Denver’s Bhutanese, Burmese community need your help

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It’s amazing how many coats and jackets a family can accumulate over the years, and how many are left hanging in the closet, hardly ever worn. This week, I took a bunch of coats to the Asian Pacific Development Center to be distributed to one of Denver’s newest immigrant communities, the Burmese.

The APDC is a non-profit that offers health and social services to the local Asian communities, and Erin serves its the board of directors. The APDC conducted a food and goods drive for the Burmese over the holiday season, and is still accepting donations at its three locations: 1544 Elmira Street in Aurora, 1825 York Street in Denver and 6055 Lehman Drive, Suite 103 in Colorado Springs. Last summer, the APDC helped collect donated school supplies for students from both the Burmese and another Asian immigrant community, the Bhutanese.

Because many Asian communities have been in the U.S. for two, three or even four or more generations and we’ve assimilated into American society, it’s easy to forget that there are recent immigrants from Asia who are not as fortunate as those of us from Japan, China, Taiwan, Korea and other countries, whose families came here to seek better opportunities. In the case of the Burmese, and also the Bhutanese, another recent Asian immigrant group, they’ve arrived in America as refugees, like the waves of Vietnamese, Laotians and Hmong in the 1980s and ’90s.

The Bhutanese and Burmese refugees fled an oppressive regime or have been resettled from refugee camps across the globe.

But unfortunately, once here, they’re facing more oppression: In the past year, both Bhutanese and Burmese students were singled out and attacked in the Denver area. The first attacks were reported last spring; on December 11, a group of Bhutanese students were beaten and robbed after getting off a bus and one required emergency room treatment. The Denver Police Department distributed special cell phones to Bhutanese that are set to dial 911 in case of future attacks, but the community understandably would prefer the violence just stop. In the Denver Post story following the attacks, one Bhutanese refugee said:

“If they kill me and my son, what will my daughter and wife do?” said Dambar Bhujel, father of an 18-year-old victim, who is now wary of letting his son go to school.

“At first, I was happy to come to the United States. After one year, I’m feeling very bad and I don’t want to stay longer. But we can’t go back to Bhutan and we can’t go back to Nepal,” Bhujel said. “They told us America was secure.”

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Yes, there’s racism in China and Japan

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Lou Jing with her mother on the Chinese talent show that made her a lightning rod for discussions of race in China.

I know I spend a lot of posts writing about the ongoing racism and stereotypes that Asians face in the United States. That’s my passion, and it’s important to me. But I’m also aware that racism exists all over the world. At its worst, that’s why genocide still goes on, after all. And, I’m sad to say, racism is rife in Asia, even (especially?) in Japan, the country of my birth and family roots. It’s a tribal instinct to separate people by ethnicity, and we just have to constantly work at rising above those instincts in the 21st century, when we live in a much smaller and much more intertwined world.

My mother, who was born in Japan and moved to the U.S. in the mid-1960s with my two brothers and I when my father (himself Japanese but born in Hawai’i) was transferred stateside for his federal government job, is about as old-fashioned as they come. She’s been in the U.S. for over 40 years, but she’s still FOBish (“Fresh Off the Boat”) in a lot of her values, even today. When I called my parents to announce that my first wife — who was European American — and I were going to get a divorce, her first comment wasn’t anything sympathetic. She said bluntly, “See? I told you you should marry Japanese.”

Thanks mom, for the support.

So I was saddened but not exactly surprised to follow the controversy in China over Lou Jing, the Shanghai-born college student who’s shown in the video above, singing on “Go! Oriental Angel,” China’s version of “American Idol.” Lou (pronounced “LOH”) is mixed-race. Her mother is Chinese and her father, whom she’s never met, was African American. She’s a beautiful young woman, and a talented singer (her favorite performer is Beyonce). That’s a picture of Lou with her mother on the TV show, above.

But she’s such an unusual sight in China that the TV show labeled her “Black Pearl” and “Chocolate Girl,” and the media picked up on her inclusion in the show and made her a national racial sideshow. In a cultural switch from the “You speak such good English” line that Asian Americans get in the U.S., she’s grown up hearing people ask how she can speak such good Chinese. “Because I’m Chinese” is her answer, of course.

Following her appearances on the TV show, the Chinese blogosphere became filled with hateful comments aimed at both mother and daughter, venting outrage that her mother would have sex with a black man and calling Lou all manner of names and telling her to leave China (she will if she gets her wish for post-graduate study in the U.S.).

There are a lot of different ethnic groups in China, and they don’t all get along, as witnessed by the recent violence between ethnic Uighurs and Han in western China. But the majority of Chinese — 90% — are descended from the Han race. Although some Chinese are tolerant, many apparently are not.

CNN has a good video report with accompanying text about the racial issues that Lou Jing has sparked in China. Here’s a video of Lou performing on “Go! Oriental Angel”: Continue reading →

Tak Toyoshima publishes “Secret Asian Man” comic strips in new book, “The Daily Days”

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Secret Asian Man: The Daily Days by Tak Toyoshima

Tak Toyoshima is a pioneer. He’s been publishing “Secret Asian Man,” a smart, funny Asian American comic strip, since 1999 in various Asian American and Japanese American newspapers and websites. He’s a visual AAPI blogger, tackling issues of the day, racial stereotypes, friendships, the foibles of family life and of course, Asian American Pacific Islander identity.

SAM is an autobiographical reflection of Toyoshima. In fact, the main character, Sam, is, according to the cast of characters rundown in the book,”an aspiring cartoonist who works as an art director at his local alternative newsweekly. He is an incurable dreamer who is fascinated by what makes us all tick.”

The Boston-based artist has been the art director of a alternative newspaper, the Weekly Dig, the whole time that he’s been building a following for SAM. A couple of years ago, SAM was picked by by United Media, which syndicated the strip in mainstream newspapers across the country. That was great for Tak, because he was able to reach a much wider, mainstream audience with his witty, observant social jabs.

Earlier this fall, though, Toyoshima parted ways with United Media to concentrate on promoting SAM once again through AAPI channels and with a new, full-color comic every Sunday on his own website.

And now, he’s collected every strip syndicated by United Media into his first book, “Secret Asian Man: The Daily Days,” which is available now for pre-order from Amazon.com. I ordered my copy — be the first one on your block to have a copy! Continue reading →

Video of “racist HP computers” reinforces race in America is a black and white issue

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Here’s a video that’s gone viral and forced Hewlett-Packard to respond quickly to try and minimize any damage to its brand from people who think that HP is manufacturing racist computers. Like most people who see this video, which pretty much proves that HP computers’ wiz-bang video tracking-facial recognition feature can’t distinguish dark-skinned faces, I’m both amused and appalled.

The video, which was shot by two employees of a computer or electronics store (it’s never mentioned and you can’t tell from the background, though it seems to have been made at work), a white woman and a black man, who show that the software will follow a white person’s face while she moves from side to side and back and forth, but not a black person.

HP’s response was posted Sunday, Dec. 13.

Some of you may have seen or heard of a YouTube video in which the facial-tracking software didn’t work for a customer. We thank Desi, and the people who have seen and commented on his video, for bringing this subject to our attention.

We are working with our partners to learn more. The technology we use is built on standard algorithms that measure the difference in intensity of contrast between the eyes and the upper cheek and nose. We believe that the camera might have difficulty “seeing” contrast in conditions where there is insufficient foreground lighting.

HP deserves some kudos for dealing with the issue quickly, and for acknowledging the two who made the video. And the company’s reasoning for the technical flaw is believable — the tests below conducted by Laptop Magazine support the theory that darker complexions need better lighting for the tracking feature to work. But As Ken Wheaton asks in an AdAge blog:

That said, HOW DOES THIS HAPPEN?!? Continue reading →

“Carnival China Style” U.S. tour showcases old and new culture from all over China

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These dancers are just paert of the 70-person touring troupe for "Carnival China Style" that will perform in Denver on Jan. 13, 2010.

UPDATE: THIS EVENT IS NOW FREE! (Ticketmaster processing charges still apply)

It probably irks Chinese people to no end that their centuries of culture is often crammed into just a couple of off-hand images: Bruce Lee and martial arts, Chairman Mao holding up his Little Red Book, Jackie Chan and martial arts, the traditionalist flash of a Beijing Opera performer in full makeup and drag, Jet Li and martial arts. Oh, and martial arts of any kind, whether or not it’s from China. The mainstream American consciousness seems to be oblivious to the depth and richness of Chinese culture, and to its vast variety.

But Chinese culture spans a huge area and a long timeline. Remember, China is so big and diverse that it even has seven separate groups of language dialects. A Chinese person from Beijing may not be able to understand someone from Hong Kong, because Mandarin is spoken in Beijing and Cantonese in Hong Kong.

The country’s government has been on an international campaign since before last year’s Beijing Olympics to educate the world about all of China. Because the country’s taking over the world stage as a economic power (by most accounts, it’ll eclipse Japan as the world’s second-largest economy in 2010, second only to the U.S.), it’s been keen to promote cultural exchanges and send performers halfway around the world. You can expect this public-relations campaign to continue through at least next year’s 2010 World Expo, which will be held in Shanghai.

The ongoing effort to showcase China’s riches is great for those of us who are interested in the breadth of its culture.

Here in Denver we have a rare opportunity to catch a spectacle of an event, “Carnival China Style,” that will bring 70 performers and support staff from all over China to the U.S. and Canada starting after the new year. A Denver stop’s been announced for Wed. Jan. 13 at 7 pm at the Ellie Caulkins Opera House, the classy auditorium at the Denver Center for the Performing Arts.

Other stops on the tour include Toronto, Ottawa, Chicago, St. Paul, Denver, San Francisco, Sacramento, Reno, Seattle and other cities. President Obama enjoyed some of the performers traveling in this troupe during his recent visit to China.

The evening of entertainment is based on a Chinese traditional festival format and it’ll highlight the long history, grace, beauty, populism, diversity and folk nature of Chinese culture. The evening won’t just be traditional dance and music, either.

There’s a segment featuring Wang Feng, a popular rock star in China, and even the woman who hold the Guinness World Record for twirling the most hula hoops at once. Who knew that’s a Chinese cultural heritage?

Here are some descriptions from the event’s press release: Continue reading →