Mee Moua named as new president & executive director of Asian American Justice Center

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Minnesota state senator Mee Moua, the highest serving Hmong American politician, speaks at a rally on Oct. 30, 2008 in support of Barack Obama, Al Franken and other Minnesota Democratic candidates. Photo by Calebrw, from Wikipedia Cool news this morning from the Asian American Justice Center, the DC-based AAPI civil rights and social justice organization, that it’s named Mee Moua as its new president and executive director.

Moua, a former Minnesota state senator who was the first Hmong American to ever be elected to public office in the U.S., is a terrific choice. She takes over for Karen Narasaki, who helmed the organization for 20 years before stepping down last summer. Moua is an inspirational and thoughtful leader and speaker, who understands her status as a pioneering role model for Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders in general, and the Hmong community in particular.

I had the honor of meeting Moua and hearing her speak several times.

The first time was during an Asian American Journalists Association convention held in Minneapolis; I was a mentor to student journalists who visited Moua in her statehouse office for an interview. She was gracious and enightening and the young journalists left in awe of her.

The second was when she spoke to a JACL Youth Conference via video. She apologized for not making it to the conference in person as planned (a last-minute legislative battle kept her in Minnesota), but told her inspiring personal story and urged the youth of JACL to strive for the best in themselves and in their country.

The third time was during the 2008 Democratic National Convention in Denver — the one where Barack Obama was named the presidential candidate for the fall elections. She fired up the crowd at a Democratic National Committee’s AAPI Caucus meeting (you can see a two-part video of Moua speaking to supporters after her speech, below).

And most recently, Erin and I had the pleasure of having a great, free-wheeling conversation with her for one of our early visualizAsian.com shows (you can hear an audio file of the one-hour show here).

Moua is clearly committed to empowering Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders; the AAJC is the perfect place for her leadership.
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JANM names new CEO, G.W. Kimura

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G.W. Kimura, new CEO of JANMThe Japanese American National Museum today announced it’s named a new Chief Executive Officer, G.W. “Greg” Kimura, to lead the Los Angeles-based institution. Kimura is a hapa (mixed race) fourth-generation Japanese American from Alaska, whose most recent position was as the head of the Alaska Humanities Forum, the state’s humanities council. He seems to have done a terrific job there, and doubled the AHF’s revenues during his tenure.

Kimura’s also a well-traveled guy — I suppose most Alaskans are, because honestly, who can stay put in Alaska all your life? (Joke. Besides, the state gives residents money every year that can be spent on travel to warmer climes.) He has a Masters in Divinity from Harvard and a Ph.D. in philosophy of religion from Cambridge, and he’s now leaving the snows of the north to settle in the sunny City of the Angels.

I’m looking forward to how he moves JANM forward into the future. Like many museums, JANM focuses a lot on the past — and in the case of Japanese Americans, why not? The Internment experience during World War II is the defining perod for many JA families.

But JANM in recet years has also been really smart about hosting forward-looking exhibits featuring artists such as Hapa activist Kip Fulbeck (whose exhibit moved Kimura when he saw it during a visit to the lower 48), rocker/visual artist Mike Shinoda of Linkin Park, and partnering with hip Asian American culture mag Giant Robot.

He’s a perfect person to lead the museum, because as a hapa younsei, he’s a reflection of the ever-evolving Japanese American community. I bet he’ll bring fresh ideas and renewed energy to JANM.

I’d lay odds that Kimura, with his academic background in religion and sprituality, at some point has JANM delve into the religious history of JAs, which mostly seems to come down to Shinran Buddhist and UNited Methodist churches. But I expect he’ll bring a new vitality and energy to the museum, which is one of my favorite places to go whenever I’m in LA (they have the coolest gift shop, and they’ve sold a lot of copies of my book “Being Japanese American“… full disclosure!).

Here’s the full press release from JANM:
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Tebow-mania gets Denver Filipinos attention in Philippines press

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The Broncos' Tim Tebow (Photo by Jeffrey Beall)The glow of Tebow-mania will fade as the Broncos head into the off-season, but the quarterback’s remarkable run with the team put the spotlight light on Denver’s Filipino community before the season’s end.

Tebow has a deep connection to the Philippines: he was born there to missionary parents, and he funds healthcare organizations there with his Tebow Foundation. NBC Sports ran a blog post the day of the New England game about how no one in his hometown of Makati City had heard of the NFL star. But the Philippine Daily Inquirer, a national daily paper, ran a story the same morning, “Colorado Fil-Ams enthralled by Tebow time” that noted Tebow’s roots and tracked down members of Denver’s thriving Filipino community to get their take on the Tebow phenom.

Two members of the Filipino American Community of Colorado were among the Broncos fans quoted in the story:

‘Kuya Tim’s a source of pride for Colorado Filipinos,’ says Fran Campbell, past president of the Filipino American Community of Colorado now headed by her father, Silvino Simsiman from Cabugao, Ilocos Sur.

Fran said Broncos fans come up and talk to her and other Fil-Am leaders about Tebow and his Philippine connection. ‘We have the opportunity to share our culture in a way that we’ve not been able to before,’ she exulted.

‘His (Tebow’s) ability to inspire not only his team, but the communities surrounding the Broncos has given us all something to strive for,’ said Bernadette Niblo, spokeswoman for the FACC. ‘His faith is strong. As Filipinos in Colorado, we connect with that and are honored to consider him one of our own.’

Maybe Tebow will visit the FACC, which has its headquarters in Edgewater, at its annual Philippines Festival this June and cement a local link to his Filipino roots…

(This is a cross-post from HuffingtonPost Denver.)

Ron Paul supporter posts online ad attacking Jon Huntsman for “Chinese values”

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This is a disgusting bit of race-baiting. Someone claiming to support Ron Paul’s bid for the GOP presidential nomination has posted an attack ad against Jon Huntsman — who frankly isn’t one of the top contenders — that plays up Huntsman’s connections to China.

It begins with an ominous challenge asking whether the candidate represents “American values or Chinese?” Then it show him speaking Mandarin and asks “Weak on China? Wonder why?” before showing Huntsman with his adopted Chinese daughter.

That’s a stupid stretch for even an ignorant person, that a presidential candidate would secretly support the People’s Republic of China because he has an adopted Chinese daughter. The next clip shows Huntsman, a Mormon businessman and former governor of Utah as well as Barack Obama’s ambassador to China (he quit the post in April to run for president), holding his other adopted daughter, who is from India.

The video ends with an icky Photoshopped image of Huntsman’s face superimposed on a portrait of Chairman Mao Tse-Tung.

The video preys on peoples’ irrational and race-based fears of the Chinese (and, by projection, all Asians), a theme that’s unforunately been a part of American culture since the earliest days of Chinese immigration and the rise of enduring stereotypes such as the evil Fu Manchu and “Dragon Lady,” to the widely parodied 2010 TV ad featuring an evil Chinese Professor chortling about the fall of the United States because of wasteful government spending.

The Huffington Post has Huntsman’s response:
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Cooking Japanese food with my mom: Okara and Tempura

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Mom cooking kakiage tempura

My mom doesn’t cook as much as she used to. She used to cook everything — mostly Japanese food of course. She even used to make her own tofu. After my dad passed away in the early ’90s she cooked for herself for years, making large portions of dishes to freeze and re-heat as meals for days. But lately she finds cooking “mendokusai,” which translates to “bothersome but I like “pain in the butt.”

She was always a great cook and of the three boys in the family, I was the one who absorbed a lot of her cooking by watching and noticing how everything tasted. I miss a lot of the dishes she used to make when I was a kid — many of them, like steamed egg custard (Chawan Mushi), which is a rarity even in many Japanese restaurants. So Erin and I have been concerned since she stopped cooking a lot of her signature dishes, and figured we better get some lessons now while we can.

Food is the one immutable bridge back to root cultures for any descendants of immigrants in this country — which means most of us. And even though it might be easier to go to a Japanese restaurant to chow down on traditional foods, I’m glad we’re holding onto our culinary heritage by learning to cook Japanese dishes too.

The two dishes we wanted to cook with my mom last week were Okara and Tempura, done the way she’s always made them.
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