will swear in 100 new American citizens. Some of the nation's top
immigration officials will speak, as well as people who actually went through
the island in San Francisco Bay, including poet Nellie Wong and her sister from
Sunnyvale, Lai Webster.
The speakers won't sugarcoat the island's checkered past.
Angel Island was different from its welcoming counterpart in New York Harbor.
About 500,000 immigrants passed through the island from 1910
to 1940. Of these, 300,000 were detained, a third of them Chinese. While most
were ultimately allowed in, many, like Tom, waited months in a torturous limbo
while their
backgrounds were investigated.
"Angel Island was really there to keep people out, not
to welcome them," says Judy Yung, a University of California-Santa Cruz
professor emeritus of American studies and author of two books on the subject.
"We need to remember that. How can we use the lesson of Angel Island to
live up to our ideal as a nation of immigrants?"
By the late 19th century, the easy gold in California was
gone, an economic recession had settled in across the country and a new wave of
immigrants from Asia and southern Europe stirred up a nativist backlash.
Congress looked for scapegoats.
Even today Tom asks, "Why did they home in on the
Chinese?"
He was 12 years old in 1939 and living with his mother in a
poor village in Canton province. His father, Yip Way Tom, had sneaked through
Angel Island in 1916 as "Jack Chew," the supposed son of a
Chinese-American family. Under the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, laborers could
only immigrate if they were the children or grandchildren of U.S.-born,
Chinese-Americans.
"The Chinese figured out a intricate system right
away," Yung says.
American-born Chinese who could sponsor relatives often sold
their immigration slots to underground brokers, who sold them in Hong Kong to
desperate immigrants like the Toms. Sometimes, undocumented Chinese here created
entirely new identities on paper, especially after thousands of birth records
were destroyed by the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and fire.
The Chinese men who came to Angel Island with these false
identities were known as "paper sons."
At 4 feet, 81/2 inches tall, young Tom boarded a ship in Hong
Kong with a new identity, May Kwong Chew, son of Jack Chew, and
"coaching" notes about the Chew family. He had to study notes between
bouts with seasickness because he would be grilled by interrogators on Angel
Island bent on ferreting out paper sons and daughters.
"After three weeks on a ship," Tom says, "the
next three months were even worse."
Tom remembers going through three or four interrogations: Where was the water
well in your village? How many steps did your front porch have? When did your
uncle in America die? What company did he work for? Did he have birthmarks, and
where?
Then he, like the other detainees, waited as immigration
agents checked out his answers. Tom waited three months, about average, but some
detainees were forced to remain on the island up to two years.
Nothing frightened him more than the whispers of suicides.
Yung says some immigrants who flunked the questioning probably killed themselves
on the island, but there is no official proof.
"They would have been too ashamed to go home and face
their families and villages," said Yung, whose own father was a paper son
and adopted the surname "Yung."
She estimates that 4 percent of Chinese were deported from
the island.
Immigrants channeled their hopes and desolation into poetry,
which they etched on the walls of their prison barracks. Tom read some of these,
but "they made me feel even more sad."
To help pass the time, he played games with other Chinese
boys in the recreation yard and picked up a few words of playground English.
Because of the strict segregation, he never met boys from other nations, though
he could see them during their allotted time in the yard.
Mostly though, he mulled over the interrogation questions
during the day, complained about "terrible mush" and other western
food, and cried silently under his blanket at night.
"I didn't want to make noise for the others," he
says.
After three months, he was released and traveled to San
Diego, where his father delivered produce to restaurants. On a much better diet,
Tom sprouted to nearly 6 foot tall and played basketball in high school. He
mastered English and kept his Chinese.
When he and his father returned to China in 1947, they
learned Tom's brother and sister had died during World War II, probably from
disease. Tom married, but with the communists taking over, he and his new bride
moved to the United States in 1949 and sailed through immigration as Mr. and
Mrs. Chew.
He might have remained a Chew were it not for the
"Chinese Confession Program," a sort of amnesty for undocumented
immigrants in the early 1960s, so long as they weren't communists or criminals.
After three decades in the shadows, he became Malin Tom again, and a U.S.
citizen. More than 18,000 Chinese paper sons and paper daughters also confessed
and were allowed to stay.
He raised a family, and owned a nursery in Silicon Valley.
And he never talked to anyone in detail about Angel Island.
"Not even to me," says his wife, Jean.
Too much shame.
In 2001, Tom returned to the island after 61 years with his
adult children and grandchildren, who had begged him to go. He says the hardest
part was visiting a restored dormitory, where he spent so many tearful nights,
remembering the sound of doors being locked behind him.
"I cried again," Tom says. "I'm still an
emotional guy."
1/7/10 press release: Asian Pacific American Leaders Applaud President for
Promised Re-nomination
of API Judge
Washington – Today, President Obama said he will
re-nominate the Honorable Edward M. Chen to the United States District Court for
the Northern District of California when the Senate reconvenes.
Obama first nominated Judge Chen Aug. 7. The Senate Judiciary
Committee approved him Oct. 15, thereby putting his nomination before the full
Senate. Because his nomination was not acted upon before Congress adjourned for
recess, Obama must re-nominate Judge Chen, and others, in accordance with Senate
rules.
“Judge Chen has a demonstrated record as a balanced, fair
and unbiased jurist through his faithful service as a U.S. magistrate judge for
nearly nine years,” said Joseph J. Centeno, president of the National Asian
Pacific American Bar Association. “Judge Chen has a strong and well-deserved
reputation for integrity and we look forward to his prompt confirmation by the
Senate.”
Judge Chen has been a federal magistrate judge for the
Northern District of California Since April 2001.He was just reappointed to
another eight-year term by the very judges he would join on the District Court.
He was nominated by a bipartisan advisory commission, and his confirmation has
garnered support from multiple bar associations, law enforcement officials and
prosecutors. He also enjoys the strong support of Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.),
who recommended him to the president.
The American Bar Association bestowed its highest ranking,
“unanimously well qualified,” upon him and the Bar Association of San
Francisco rated him “exceptionally well qualified,” a distinction reserved
for only the most exceptional candidates.
“Judge Chen has strong support from law enforcement,”
said Karen K. Narasaki, president and executive director of the Asian American
Justice Center. “In a bipartisan letter from the Coalition of Former Federal
Prosecutors in the Northern District of California, the 11 signatories noted
that Judge Chen is a jurist of the highest caliber who demonstrates a strong
commitment to due process and upholding the rule of law, and that no one is more
qualified to serve on the U.S. District Court for Northern California than Judge
Chen.”
If confirmed, Judge Chen would become the first Asian Pacific
American federal District Court judge in San Francisco, bringing long overdue
diversity to the court that first rendered many infamous civil rights decisions
affecting Asian Pacific Americans – including United States v. Korematsu and
Yick Wo v. Hopkins. Notably, Judge Chen was also part of the original legal team
that overturned the conviction of Fred Korematsu, 40 years after the fact.
Asian Pacific Americans constitute approximately 15 percent
of California’s population. Moreover, although Asian Pacific Americans
comprise more than 35 percent of the San Francisco area’s population, an Asian
Pacific American has never sat on the federal District Court in that area in its
entire 150 year history.
Centeno and Narasaki thank President Obama and Sen. Feinstein
for supporting Judge Chen. He is the second Asian Pacific American she has
recommended to the president for the federal judiciary.
