Next on visualizAsian.com: Dale Minami, rock star of AAPI attorneys who took on Supreme Court… and won

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Attorney Dale MinamiThe next interview scheduled for Erin and my visualizAsian.com project is one close to our hearts. The free, live interview on Tuesday, August 25 at 6 PM PT (9 PM ET) will be with with Japanese American attorney Dale Minami.

Dale is a rock star within the AAPI community — in fact, the entire U.S. legal community — as the lead attorney in Korematsu v United States, the landmark case that cleared the name of Fred Korematsu, a Japanese American who resisted being sent to internment camps during WWII and was sent to prison. A 1944 U.S. Supreme Court’s decision established the constitutionality of the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II. But Dale and a team of young pro-bono lawyers took on the case and in 1983, got Korematsu’s conviction overturned.

He’s most famous for the Korematsu case, which he won on a writ of coram nobis, a legal tactic that forced the court to admit that an error of “fundamental character” had been made in Korematsu’s conviction.

Here’s a must-see video about Dale made for an award ceremony when he received the UC-Berkeley law school’s highest honor:

But Dale has been fighting for the AAPI community all his career.

He filed the first class-action lawsuit over employment by AAPIs on behalf of AAPIs with United Pilipinos for Affirmative Action v. California Blue Shield, and he helped the Spokane chapter of the JACL take on Washington State University with a class action suit to establish an Asian American Studies program. He also led a fight against UCLA over tenure that was denied an Asian American professor that revealed the layers of discrimination in the academic community. Continue reading →

If today’s media covered the Moon landing — looking back at a baby boomer’s milestone

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This is from Slate: a re-imagining of the coverage of the Moon landing on July 20, 1969 if today’s Internet- and cable-TV fueled media could have covered the event. I think it’s fabulous and funny, but I wonder if young people seeing this would go, “and your point is?”

It’s wild to think most of what we accept as part of our media diet today didn’t exist on July 20, 1969 – just three networks’ TV news operations along with their interlaced radio news operations, newspapers across the country (most independently-owned, not corporate networks) and a handful of national weekly magazines. That was all.

I was 11 when Neil Armstrong walked on the moon that late Sunday night in Northern Virginia, glued to the TV screen and agog at the fuzzy view of Neil Armstrong gingerly climbing down the steps of the Lunar Module, and then mouthing those now-cliched words, “That’s one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind.”

Wow. Am I really 40 years older now?

Here’s the scene as it was covered by the media back in the day, and seen around the world:

Next on visualizAsian: Kip Fulbeck – hapa artist, author, slam poet, professor

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Kip Fulbeck is a mixed-race artist and performer
Photo by Suzanne Bernel

Think of it as a racial mashup. We’re living in an era when the President of the United States is multiracial, and we’re changing our perspectives on ethnic identity — especially what it means to be Asian American. We’re moving beyond single cultural identification. Many of us are connected to our ethnic heritage and add the layer of American culture. Hence, I’m both Japanese American and Asian American.

In addition, the richness of mixed-race America is going to continue to have a huge impact on the U.S. in the future.

For example, the Asian American community of the future will be a multicultural tapestry with a bright thread of mixed-race Asians. In the Japanese American population, the mixed-race fabric is already very evident — since the 1970s, JAs have married outside our own community more than any other group. So we’ve been familiar with the term “hapa” for decades.

I remember when I was a kid, my mom used to call mixed-race JAs “ai noko,” which literally translates as “love child,” or maybe “hafu” (“half”), and she would say it disparagingly (sadly, she’s not PC at all). Likewise, “hapa” is a Hawai’ian term that means “partial” — and it was used originally in a derogatory way, for “hapa haole,” or “half-white.” Although I know people who are offended by the use of the word hapa, it’s become a common term for mixed-race people of all ethnicities, not just Asians. I’ve heard it used within the black and Hispanic communities.

Because of the importance of the mixed-race AAPI community, Erin and I are proud to announce our next interview for visualizAsian.com: Kip Fulbeck, an artist, author, performer, slam poet and….uh, professor! Kip’s ethnic background is Cantonese, English, Irish, and Welsh, and he’s nationally known for his exploration of mixed-race identity.

Our conversation with Kip Fulbeck will be on Tuesday, July 21 at 6 pm PT (9 pm ET). Continue reading →

Boa mashes Asian, Mexican cuisine in cross-cultural menu

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Since the fastest-growing population in the United States is mixed-race and we live in an increasingly global and multicultural world, it makes perfect sense that a restaurant like Boa on West 32nd would open, and serve a mashup of Mexican and various Asian cuisines.

Erin and I got to sample some of Boa’s cooking recently, when we were asked by Asian Avenue magazine to write up one of their ‘Restaurant Peek” features on the eatery. We met photographer ace Brandon Iwamoto there and tasted the food and spoke with the owners on an afternoon interrupted by a tornado warning and a twister curling down from the sky in the neighborhood (it never touched down).

Inside, the restaurant reflected none of the dark fury of the weather outside (except when the entire staff and all the customers ran out in the street to gape at the funnel cloud).

The small, comfy eatery is located in the heart of the bustling, hip Highlands business district off 32nd and Lowell, and welcomes passersby who look puzzled at the combination of Asian and Latin foods. When they give it a try, say the co-owners and chefs, Julie Villafana and Braydon Wong, they like it. Continue reading →

The Men from U.N.C.L.E. — the 1960s’ top TV spies

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Robert Vaughn as Napoleon Solo and David McCallum as Illya Kuryakin were the top TV spies in the 1960s.Last year I received one of the coolest gifts ever — a 41-DVD boxed set of “The Man from U.N.C.L.E.,” the TV spy series that ran from 1964-’68. The set came in a package that looks like a secret agent’s briefcase, and includes all 105 episodes of the program, plus a ton of extras such as documentaries and commentary by the show’s stars, Robert Vaughn and David McCallum.

I’m still sifting through this pop-culture treasure chest, and having a blast. The series was my favorite TV show from my childhood — I had a bunch of toys related to the show, and I read and collected books, gadgets, magazines — anything to do with U.N.C.L.E.

I’ve been struck by a few observations about the show, in light of 40 years of being a fan, and then suddenly being able to see every episode on DVD.

First (and relevant to this blog), I’m surprised at how many Asian Americans were cast in the show as guest stars. There were some episodes set in Asia, like one that takes place in Japan, and that’s kinda hokey since all the sets and scenes are actually shot in Hollywood. But in many episodes, the requisite woman who’s an innocent bystander but gets dragged into the plot as a sidekick is Asian American, and I mean Asian American as in, no phony accents. They’re Asian American actors cast in American roles, which is nice.

Second, they had some big name guest stars. I just watched a goofy one from the third season (of the four, the third was the one where the show got silly, comedic and unbelievable) titled “The Hot Number” that featured Sonny and Cher. Cher was a snooty fashion model (not a stretch) and Sonny was a bumbling fashion designer. The episode also featured Sonny and Cher’s music, which was a neat cross-marketing gimmick.

Third, a lot of the episodes are slight to the point of being anemic. The story lines are sometimes clunky and the writing often forced. And little of the acting, even from Vaughn and McCallum, is Brandoesque. It’s more like Shatneresque.

But then, the artifice is actually part of the charm of “The Man from U.N.C.L.E.” Continue reading →