QUESTION OF THE WEEK #91

Yet another Mexican banned from the U.S.A.

This Week's Question:

Do you agree with Cartoon Network's decision to never broadcast any Speedy Gonzales cartoons in the United States because they include offensive stereotypes of Mexicans?

--Junichi

WHAT TO READ: MISCARRIAGE OF JUSTICE EDITION

Georgia Inmate No. 1187055

Here are three stories of individuals who don't deserve to be behind bars:

• ESPN's online magazine profiles the outrageous/incensing tale of Genarlow Wilson, a high school honor student, football star, and homecoming king from Georgia, who is now serving a 10-year sentence for receiving consensual oral sex from a female 15-year-old high school sophomore while he was a 17-year-old senior. Everybody and their mother agrees that that the act was consensual, and that the girl initiated it. Yet, Wilson was convicted under an antiquated Georgia law that makes it a felony for teenagers less than three years apart to have oral sex, even though it's only a misdemeanor for the same kids to have vaginal intercourse. That nonsensical law has since been revised, but the new legislation doesn't apply retroactively to Wilson, who has spent almost two years in prison now. The NY Times is one of many that have called for his release, but he still remains in jail. You can find out more and sign a petition here.

Credit: Darius M.

• Julie Amero, a 40-year-old substitute teacher, is now facing a whopping 40 year prison sentence for exposing her seventh grade class to pornographic images. She alleges that she is the victim of a software virus that caused her computer to shoot out a swarm of pop-up ads with explicit images that Ralph, from The Simpsons, would describe as "Everybody's hugging." The facts seem to support her version of the story. According to this AP article, the DA claims that Amero intentionally clicked onto some pornographic websites. As anyone who has visited porn sites knows, however, a deliberate visit to one website may still lead to a viral infestation in the form of a pornucopia slide show that can't be stopped without unplugging the computer. That's what my friends tell me, anyway.

• Here's yet another story of how high school students' self-incriminating posts on MySpace have led to their criminal arrests. Only this time, six 14- and 15-year-old girls in Tennessee have been charged with homicide conspiracy after their principal merely found a list with 300 names along with a message by one student that said, "Let's kill everyone on the list." In light of Columbine and its progeny, I don't blame officials for taking threats seriously. But what makes this arrest ridiculous is that the list included Tom Cruise, Oprah Winfrey and the Energizer bunny. Please.
  

--Junichi

MURDER IN SCRANTON

--Junichi

RUNNING WHILE BROWN

Richardson is Running ... for the Border

Yup, that's an actual screen capture above.

When Oliver decides to run for office, I can't wait until the New York Post prints the headline:

WANG THROWS CHINAMAN'S HAT INTO THE RING

*

Just as Obama and Clinton are forced to field idiotic questions and analysis of their race and gender, respectively, Governor Richardson will inevitably weather acerebral comments about his Mexican heritage and the fact that he grew up in Mexico City.

I feel bad for Richardson ... until I remind myself that he is the one directly responsible for the racial profiling and incarceration of Los Alamos scientist Wen Ho Lee.


Source: Wonkette

--Junichi

QUESTION OF THE WEEK #90

Eyes Without A Face

This Week's Question:

What movie has no chance of getting a Best Picture nomination tomorrow from the Academy, despite your belief that it was one of the best movies of 2006?


FWIW, I'd be willing to bet my underwear that the five best picture nominees will come from the following list of six movies: “Babel,” “The Departed,” “Dreamgirls,” “Little Miss Sunshine,” “The Queen," and “United 93.”

--Junichi

INDUSTRY SNITCHES

Click To Play

Some thoughts on the RIAA's persecution of mixtape kings DJ Drama and Don Cannon

(Jay Smooth is rather killing it on the vlogger tip right hurr. Don't worry, I have no intentions going that route but Junichi is much prettier than I am so maybe he will at some point).

--O.W.

BALANCING ON THE NEWS CYCLE

1. The LA Times reports that the key Latino gang in the recent murder of a young Black girl, the Harbor Gateway 204th Street gang, has reached a "truce" in the turf wars around Harbor Gateway:

"[the gang] will open their neighborhood to all residents, including African Americans. In exchange, they want similar access to the predominantly African American part of the neighborhood."

"Najee Ali, an activist who runs Project Islamic Hope and negotiated the truce with the 204th Street gang, said the gang members are asking the city to use its eminent domain powers to accumulate land for a recreation center. The 12-square-block neighborhood has no park, school, community center or church and has only one business — a small market that the gang claims as its territory."

An interesting development, to be sure...I'll be curious to see how the city, police and other community officials respond to this.

Note: one of the other things the 204th St. gang want in exchange for the truce is for:

"police to review the cases of Albert Mata, Marco Milla and Mario Martinez, gang members convicted of killing blacks in the last decade. Gang members said that all three are innocent and that their cases have made Latino residents reluctant to call police."

Not sure how the last part is related to the first but in any case, there seems to be a variety of different machinations going on besides just the immediate end of racial violence in the area.

By the way, the main L.A. NPR affiliate, KPCC, is doing a live broadcast from Harbor Gateway this evening to talk about the racial tensions in the area.

Meanwhile, NY Times is covering the story now and I spotted this little piece of melodramatic prose: "Ethnic and racial tension comes to Los Angeles as regularly as the Santa Ana winds."

This quote from local civil rights attorney Constance Rice is worth noting:

"You don’t find entire segments of the city against one another but in the hot spots and areas of friction you find it is because the demographics are in transition and there is an assertion of power by one group or the other and you get friction."

2. In other racial hate news: I've been following this story concerning a hate crime attack in Long Beach for several months now. Basically, three White women (late teens - 20s) were attacked by a group of Black youth in a tony neighborhood of Long Beach on Halloween night.

As one might expect, the case has garnered much interest but so far, the trial has been a hot mess, especially for prosecutors. The main problem is this: no one disputes that the attack happens. No one disputes the racial dynamics of the attack. But, no one is really sure if the suspects being charged are the right teens. One of the suspects claims that, far from joining in the attack, he was actually one of the people who helped put it to an end yet he's being charged. Meanwhile, "eyewitness" testimony is starting to seem like it it is punctured with holes.

This one has "reasonable doubt" written all over it and best believe, there's no way this trial can end without many people being extremely unhappy.

3. In lighter assault news: a Yale acapella group was attacked on New Year's Eve by a group of "San Francisco pre-school graduates." (I did not realize that prep school grads still ran in packs after prep school. Fascinating). As typical any case involving the police and city politics in S.F., what should have been a minor case has basically blown up into a huge mess, with "influential" Yale parents criticizing S.F.'s chief of police, Mayor Gavin Newsom firing back and then people dumping on Newsom. Which leads to the best part of this story...

Newsom asked if any members of the Yale group (all underage) were given liquor which prompted this response by a critic of the mayor:

""Who the heck does he think he is? Talk about kids drinking! Here you have a guy who's over 40 taking underage girls to bars where they're drinking stuff that sure looks like alcohol."

4. Speaking of law enforcement: why the f--- is SWAT needed to raid a mixtape office? As has been widely reported already, DJ Drama's Aphilliates Music Group offices in ATL were raided last night by the police, under orders by RIAA and Drama was charged with...racketeering.

Just so we're clear here: racketeering = "a pattern of illegal activity (as extortion and murder) that is carried out in furtherance of an enterprise (as a criminal syndicate) which is owned or controlled by those engaged in such activity." Normally, the term is used to describe the activities of organized crime. The whole situation is just so ridiculous.

What I want to know is this: RIAA usually only sics their enforcement teams on people after a complaint has been filed. However, Drama wasn't bootlegging albums in the conventional sense and most of his CDs were filled with exclusives rather than songs that appear elsewhere. WHO COMPLAINED?

Considering that many labels pay Drama to get their artists on his tapes, it's strange to think that someone would have filed a complaint over his activities. As a friend noted, many of the artists who recorded with Drama were technically violating terms of their contracts but that sort of thing happens so often that most labels look the other way since - hey, free promotion = good promotion.

The upside is that DJ Drama's street cred has just multiplied. We predict his first tape post-jail will be: DJ Drama Presents: The Man Can't Hold Me Down.

5. And if anyone was still paying attention, Ward Connerly...still up to his old tricks.

6. Last, but not least: "don't let faux Klingons send real Americans to war." (Thanks HHH)

--O.W.

QUESTION OF THE WEEK #89

Pro-Reparations! Anti-war! Actual equality! King 2008!

This Week's Question:

If Dr. King were alive today and decided to run for President in 2008, how far would he get?

--Junichi

FOLLOW-UP: ROLLING STONE SHOW, DIVERSITY IN THE UC SYSTEM

1. Following up on "The Write Stuff?": A former Rolling Stone intern breaks down what the actual reality of life there was like:

"...the contenders on this new reality show are given the kind of opportunities normally reserved for seasoned writers: traveling the world, interviewing rock stars and working on hard-hitting exposés, all while struggling to meet deadlines.

The enhanced job description makes sense, given that it was the only way for producers to make the show at all exciting. (Bonus: It gave them an excuse to incorporate loads of celebrity cameos.)"

"I'm From Rolling Stone loses credibility as soon as it introduces the cast. Given the final prize, one would expect the producers would pick some of the most talented young writers in the country. Having received more than 2,000 applications for the six spots, they certainly had the chance.

Instead, the reality-show casting formula -- abrasive personalities and model good looks -- won out."

"As RS Executive Editor Joe Levy (the show's de facto host) tells five of the six contestants that their work is just plain bad, he looks almost embarrassed to be treating them as serious contenders for a coveted gig at his magazine."

None of this should be much of a surprise but it just accentuates the point that A) the show is terrible and B) RS's falling reputation has streamlined even faster.

2. Following up on "Race Reality Check, Berkeley Daze": The LA Times had a story today profiling UC Riverside. If UC Berkeley is supposed to be "Little Asia On The Hill" (I still laugh when typing that), UCR is more like, um, Little California In the Valley insofar as it is the most diverse of all the UCs, at least in its percentage of Black and Latino students.

Interestingly, the number of Asian students is still roughly as high as Berkeley's: 43%, but Latinos constitute a quarter of the school and the percentage of Black students (7.1%), is double that of UC Berkeley and the UC system, as a whole. Riverside also boasts the lowest % of White students in the entire system: 18.7% (the highest remains UC Santa Barbara which has 43%[1].

The high diversity at UCR, at least in this article, is seen through two different lenses. On the one hand, it's good at least one UC campus has a Black student population that comes remotely close to reflecting the actual reality of California's state-wide demographics. As one professor quoted for the story points out, "Maybe [other UCs] should be looking at what UCR is doing right in attracting minorities" and elsewhere, the story notes that even students accepted at other, more arguably prestigious UCs, are likely to choose Riverside because they feel more comfortable with the larger numbers of Black and Latino students there.

However, the other side of these demographics is put forward by a sociology professor at UCLA: "It's separate, but certainly not equal," said Darnell Hunt...director of the Ralph J. Bunche Center for African American Studies at UCLA. "It's the resegregation of the UC system." In other words, Hunt seems to argue that Black students (and presumably Latino to a lesser extent) are pushed towards Riverside thus allowing campuses like UCLA or UC Berkeley to enroll fewer "underrepresented minorities"[2].

One wonders what UCR staff and faculty feel about such an accusation. While I understand the point Dr. Hunt is making here, it also has the effect, intended or not, of besmirching UCR's reputation as an institution of higher learning. I doubt many at UCR see their school as the university equivalent of colored bathrooms back in the Jim Crow era.

It's also important to note, as the story does that: "One advantage Riverside has in attracting underrepresented minorities is that it draws many of its applicants from the Riverside area, which has a large black and Latino population." Of course, one can also break down the economic and social forces that have factored into why the Riverside area has a higher percentage of Black and Latino residents vs, say, the areas around Berkeley or Westwood (or Santa Barbara and Santa Cruz). To that degree, the disparities/inequalities associated with UCR are likely a reflection of similar inequalities in many of California's social institutions and historical trends. That's not saying that other UCs can't do a far better job of recruitment of Black and Latino students to their campuses - as the story also notes, this has been one area where UCR has made a vigorous push, a lesson that could be well learned by some of Riverside's sister campuses.

---

[1] At no UC campus does any single ethnic group hold a majority though Asians hold a plurality at every campus save for UC Santa Barbara and UC Santa Cruz.

[2] Given that ALL students in the UC system are technically "minorities" given that there is no majority group, I wish we could find a few language to express that reality.

--O.W.

RACE REALITY CHECK, PART 2: NOT ALL GOOD IN THE HOOD

more real than the hill

(UPDATE: One of our commenters pointed out that Hernandez's article is a partial distillation of a longer working paper that breaks down some of the ideas more thoroughly than a newspaper column would really allow.)

In my previous post, I discussed Timothy Egan's NY Times article on Asians, UC Berkeley and affirmative action. In Tanya Hernandez's "Roots of Latino/black anger" (published in the LA Times) she also takes a worthwhile topic: anti-Black racism within the Latino community, but forces a sensationalist hook on it that both misrepresents reality as well as threatens to detract attention away from her core point. While Egan was mostly overstating the Asian influence on UC Berkeley, Hernandez is treading into even more dangerous territory by practically declaring that L.A. is the new Darfur.

CONTINUE READING...


To be more specific, Hernandez writes, "murder was a manifestation of an increasingly common trend: Latino ethnic cleansing of African Americans from multiracial neighborhoods."

This is one of those deliberate choices of words that have the effect of jack-knifing a tractor-trailer in the middle of a freeway. After all, for most people I surmise, "ethnic cleansing" is synonymous with "genocide" (the main difference being one of scale but not of concept). In other words, Hernandez is implying that there is a concerted effort by Latinos in Los Angeles (she doesn't actually cite which Latinos but we'll get back to this later) to carry out a deliberate campaign that ultimately leads to, "the elimination of an unwanted ethnic group or groups from a society, as by genocide or forced emigration."

What's curious here is that throughout the rest of the article, Hernandez relies on research data to support her argument yet here - with the most explosive argument of all - there is strangely no attempt to cite empirical sources even though such data exists. I cannot, of course, presume why this omission exists but I can say that if you look at the existing data, it complicates any easy depiction of racial violence as one-sided (let alone on the level of "ethnic cleansing").

The Los Angeles County Human Relations Commission keeps track of hate crime statistics annually (by aggregating a variety of federal, state but mostly local criminal justice sources). In their most recent report, analyzing 2005 data, what they found was the that, in L.A., 68% of Black hate crime victims were targeted by Latino perpetrators (pg. 20). That is, unquestionably, a stark and sobering statistic. Moreover, "African Americans were again targeted by far the most frequently in 230 crimes (55%). This is a rate more than five times their presence in the general population" (pg. 18). It is also a nearly 50% rise from the year before.

However, if you look at the rest of the data, "in anti-Latino crimes, 76% of the suspects were black" (pg. 20). In other words, amongst all hate crime victims, Latino victims were a little over 10% more likely to be targeted by Black suspects vs. Black victims and Latino suspects. That difference is somewhat misleading however when you factor in the disproportionate amount of Black victims overall (over half of all hate crime victims were African American in 2005). When taking that into consideration, there were roughly 156 Latino-on-Black hate crimes vs. 93 Black-on-Latino hate crimes, a sizable difference of nearly 40%, especially when noting that Blacks only constitute 10% of the L.A. County population in comparison to the whopping 46.5% of Angelinos who identify as "Hispanic."[1]

Either way, the overall pattern in Los Angeles has been that the majority of anti-Black hate crime suspects have been Latino and the majority of anti-Latino hate crime suspects have been Black. However, compared to 2004, rates of interracial hate crimes between Blacks and Latinos were down even though the overall number of hate crimes, across the board, were up, especially for Latinos who saw a nearly 100% jump in hate crime incidents compared to 2004. Moreover, Latino victims were more likely to be subject to violence compared to African American victims (67% vs. 61%). Meanwhile, the number of suspected Latino perpetrators of hate crimes decreased by 12% while the number of African American suspects increased by 10% but Latino suspects still dominate: they are 44% of all hate crime suspects, followed by Black at 30% and Whites at 24%. (Just to note: these year to year differences should always be taken with a grain of salt but I don't have sufficient access to more longitudinal studies that deal specifically with the Los Angeles area).

Where the numbers dramatically begin to skew is when you look at gang-related incidents of hate crime.

"...the overwhelming majority of these were cases in which Latino gang members targeted African-American victims. The data show that 54 (78%) of racial crimes committed by gang members were anti-black, and only 8 (12%) targeted Latinos. Very few reports indicated that these racial crimes were committed by gang members against rival gang members; most were against victims who were not identified as gang members."

In other words (and this is what Hernandez is also saying): there is a clear and discernible trend of Latino gang members targeting non-gang affiliated African Americans for hate crimes.

Further dissection of the data reveals some other notable figures - though with harder-to-draw conclusions. On one hand, gang-related hate crimes, overall, constitute 11% of all hate crimes - a big number but hardly the majority of hate crimes. However, in 5 out of 6 cases of racial bias-based attempted murder, the perps were Latino gang members and the victims African Americans. The reverse does NOT seem to be true: there are far fewer documented cases of Black gangs targeting non-gang affiliated Latinos.

So what does all this mean? For starters, I absolutely agree that incidents of anti-Black racism by Latino suspects - specifically in the form of violent hate crimes - is a serious issue that has gone woefully underreported or opined about. In that respect, I think Hernandez's article is important for bringing attention to the issue.

Moreover, some of her main points are correct: there is a higher overall number of incidences where Latinos have targeted African Americans (vs. the inverse) for hate crimes, especially through violence. Unfortunately, it's too early for parse down the 2006 data so it's hard to know what direction these trends may go but it's very important to note: in both 2004 and 2005, there no recorded bias-related murders (there was one in 2003 where two Latino gang members killed an African American man) but the story that sparked Hernandez's article was the December 15th slaying of a 14 year old Black girl in Harbor Gateway (again, by Latino gang members).

However, none of this data supports a claim that there is a widespread Latino-coordinated campaign of ethnic cleansing of African Americans in Los Angeles. What you could say is that there is a very troubling number of incidents (even though they had been on the decline) of Latino gangs (presumably Mexican though perhaps Salvadoran, though no one specifies) targeting non-gang affiliated African Americans for violent hate crimes in specific neighborhoods (but certainly not just any/all "multiracial" ones).[2] That alone should give everyone pause and inspire a serious call to action for L.A. city and community leaders to deal with.

However, how Hernandez conflates "Latino gangs" (and really, I think we're most likely talking about Mexican gangs) into "Latinos" writ large is troubling. I cannot imagine that Hernandez would ever claim that the Mexican Mafia stands as a proxy for the entire Latino community any more than Piru Bloods represent the African American community writ large but in her article, she essentially uses the two interchangeably. For example, at the end, she writes, "the recent violence in Los Angeles has involved Latinos targeting peaceful African American citizens." This is technically true but it is nowhere near the whole story.

For example, curiously missing from this discussion is acknowledging that one of the prime locations for Latino/Black violence isn't in the streets but rather, California's penal system where racially-aligned and segregated prison gangs create an incredible amount of violence (that can spill outside once members are released back into the general population).

Though the cultural roots of White Supremacy in Central/Latin America may very well play a role in prison conflicts too, one cannot deny that the prison system itself is a uniquely different social institution that has its own kinds of cultural logic. Others have argued that the very policy of the CA prison system to segregate based on race only contributes to flaring tensions and violence. In any case, no law enforcement official or criminal justice scholar in California would ever discuss Black/Latino violence - especially gang-related - without nodding back to the prisons.[3] Yet, in this article, what happens in Pelican Bay, stays in Pelican Bay it seems.

On a different angle, one of the main arguments also being put forward by Hernandez is that these racial conflicts cannot be explained by economic forces. This certainly flies against the common understanding amongst most sociologists and other social researchers that socioeconomic factors play a key role in brewing racial tensions between historically disenfranchised communities.

If someone wants to challenge that common logic, that's fine - the social scientific method relies on challenges to prevailing beliefs. However, in one of the cases where Hernandez does rely on research (rather than anecdote), she cites the 1992 Los Angeles County Social Survey even though that data is 15 years old (and the survey is conducted annually, mind you). Moreover, 1992 was the year of the L.A. Rebellion/Riots, arguably the most important race-related event in a generation in the Southland (sorry O.J.) and would likely skew responses on account of that. In any case, the demographics of Los Angeles have changed dramatically in that decade and a half and a more recent analysis would be apropos given that.

None of this means that her argument is necessarily false but it hardly proves the case either. To dismiss socioeconomics as a factor in how interracial violence manifests in a city as spatially dense and economically competitive as Los Angeles in the way Hernandez does defies easy understanding. A single, 15 year old survey study isn't enough to make the case that socioeconomics are some kind of red herring, especially given the mountains of other social research that would suggest that at some level, economic competition feeds into racial tension. That does not presume that racist prejudice is not also at play. It merely includes a variety of factors, something that the Hernandez article fails to consider.

All this said, I think the core of Hernandez's article is actually extremely important in exploring the deeper, cultural roots of anti-Black racism within the Latino community. As she - and many others would concur - this is NOT a topic that is part of the mainstream conversation around race. Within the Left, there is a naive idealism that somehow, all people of color are in solidarity with one another (regardless if the historical record actually disproves this countless times) and especially given how Latinos will become the majority-minority soon (as has already happened in California), it is more important than ever to discuss how anti-Black sentiments within that community factor into the relationships between those communities.

Some key points in her article:

"racism — and anti-black racism in particular — is a pervasive and historically entrenched reality of life in Latin America and the Caribbean."

"The legacy of the slave period in Latin America and the Caribbean is similar to that in the United States: Having lighter skin and European features increases the chances of socioeconomic opportunity, while having darker skin and African features severely limits social mobility."

"African Americans had substantially more positive views of Latinos than Latinos had of African Americans. Although a slim majority of the U.S.-born Latinos used positive identifiers when describing African Americans, only a minority of the foreign-born Latinos did so."

"Latinos were more likely to reject African Americans as neighbors than they were to reject members of other racial groups."

These may be difficult ideas to accept but even when debatable, they're still crucial to any kind of truthful confrontation with issues of racism between racialized groups rather than the conventional - and all but moribund - binary of White/non-White relations. To that extent, I applaud Hernandez's effort to bring these issues to light even as I question some of the decisions she makes in framing it.

What is missing, however, is a greater discussion, or even acknowledgment, of how these attitudes play off structural forces that either reflect or feed into the perpetuation of prejudice. This can be one of those chicken/egg debates but as noted earlier in regards to the role that the segregated CA prison system plays in exacerbating racial violence, it seems myopic to suggest that prejudicial attitudes would be sufficient to explain, in Hernandez's words, "the extremity of the ethnic violence." There's many groups that hate one another. Not all those groups make it a point to murder one another in public. Take away the gang angle (which is dependent on the prison angle) and the equation changes dramatically.

(She might also have mentioned the incidents of racial conflict in L.A. public schools, which, besides prison, is a "ground zero" for brewing racial conflicts.[5])

What is unfortunate is how Hernandez's article has gotten great play in the worst of places: Right-wing, anti-immigration sites who are perverting her arguments into another justification for attacking Latino immigration under the disingenuous mantle of protecting African Americans (and other Americans by extension) from the scourge of Latino racist violence. I think it goes without saying that most fervent, anti-immigrant groups are no friends to Black liberation or social justice - indeed, their racially-coded ways of talking about how immigration is changing the fabric of American identity (read: White identity/prvilege) are a close cousin to similar arguments around the "bankrupt culture" of impoverished African Americans.

While Hernandez likely did not intend for her article to have this effect, by sensationalizing the violence angle of her argument - especially when the data doesn't support that read - her article plays very nicely into the hands of those who would pervert its aim to spur up paranoia around violent Latino gangs putting American lives at risk (see Pat Buchanan's hysteria-laden screed about the Salvadoran American gang, MS13 for example).

---

One last thing regarding both Hernandez and Egan's articles: both point out the challenges in trying to discuss race and ethnicity in contemporary America, not the least of which are the ways in which umbrella terms for diverse ethnic groups tend to flatten difference when really, specificity is what's needed. (This is not a new point but still bears repeating).

For example, when Egan is trying to contrast the successes of Asian immigrant families with the historically underrepresented and disenfranchised Black and Latino populations (in the context of higher education), he's really talking about post-1965 Immigration Act East Asian ethnic groups: Chinese and Koreans (and to a lesser extent Japanese though their numbers have dwindled). These are the Asian communities most likely to 1) have a powerful class privilege working in their favor, at least when it comes to prioritizing resources for their children's education and 2) have avoided the direct historical legacies of anti-Asian oppression in America history by immigration in the post-Civil Rights Era.

However, as is oft-noted, for many Southeast Asian and Filipino immigrants, the advantages are not so widely shared, especially by Southeast Asian refugees whose key immigration date is not 1965 but 1975 (fall of Saigon). Those communities are far more likely to live near or under the poverty line and their arrival in the U.S. is a direct outcome of American foreign policy (one could make a similar argument for Filipinos as well given the U.S. occupation of the Philippines from the 1890s through 1930s) and thus, their disenfranchisement has roots in historical structures of imperialism and war (not to mention contemporary issues around environmental racism, public housing, gang involvement, etc.). Though Egan talks about how "Asians make up the largest single ethnic group, 37 percent, at [the UC's] nine undergraduate campuses," he treats that group as monolithic (despite later paragraphs which make note of "differences" between Asian ethnic groups but fail to specific what those differences are, especially within a social structure of power/privilege.

While there might be a fair social justice argument made to limit, say, Chinese American, access to affirmative action policies in higher education, it becomes far harder to make the same claim for Hmong or Cambodian youth. But even that becomes complicated: the first generation of post-75 Vietnamese immigrants to arrive in America were more likely to be part of the educated and political elite vs. later waves of more low-skilled, agrarian-class refugees. Does it make sense to offer social policy advantages to Vietnamese Americans across the board? Or just those who've been most socioeconomically challenged? You can see the complexity here.

Likewise, with Hernandez, apart from conflating Latino gangs with the Latino community as a whole, she rarely specifies if findings regarding one Latino group (say Mexicans or Mexican Americans) can be applied to others. In Los Angeles, Mexicans are the dominant Latino community, by far, but there are still important pockets of Salvadoran, Honduran and Guatemalans and her ideas on Black/Latino conflict in Los Angeles may have little application in, for example, New York, where Puerto Ricans are the dominant Latino group and whose community can span the range from light-skinned "Hispanic Whites" to dark-skinned morenas. That's not to say that anti-Black racism doesn't exist there but the social dynamics (and demographics) are significantly distinct.

Cursory moral of this very long story? Talking about race and racism is tremendously complicated yet even more completely necessary and to the degree that both articles (despite their flaws) push this conversation into the public sphere, I think that's great, especially if it encourages more people to push deeper into having these very difficult dialogues.

---

[1] The data on these figures track ALL hate crimes, not just violent assaults, attempted murders or murders (there were no racial bias-related murders in 2005 according to the report).

[2] It really needs to be said here that nationally, over 90% of Black murder victims were killed by Black suspects. One would imagine that the figure, specifically for Los Angeles, would not be dramatically lower. I doubt anyone would describe that figure as a "self cleansing."

[3] In CA prisons, the term "ethnic cleansing" might actually be more apropos but I suspect Hernandez avoids dwelling on this since it would undermine her discussion of how "peaceful African Americans" are coming under attack by violent Latinos.

[4] In public schools, most of the Black/Latino violence tends to involve Black victims and Latino suspects except, it seems, in May. Presumably, the timing of Cinco De Mayo tends to incite more Black suspects to attack Latino victims.

--O.W.

RACE REALITY CHECK, PART 1: BERKELEY DAZE

beginning of the end

By coincidence, the NY Times and LA Times both ran stories on Sunday dealing with contemporary American race relations but not of the conventional Black/White variety. In the LAT was Professor Tanya Hernandez's op-ed, "Roots of Latino/black anger," which looks at both the current rates of Latino-on-Black violence in Los Angeles communities and argues that deep-seated racial prejudice helps explain the acrimony (rather than the more traditional theory that economic pressures are at root). In the NYT, it was Timothy Egan's "Little Asia on the Hill" which is a profile of both Junichi and my alma mater, UC Berkeley and how the long-term growth of Asian American students there complicates the racial demographics of an institution that has seen the recent percentage of African American students drop from small to near-absent.

It's not as if White racism completely disappears in these two stories but the main focus is looking at how power and privilege is as much an issue between non-White communities as it is between the more commonly discussed "people of color vs. White" binary. Especially in California, which both articles focus on, as a non-majority state, race relations here offer a model for what the rest of America may experience in the generations to come as we head towards a non-majority, pluralistic nation as well.


CONTINUE READING...



I'll begin with Egan's article in this post and I'll tackle Hernandez's separately. I've re-read Egan's essay a few times and the more I do, I realize that I gave it too much credit the first time through, thinking that it had something insightful to say about contemporary race relations (specifically concerning Asian Americans). In reality, it's actually a rather tired retread of hundreds of model minority tales seen in decades past (even though it tries, not very successfully, to be self-conscious of the model minority myth) paired with an equally tired recycling of questions around Asian Americans and affirmative action as if the topic hasn't already been discussed to death for well over 15 years. That doesn't mean it's not important but in many ways, the "quiet revolution" Egan writes about has already been noted over the last two decades - it's hardly been that quiet.

Moreover, the article itself is problematic on so many levels, it's hard to know where to begin. For starters, his basic intent is to profile an Asian-dominant campus (though it's still no-majority) but rather than simply put it across "there's a lot of Asians here!", he plays up their numbers/influence with all sorts of questionable rhetorical flourishes that feels, at times, like a subtle retrenchment of "yellow peril" hysteria, albeit with a gentler tone.

For example, he describes Berkeley as "overwhelmingly Asian" - a curious argument given that Asian American students don't constitute a majority (no single ethnic/racial group does) and in general, I don't think of a numerical plurality as being particularly "overwhelming." For example, would one describe a campus with a 40% White or Black student population as "overwhelmingly White/Black"? Unlikely.

Of course, perhaps Egan wasn't talking pure statistics but rather, a general impression but even then, it's an overstatement. It's absolutely true: there's a lot of Asians at Berkeley. Walk on campus and it's impossible NOT to notice this. However, the public face of Berkeley is a different story. Asians do not constitute a plurality of: faculty, staff, executives, or Division I athletes (they are nowhere close in any of those categories). Moreover, in the materials that the campus makes available to the public, they severely underplay the actual numbers of Asian students. Watch this online video of Cal freshmen to see what I mean.

Nevertheless, Egan makes Berkeley seem like, well, "Little Asia."[1] He paints a portrait where Mandarin floats down every hall way (uh, no), where Asian-themed residence halls are common (nope [2]), where - and I have hard time retyping this without convulsing in laughter - "more than any time in its history, it looks toward the setting sun for its identity."

Ok, please, just stop for a moment. Berkeley's Office of Student Research doesn't parse down its data to note the differences between foreign vs. American-born/raised Asian American students but based on my experience, both as an undergrad and more importantly, grad student who taught at least 500 Asian American undergrads at Berkeley, it's clear that most Asian American students at Berkeley are, at the very least, American-raised if not American-born. Their identity doesn't turn any further west than the Richmond and Sunset Districts in San Francisco. It's just one of the ways in which Egan recycles that old chestnut of Asians as perpetual foreigners, turning to the inscrutable Orient for inspiration.[3]

Another problem with the article is simply that Egan is trying to make his point through a meandering series of observations even though the core of it is right here: "In California, the rise of the Asian campus, of the strict meritocracy, has come at the expense of historically underrepresented blacks and Hispanics."

I could quibble over whether UC admission policy is actually a "strict meritocracy" but I'll let that go for sake of expediency.[4] Regardless, I wouldn't disagree with Egan's supposition that increases in Asian American enrollment at a school such as Berkeley means declining numbers elsewhere, especially amongst Black and Latino students.

However, Egan tries to play this debate in fumbled way - he wants to set-up a conflict that pits Asian American students on one side and Black/Latino students on the other but he rarely just tackles this question head-on. Personally, I would have preferred had he gone out and probed that precise question rather than doing it elliptically.

I did try to pull a few things noted in the piece which I thought were good food for thought:

"[UC Berkeley], [Chancellor] Dr. Birgeneau says, loses talented black applicants to private universities like Stanford, where African-American enrollment was 10 percent last year — nearly three times that at Berkeley.

'I just don’t believe that in a state with three million African-Americans there is not a single engineering student for the state’s premier public university,' he says."
(All cogent points).

"It is not the university’s job to fix the problems that California’s public schools produce." [from Professor David Hollinger]
(On one level, Hollinger is noting that the roots of admission inequalities lie much further in the general preparation of CA students through the K-12 system and the differences in access/privilege that students have. While I understand his point that perhaps it's unfair to burden the university with solving a problem that, in essence, it didn't create, it also seems like a bit of a cop-out to not also think that Berkeley also - especially as the "flagship" camps in the UC system - to take a role in addressing these things).

"If Berkeley is now a pure meritocracy, what does that say about the future of great American universities in the post-affirmative action age? Are we headed toward a day when all elite colleges will look something like Berkeley: relatively wealthy whites (about 60 percent of white freshmen’s families make $100,000 or more) and a large Asian plurality and everyone else underrepresented?"
(Isn't this where things have already headed, more or less?)

"[Stanford professor Hazel Markus'] studies have found that Asian students do approach academics differently. Whether educated in the United States or abroad, she says, they see professors as authority figures to be listened to, not challenged in the back-and-forth Socratic tradition. 'You hear some teachers say that the Asian kids get great grades but just sit there and don’t participate,' she says. 'Talking and thinking are not the same thing. Being a student to some Asians means that it’s not your place to question, and that flapping your gums all day is not the best thing.'"
(I'd say these all seem like vast generalizations and stereotypes though...having taught hundreds of these students, I can't say it's wholly untrue either).

Rather than dissect Egan's entire article, I want to use some of his more elliptical points to address a few issues that I think are really (in my opinion) at the heart of what the article should have been focused on.

Would a strengthening of affirmative action policies impact the number of Asian American students at universities such as UC Berkeley?

Yes and no. It would likely lead to lower numbers of, say, middle class Chinese and Korean American students but assuming these policies were not strictly ethnicity-based but rather, took into account a larger diversity of considerations, it might help bolster numbers of underrepresented Asian ethnic groups such as Cambodians, Vietnamese and Filipinos.

Do most Asian Americans favor affirmative action?

According to the survey data, yes but a word of caution. The 2001 Pilot Study of the National Asian American Political Survey found that in reply to this question: "Affirmative action refers to any measure, policy or law used to increase diversity or rectify discrimination so that qualified individuals have equal access to employment, education, business, and contracting opportunities. Generally speaking, do you think affirmative action is a good thing or a bad thing for Asian Americans, or doesn't it affect Asian Americans much?", 63% responded "A Good Thing" while only 6% said, "A Bad Thing."[5]

My issue with this survey question is around how it's worded. The core issue in Egan's article - and really, when we're talking about Asian Americans and affirmative action it centers on this too - is preferential policies in college admission. If you were to phrase a question that asked instead, "Would you favor affirmative action policies designed to increase diversity or rectify discrimination but Asian Americans would not benefit from these programs, would you think this is a 'good thing' or 'bad thing'," I imagine that the results would be very different.

This may sound self-obvious but Asian Americans are more likely to support affirmative action when it benefits them, especially in areas around hiring and job contracts. But when it comes to college admissions and in general, educational opportunities afforded people and their children, the historical record is clear: do not come between (certain) Asian ethnic groups and their pursuit of higher education. It doesn't matter if greater diversity for all is the benefit being touted - if Asian Americans think they're "losing" in this equation, then at least a vocal minority will make their anger heard. (Added afterthought: that minority might be quite small but given the overall challenges in making Asian American political opinions audible, a vocal minority can come off as seeming to represent the whole, alas).

This is truly an unfortunate legacy of Asian America's record on race relations. Educational policy has, throughout the decades, been one way in which Asian Americans have been more than willing to part ways or abandon larger solidarities with other communities of color. Whether Asian Americans, as a whole, aspire towards White privilege or not is a larger debate but when it comes to educational privilege, in places like San Francisco, Mississippi and New Jersey, certain Asian Americans (whether individually, in small groups, or in specific communities) are quick to abandon any pretense to supporting diversity if they perceive their admissions are on the line. (To be fair, we're mostly talking about Chinese Americans rather than all Asian Americans, across the board. I'm not proud of this).

(Added afterthought: This is one of those "more research is needed" areas. As noted earlier, I don't think the existing polling and survey data is sufficient to really reflect Asian American opinions on affirmative action admission policies. Without sounding like I'm trying to recycle broad generalizations, I do think that for many Asian American families, education (esp. at the collegiate level) is a higher priority than it is for others (and I think if you were to parse family resource allocations, there'd be data to back this up) and as a result, talking about preferential hiring is one thing, talking about preferential admissions? Whole 'nother ball of wax.)

Should Asian Americans be concerned about the rising numbers of Asian Americans students - and declining numbers of African American and Latino students - at schools such as UC Berkeley? Likewise, should they be in favor of affirmative action policies even if they aren't a direct benefit to their own access?

Absolutely yes. I think this is the difficult stance to accept amongst some (if not many) Asian American families, especially those inclined to oppose affirmative action policies that would negatively impact Asian American (i.e. their kids) enrollment. For starters, it's very difficult to see how a majority Asian campus is really "beneficial" - as an intellectual space, as a social space - to Asian students. While it may play into their comfort zone (not for nothing), it does little to prepare them for the greater diversity of ideas - and just plain people - that exists outside of campus.

Mind you, I'm not speaking now as a sociologist or academic per se. I'm speaking as someone who went to UC Berkeley for basically, one-third of my lifetime, as someone who grew up in a town that was basically a 60/40 White/Asian split (with practically no African Americans and barely any Latinos), who has an intraethnic Asian American daughter whose future childhood environs and education I'll need to help plan.

Being Asian at Berkeley certainly felt more comfortable than, I suppose, being Asian at SMU but I'm not sure what benefits, besides comfort, an Asian-dominant campus afforded. Like I said, comfort is not for nothing, but it's hardly the raison d'etre for going somewhere. What's been striking is that teaching at CSU-Long Beach is the first time when I've had big classes that were NOT majority Asian American and that's been a very illuminating and important process for me - as a teacher, as a scholar, as a member of society - because on a very simple, basic level, it makes me confront my own unspoken biases and ideas about people.

As my daughter gets older, I wouldn't want her to grow up in the kind of racially sterile (not to mention quasi-elitist) environments of my own upbringing (which isn't a knock on my parents' choices. They had the best intentions at heart). She currently attends a daycare that includes Black, White and Asian toddlers and without overidealizing that experience, I think it's important that she's come into social awareness in an environment that more closely mirrors society at large rather than presuming that everyone else only looks like her (or White children). My hope - and this might be, again, overidealized - is that those kind of formative experiences will encourage her to grow into someone who is more empathetic, more aware of society at large and more invested in the ideals of social justice rather the more parochial, self-interest attitudes that accompany certain members of my community.

An Asian-dominant environment, especially a university, does little to foster those ideals, especially if the mentality is that encouraging diversity is somehow "a loss" suffered by Asian Americans. Considering that post-1965 immigrant Asian Americans (who comprise the vast bulk of the community) essentially benefitted from Civil Rights struggles that they themselves didn't actually contribute to/participate in, it seems like the height of arrogance to claim that affirmative action policies are a denial of egalitarian ideals of fairness and equality.

So affirmative action is a good policy, right?

Well...

The problem with the affirmative action debate has been how it's become this touchstone issue that somehow is seen as being the sole remedy available to challenging the legacy of White supremacy and institutional racism. I'm not sure if that's a product of laziness on the Left or machinations on the Right but either way, it's a dangerously shortsighted perspective.

Affirmative Action is not great public policy for an "all eggs in one basket" approach insofar as 1) a focus on hiring, promotional or educational access are essentially middle class concerns but do little to address historical inequalities in class and race that affect the millions for whom basic needs around health care, housing and employment are far more important than who gets to attend UC Berkeley or Stanford, 2) it's only going to become more politically untenable over time and thus becomes a sponge for progressive energy that might be better applied elsewhere (I'm a firm believer in the realpolitik/choose your battles approach), 3) it diverts attention from the entrenchment of structural discrimination in many other areas, not the least of which are housing, health care and the criminal justice system. This list could go on.

Yet, it seems as if affirmative action is the only policy that is ever floated out there to address 400+ years of racial inequality, as if college enrollments or hiring preferences are an adequate redress or unengineering of a national economy built on Black slavery and indentured servitude of other groups of color.

That's why I tire of the Asian American/affirmative action debate. It's not that it's a wholly spurious topic but it's seems so relatively insignificant in the grand scheme of social justice. It's certainly a myopic cause for certain, so-called Asian American civil rights groups to take up (and by this, I mean those fighting to oppose aff. action policies) and as noted, I don't consider it the most productive front for progressive Leftists to champion either.

---

[1] "Little Asia" is a term that, in over twelve years at Berkeley, I never once heard bandied about...unlike say, UCI aka (University of Chinese Immigrants) or UCLA (University of Caucasians Lost among Asians). It's just a painfully insipid and (as noted elsewhere) inaccurate way to describe Berkeley's demographic flavor.

[2] Egan wrote "there are residence halls with Asian themes." Well, actually, there is a house (singular): the Asian Pacific American Theme House[1] which isn't a hall nor even really a house: it's a single floor in a larger building. The overall number of its occupants is tiny in comparison to the overall residence hall system at Cal. (Disclosure: I lived in the theme house for its first two years, from 1992-1994 and Junichi was Hall Coordinator for the building it was housed in, the now-named Beverly Cleary Hall).

Egan also observes, "an a cappella group, mostly Asian men, appears and starts singing a Beach Boys song." Sorry but no: the Berkeley's Men's Octet has four Asian American members, four White. Though, I suppose that would, in Egan's perspective, make the Octet "overwhelmingly Asian." (Note: the Octet's female equivalent is even less diverse).

By the way, I'd also highly question Egan's supposition that "good dim sum is never more than a five-minute walk away" but maybe the quality of Chinese food has substantially improved near campus since my leaving there two years ago.

[3] Egan does this later in the piece too in a rhetorical slight-of-hand that I find highly dubious: "But as the only son of professionals born in China, Mr. Hu fits the profile of Asians at Berkeley in at least one way: they are predominantly first-generation American. About 95 percent of Asian freshmen come from a family in which one or both parents were born outside the United States."

The second sentence does not follow the first at all. Again, I have yet to see data that breaks down what percentage of foreign vs. native-born Asian Americans so this idea that foreign-born are "predominant" is questionable. Moreover, while I would agree that 95% of Asian American freshmen have at least one parent born outside the U.S., that doesn't mean that THEY were also born abroad.

[4] I also wonder why Egan did not also note that White student populations have also declined as well. There's a perception - however true or not - that within the UC system, there's been a White flight away from heavily Asian campuses to places like UC Santa Barbara which are still White-majority schools.

[5] Just to note, Japanese and South Asians, at 8 and 9% respectively, were the ones mostly likely to answer "A Bad Thing."

--O.W.

THE WRITE STUFF?

funny, my desk doesn't look like this
Apart from the fact that the only reality TV shows I can stand watching the whole season through appear exclusively on Bravo (American Idol is great for about a month then dies a slow, melisamatically-challenged death), I have no interest in MTV's new I'm From Rolling Stone, despite the fact that it's supposed to represent a profession that I've spent most of my adult life engaged in: music journalism. (If you need a primer, may I suggest Idolator's gleefully caustic wrap-ups).

CONTINUE READING...


Times are evidently hard for RS even if they haven't quite descended to the level of self-parody The Source attained in its later years but it's been clear to me and most my colleagues that it no longer holds as much prestige or influence in an era of Blender/blogs/NY Times, etc. dominance. Maybe that's why they agreed to a show as ridiculous in basic concept (let alone execution) as this one. It reeks of desperation in the attempt to hold onto some kind of pop culture zeitgeist it 1) doesn't really need and 2) shouldn't be chasing after anyway. The show would actually be a better fit for a more irreverent magazine like Blender except that I'm fairly certain they have the good sense to steer clear of anything as embarrassing as this just to stir up circulation numbers or improve their public sphere standing.

The show's a bad look for the magazine and it's an even worse look for the participants, at least those who are serious about forging a career in music writing. As many have already noted though: you don't go on a show like this if you're serious about music writing. You do it because you seek celebrity, both for yourself as well as the opportunity to "interact" with actual celebrities.

In that sense, the show is an unintended but brilliant reflection of the state of cultural criticism/journalism even as it tries to package it for MTV. Most presume today that music journalism was always synonymous with celebrity journalism but though the blurring may have been endemic to both professions from the very beginning, it's become far, far more pronounced in the last 10-15 years, especially with market realignments in the media industry. It's not enough to want to rub shoulders with celebrities - today's media writers aspire to be minor celebrities themselves. I'm With Rolling Stone is as perfect a manifestation of that trend as anyone could imagine. One could blame Cameron Crowe's Almost Famous for contributing to this by glamorizing the so-called glory days of rock journalism (albeit through a fictionalized account that likely didn't include Kate Hudson hotties) but the protagonist in the film had no pretensions to fame himself...he just wanted to chase a story. With I'm With Rolling Stone, the very title reflects the kind of cachet that the magazine itself supposedly imparts on its writers (though in reality, it's highly questionable how much clout RS actually carries).

At risk of sounding naive or self-obvious, what annoys me about the show is simply how it degrades a craft that already suffers from enough image problems already. At best, the modern music journalist is seen as irrelevant in an age of insta-journalism from bloggers and message boarders. At worst, they're seen as thinly repackaged publicists, shilling for the record industry and/or the lowest common denominators in populist favor.

What's most comical about the show's very premise is that it'd be of interest to anyone to begin with. If you had told me that someone would pitch a reality show on music writing, I'd assume this was some kind of Onion parody story...perhaps I'm too inside the profession to try to see it from the outside but it just wouldn't have occurred to me that the craft would make good tv drama fodder. Most of our days are spent either: 1) transcribing, 2) writing, or 3) editing. None of this makes for very interesting visual fare.[1]

Of course, if your ultimate aim is to hobnob with celeb musicians, the show no doubt will play up that angle and in truth, going into music writing isn't a bad way to go about it. But it seems like an awfully mundane path to take just to become a glorified groupie. That's why it's hard to take any of the contestants seriously (and I suppose I should actually watch the show before passing judgement but let's just say the existing reviews are not flattering)[2] .

The thing is too: if folks are actually interested in becoming music journalists, it's kind of absurd that a tv show would be the route to take considering how relatively easy it is to get a start. Will you be interviewing Bono on your first assignment? Probably not but save for the very top of the pop/celeb echelon, it's not that hard to get to the point where you can have interview access (even if just a phoner) with any number of artists (big or small). For someone fully focused, you could get there in less time it will take this tv show to run its course.

Regardless, I know very few music writers who get into the work, let alone stay with it, simply out of a desire to interact with celebrities. This will no doubt come off sounding like an overly idealized point but ultimately, you start writing and stick with it because you actually enjoy the craft itself. That's not to say there aren't fringe benefits (though the free CDs aren't as good as they were 10 years ago) but seriously, there are lot better and less torturous ways to make a living then becoming a journalist/writer.

As a recent Economist issue noted:

"Journalism, apparently, is a “prototypically misaligned profession”, staffed by reporters who want to investigate great affairs of state but read by a public more interested in stories that are “scandalous, sensational, superficial”.

The mag was referring mostly to hard news journalism but the point is no less meaningful or applicable to people who write on culture: no one likes to spend their time writing like a star-f*cker but that's often what the market pushes us towards.

My long-winded point here is simply to note that the one thing that really makes working as a writer fun is also the most boring for anyone else to witness: the act of writing itself (which includes editing/revising). The end product might be illuminating or entertaining, but the actual act offers little for others to spectate on (Carrie Bradshaw and Doogie Howser excepted, I suppose).[3]

Last, random point: I wonder how much of a future in the biz the eventual winner is going to have, outside of Rolling Stone? Somehow, I can't see participating on the show as being a real feather in someone's resume.

---

[1] Normally, I'd insert a joke - "...unless done naked!" - except that if you actually saw most music writers nude, you'd instantly be glad that chair, desk and laptop would spare you from having to look upon the bodies of people who spend most of their time sedentary.

[2] I'm actually going to watch at least the first show, if only to see if Krishtine de Leon is as annoying as everyone says she is. From some of the reviews I've read, it'd seem like she was taking the public image of Pinoys/Pinays back to some pre-Bulosan era of "No Filipinos or Dogs Allowed." I've never met de Leon though I have read the magazine she works at, Ruckus, a small monthly on Bay Area music that is predominantly run by Filipino/Asian writers/editors. It'll be interesting to see if she's repping for all the Pinoys in the music biz or (more likely) inspiring many head slaps. I also think Krishtine is the one who thinks music journalism will be some kind of path to upward class mobility for her family...a bizarre misconception that anyone - starting with my mother - would be very quick to dispel.

[3] By the way, I know writing is built into the contest of the show itself (here's two examples). Both of these actual have decent moments but jesus christ, the whole "setting the scene" angle is taken way overboard.

---

UPDATE: First week ratings = 369,000. OOF.

I actually watched this...Krishtine wasn't nearly as bad as others made her out to be though her racial identity confusion isn't exactly a great look, especially not for other Bay Area Filipinos in the hip-hop game. I can only imagine what they're thinking right now. But the show is pretty much unwatchable. I thought the Joe Levy editorial meeting would have been an improvement but it was painful on many levels. They should have done edits in a big room with everyone present, rather than one on one. In any case, this looks rather D.O.A.

--O.W.

LETTER RE: REJECTED VANITY PLATE

Thanks to The Smoking Gun and the Freedom of Information Act, I'm worried that any letters I've ever written to government officials (hello, parking ticket appeals!) could be made public one day.

But for now, I am soaking in the glory of the below 1997 letter by Michael J. Merz to the Florida DMV.



Mr. Merz, if you Google yourself and find this post, I want you to know that your letter is full of awesomeness. I know that if I were Fred O. Dickinson, your letter would have persuaded me to change my name ... for the sake of the children.

Personally, I think your phrase "acquiring the whole amount" should be a new slang term.

Person 1: Hey, are you going on a date with your high school teacher again?
Person 2: Yes. Tonight, I hope to be acquiring the whole amount.

The Smoking Gun has more vanity plate-related letters, both regarding complaints about existing plates and letters from people whose requests were rejected. Great reading, I assure you.

--Junichi

QUESTION OF THE WEEK #88

This ... is ... CNN.

This Week's Question:

If you could permanently change your voice to resemble another person's, whose voice would you choose?

--Junichi

R.I.P. MOMOFUKU ANDO

Breakfast, Lunch, and Dinner

If you are what you eat, then I am ramen.

And I owe my entire existence to Momofuku Ando, inventor of instant ramen and founder of Nissin Food Products Co., who just died of a heart attack at the non-instant age of 96.

As the inventor of Cup Noodle, Ando deserves credit for fueling students in higher education across the globe. His legacy also includes the Momofuku Ando Instant Ramen Museum in Osaka, Japan.

The picture of Ando, below, leaves no doubt that the man had flavor, and not just Oriental flavor.

--Junichi

"U R NOT ONE OF US," SAYS TOYS 'R' US

Denied 'R' US Winners!

In a promotional sweepstakes, Toys 'R' Us decided to award a $25,000 United States savings bond to the first American baby born in 2007. Initially, the award went to Yuki Lin, an American citizen, after she was born at the stroke of midnight and was selected from a tie-breaking drawing.

But then Toys 'R' Us changed its mind because Yuki's parents, who are both 22-year-old restaurant workers in New York, are not legal residents. Many, including myself, are asking: when the prize goes to the baby, why should her eligibility depend on the immigration status of her mother?

Update: After all the negative publicity, Toys "R" Us reversed its decision again and has awarded $25,000 to each of the three babies, including Yuki.

Please remove the following graphic from your webpages:

--Junichi

DO SPERM DONORS HAVE RIGHTS?

Spunk Rockers

The Kansas Supreme Court is about to decide an interesting case involving the parental rights of sperm donors.

Here are the basic facts of the case:

1. Single woman is inseminated with the sperm of a friend and gives birth to twins.
   
2. Mom says she doesn't want to share parenting; sperminator sues to establish paternity.
   
3. Sperminator loses at trial because Kansas law says that a sperm donor, via artificial insemination, is not the legal father of the child unless the donor and mother agree to it in writing.

For the most part, my sympathies lie with the mother. I don't think sperm donors, anonymous or otherwise, should have any parental rights.

It seems especially wrong when imagining two lesbians deciding to raise a family and suddenly being forced to share their child with their male friend who provided the man chowder and who now wants to be known as Daddy.

On the other hand, I don't think sperm donors should have any parental obligations, either. (One court in Pennsylvania forced a mother's sperm donor friend to pay child support.)

Even if the court agrees with me, there would be something unsettling about it. If the court sides with the mother, it would create a somewhat bizarre rule where a man's paternity rights and obligations solely depend on whether the sperm is donated artificially or through the "old-fashioned way." Paternal rights literally come down to a game of sexual tag between a woman's vagina and a man's penis.

In other words,

• Male stranger has casual sex with woman during a liquor-fueled one-night stand at a rave --> man has paternity rights and 18 years of child support obligations.

• Man and woman, who aren't married but have known each other for 20 years, decide to raise a child together (but don't put in writing) and man agrees to donate sperm via artificial insemination --> man has no rights and no child support obligations.
  

Seems like a rather strange outcome.

--Junichi

LET THE PROFILING BEGIN

Future High Times coverboy

According to today's NY Times, the National Center for Health Statistics just dropped some startling stats:

Today ... the fastest-growing population of drug abusers is white, middle-aged Americans. This is a powerful mainstream constituency, and unlike with teenagers or urban minorities, it is hard for the government or the news media to present these drug users as a grave threat to the nation.

Among Americans in their 40s and 50s, deaths from illicit-drug overdoses have risen by 800 percent since 1980, including 300 percent in the last decade. In 2004, American hospital emergency rooms treated 400,000 patients between the ages 35 and 64 for abusing heroin, cocaine, methamphetamine, marijuana, hallucinogens and “club drugs” like ecstasy.

Equally surprising, graying baby boomers have become America’s fastest-growing crime scourge. The F.B.I. reports that last year the number of Americans over the age of 40 arrested for violent and property felonies rose to 420,000, up from 170,000 in 1980. Arrests for drug offenses among those over 40 rose to 360,000 last year, up from 22,000 in 1980. The Bureau of Justice Statistics found that 440,000 Americans ages 40 and older were incarcerated in 2005, triple the number in 1990.

Suddenly, our nation's tragic War on Drugs sounds just a tiny bit fun.

I trust that next season of The Wire will take place in a gated community in the Hamptons.

--Junichi

HEY, I'M AN UNCLE NOW

8 lbs, 2 oz.

My nephew, Tamer, was born in dramatic fashion on New Year's Day.

His parents missed a juicy 2006 tax deduction by a few hours.


P.S. For those who have been curious about my own plans for children, I can assure you this: Dima and I aren't planning to bring a child into this world ... so long as President Bush is in office. 100% serious. Of course, we're counting on Jeb not to run for president in 2008.

--Junichi

QUESTION OF THE WEEK #87

Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot!

This Week's Question:

You are 65 years-old. You have one 30 year-old daughter, who has a husband and two young children. Her husband is a generally kind man, although he has been known to be verbally abusive on occasion when his temper flares up. One day, while walking into your daughter’s home, you see her shoot her husband dead during a heated argument. You are the only witness.

As your daughter's actions were done intentionally and with malice, she will likely face at least twenty years in prison, especially if you testify honestly as to what you witnessed. (Keep in mind there's no parent-child privilege, so you will be forced to testify.)

Which of the following options are you most likely to do?

(A) Immediately call the police and truthfully testify against your daughter

(B) Collaborate with your daughter upon a story that makes it sound more like self-defense, before calling the police

(C) Agree to take the rap for the crime yourself, knowing there's a good chance the police will believe you

(D) Hide the body

--Junichi

A SAVAGE WAY TO END A YEAR

Fox News comes through with another Pulitzer-worthy headline

I can't decide which is worse:

(A) The primitive and pointless execution of Saddam Hussein, the former leader of a sovereign nation whom we, the United States, overthrew in violation of international law, and whom the puppet Iraqi government officially canonized as a martyr to hundreds of thousands, and whose corpse is now a symbol of our bloody hands and decaying image abroad, where the majority abhors our illegal invasion, opposes the death penalty, and considers George W. Bush to be just as guilty for crimes against humanity, all of which exponentially invites further attacks on Iraqi and US leaders,

or

(B) The fact that the execution can be viewed on YouTube.

I'm kinda leaning towards (B).

A few hours before 2007 began, I couldn't help but watch Saddam being executed on Google video. I'm not sure why I checked out the clip, nor am I clear on why such a video was (a) taken and (b) released to the world. But I am sure that it was a horrible way to spend the last few hours of 2006. And now I know how to say "Go to hell" in Arabic.

I am no fan of Saddam's and I have no doubt of his horrendous crimes against humanity. But I'm happy to go on record as being completely horrified by this rushed hanging. At the very least, I wish they kept Saddam alive to put him on trial for other crimes and potentially get more information out of him as to his co-conspirators.

This leads me to a related question: Why are so many left-wing bloggers, who oppose capital punishment, silent about Saddam's execution?

Oh, and um, this is kind of awkward, but, uh, Happy New Year!

--Junichi