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September 27, 2006

Iva_Toguri_mug_shotIva Toguri D'Aquino died Sept. 26, 2006 at age 90, in Chicago. You might not know her, or remember her today, but she was a victim of circumstance who was once one of the most hated women in the United States. You might not know her, but you might know her nickname: Tokyo Rose.
August 18, 2006

How sad that Andrew Young, a man I (and many others) have admired and thought of as a civil rights leader, reveals that deep-down inside he harbors racist feelings toward other minority communities. The former Mayor of Atlanta and U.S. representative to the U.N. is African American.
August 5, 2006

The Indian community of Edison, a town in northern New Jersey, is split over racial boundaries. This article ran in the Newark Star-Ledger the other day, about a protest mounted by the growing Indian community in Edison over an alleged police abuse of an Indian man, and a counter-protest by non-Indians.
July 21, 2006

Here's a story published June 20 from the Toledo Blade in Ohio about a Tower 98.3 DJ "apologizing" for an on-air stunt that sparked protests from Asian Americans. Lucas, a night-time DJ, made a series of mocking calls to Asian-owned businesses while on the air, including a Japanese restaurant where he reportedly told the person at the restaurant, who had an accent, “me love you long time,” “ching, chong chung,” and “Me speakee no English.” He also called a Chinese Restaurant in May, and when the person on the other end spoke perfect English, made comments on the air that a white person must be working in the restaurant.
July 19, 2006

Ask a NinjaIs it just me? I really think "Ask a Ninja," a free video podcast that consistently ranks among the top-5 popular video podcasts on Apple's super-influential iTunes store, is dumb. Really dumb.
July 8, 2006

Yellowface afootI know, I know, I'm painting all of the radio industry with an awful broad brush. But let's face it, no one's doing this kind of stuff on TV. A year and a half ago, I wrote my (embarrassingly, most recent) Nikkei View column about Hot 97, a station in NYC, which broadcast a tasteless and racist satire making fun of dead Asians after the tsunami. But similar incidents continue, even up to this month.
February 8, 2006

The current protests throughout the world by Muslims who were offended by caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad (the cartoons caused riots in Afghanistan) that originally ran in a Danish newspaper, sparked an interesting discussion among some friends of mine, about the nature of offensive imagery and the role of the media and even of cartoonists. The most inflammatory cartoon was one of Muhammad with a bomb as part of his turban, suggesting that all Muslims are terrorists. Below are edited excerpts from the e-mail discussion.