CAN'T BLAME HIP-HOP ON THIS ONE (OR CAN YOU?)

From the NY Times
April 24, 2007
CBS Radio Show Hosts Suspended After Prank Call
By JACQUES STEINBERG

CBS Radio suspended two hosts from an FM station in New York City today after an Asian-American advocacy organization complained about the broadcast of a six-minute prank phone call to a Chinese restaurant that was peppered with ethnic and sexual slurs.

The call was first played on “The Dog House With JV and Elvis,” a midmorning show on WFNY, on April 5, the day after Don Imus made his comment about the Rutgers women’s basketball team on WFAN, another CBS-owned station. The call was then replayed on “The Dog House” on Thursday, a week after Mr. Imus was fired by CBS Radio.

In the skit, a series of apparently unsuspecting employees of a Chinese restaurant are berated by a caller who tells one woman he would like to “come to your restaurant” to see her naked, especially a part of her body he refers to as “hot, Asian, spicy.” The caller also attempts to order “flied lice,” brags of his prowess in kung fu and repeatedly curses at several employees.

In a statement on Sunday, the four New York-area chapters of the Organization of Chinese Americans, an advocacy group, demanded an apology from the show’s two hosts and from CBS Radio, and called for the firing of the hosts and their producer.

In an interview today before the suspensions were announced, Vicki Shu Smolin, president of the organization’s New York City chapter, said she was mystified that CBS would allow the call to be broadcast in the first place and then would permit it to be replayed in the aftermath of the Imus incident. (“The Dog House” has been waging a broad campaign in support of Mr. Imus both on the show and on its Web site.)

“I just see plain ignorance in the CBS management — of the community, of who we are, of what we’re all about,” Ms. Shu Smolin said. “If they don’t fire the D.J.’s, it will be a double standard.”

She promised to rip a page from the playbook of the Rev. Al Sharpton, who led the charge for Mr. Imus’s dismissal, by staging protests of CBS Radio and boycotting advertisers on WFNY.

“They don’t think they’re going to get any backlash from the Asian-American community,” she said. “They’re definitely wrong.”

In an e-mail message sent this afternoon, a spokeswoman for CBS Radio, Karen Mateo, said that the two hosts, Jeff Vandergrift (JV) and Dan Lay (Elvis), had been suspended “without pay until further notice.” Mr. Vandergrift, Ms. Mateo said, had apologized on today’s show. The show, which began on WFNY (92.3 FM) in January 2006, can be heard outside the New York City market only via the Internet.

Ms. Shu Smolin said she first learned of the “Dog House” broadcast on Saturday, in an article published by Ming Pao, a Chinese-language daily newspaper in New York. She said her organization had since sent e-mail messages to the general manager and program director of WFNY voicing its concerns, but had to resort to regular mail to reach Leslie Moonves, the president and chief executive of CBS.

“I can’t get any contact info on him,” she said.

It was, she acknowledged, an indication that her organization was not yet as media savvy as Mr. Sharpton’s.

--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.

MY LIFE DISORIENTED: GET, UM, ORIENTED

on the third day of xmas, PBS gave to we...three beckys,
two azns and a goth dude without a goatee

For the first time since Margaret Cho's ill-fated All American Girl, there's an Asian American TV series in potential play: My Life Disoriented. Here's the breakdown:

"Life gets turned upside down for Kimberlee and Aimee Fung when their father decides to leave his well-paying corporate executive job in San Francisco and move the family to Bakersfield, CA. Moving in with grandparents and helping out with the family business, a massage parlor called “Touch of the Orient,” add to the remodeling of their lives. If the social pressure of starting at a new high school in the middle of the school year weren’t enough, Kimberlee and Aimee are among only a handful of Asian American kids at North High. They soon realize that every choice they make—from where to sit at lunch to what clubs to join—will determine where and if they fit in."

Some of our fave talents are involved including director Eric Byler (Charlotte Sometimes) and actor Dennis Dun (where has he been the last, you know, 15 years?) and PBS is going to give the ep its first run in the next week or so (it will be on in L.A. and S.F. on 12/26).

We haven't seen anything from this but youtube clips are here and here. We're probably just a little older than the target demographic (from the sound of it, this show sounds like My So-Called Life meets, um, uh, uh, well - this is the point, there IS no comparison with in the Asian American media world. Maybe if they're lucky enough to get picked up, Yul Kwon can guest.

--O.W.