Fair Housing: Do Asian Americans Matter At All?

I have been tracking down and getting up to speed on some civil rights issues, fair housing being one of them. The Leadership Conference on Civil Rights and the National Commission on Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity recently released a pretty extensive report looking at Fair Housing in the new millennium. The Fair Housing Act (FHA) was passed in the late 60s as one in a group of landmark laws that ensured the rights of those most likely to be discriminated against in a range of issues.

The FHA targeted landlords and others with the power of allowing or denying the right of people to rent or buy housing, outlining the criteria that may not be considered in deciding whether someone could rent or buy from you. The FHA itself outlines race, color, national origin, religion, sex, family status, disability, and age, among other things.

State and local acts have added to this, now including sexual orientation, gender and gender identity, source of income (for example, housing vouchers), and a number of other criteria that cannot be used to discriminate against people seeking housing. However, the report painted a fairly grim picture about where things are at with enforcement and gives a road map about where things could go with the inevitable reorganization expected when the new administration comes to DC.

There are some good recommendations there, however, looking at this report was quite sobering: there's only one mention of Asian Americans, and it's basically as a obligatory mention of all communities of color (it's also the only time that Native communities are mentioned). While there are some pieces about the impact of poor fair housing enforcement on immigrants, it is clear that they are talking about Latinos, and the priorities focus on issues central to Latino communities. While I don't question that these problems in equitable access to housing must be addressed, I'm very worried about the lack of concern or mention of Asian American/immigrant communities.

Hell - even Clint Eastwood's new movie (Gran Turino), which I haven't seen, seems to marginally deal with issues of Asian immigrants and housing better than this report. Clint Fucking Eastwood. So where is the outrage, or the addendum from the Asian American community? Where are the pieces that talk about the specific hurdles faced by many of these communities, which are pretty well documented by Fair Housing testers around the nation that actually include Asian Americans in their work?

I haven't seen anything at all, and I'm still waiting. I guess it begs the question of who should be looking at these issues? It's a civil rights issue, but I haven't seen the Asian American Justice Center, or really any of its three affiliates (LA, San Fran, and Chicago, though the Asian Law Caucus has done housing work in the Bay Area for a long time) deal with this issue at all. AALDEF seems to have just hired a housing attorney in NYC, so there's not much there either.

And that brings us to the National Coalition for Asian Pacific American Community Development (National CAPACD). They were formed by a group of local Asian CDCs around the nation who thought we needed a national organization to push for policy change in the National Capital and support local efforts around the nation. But if we all agree that affordable housing falls generally into the "community development" universe, do tenants' rights?

Because aren't many CDCs housing developers? And doesn't that make them. in effect. landlords? And isn't that kind of in conflict with tenants' rights? So then where do they fit in when it comes to fair housing work? And isn't it just a little odd that there's no group out there that really claims fair housing advocacy to be part of what they do on behalf of Asian American communities, when there are documented studies that show that landlords in places as diverse and "accepting" as NYC and the Bay Area are screening potential renters by their accents, last names, and purported/assumed religious background, with Arab Americans, Muslims, and some other South Asians getting the short end of the stick most often.

Family status (and the relation between members of a "family") are touchstones for the Latino community, and this is very true for Asian immigrants too. They're basically saying not just that 10 people in a 2 bedroom is unacceptable, which is hard to argue with, but that even if there are only 3 or 4 people in that apartment, they have to have a very specific relationship, and grandma's gotta go. That's problematic for extended family connections that many Asian immigrants recognize, and allow for all kinds of crazy landlord shenanigans.

But the heart of this post, and my inquiry, is still: who out there gives a shit about Asian Americans and fair housing? And who is raising those issues in the public sphere? And why aren't we holding the groups who say they give a shit about our civil and housing rights accountable?

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I am So Sick of Reminding "Pan-Asian" Groups to Remember Desis

This is a rant. I have been working in Asian American spaces for more than 15 years. I have had issues with being tokenized, marginalized, the "only one of my kind" (i.e. desi) in some places, and being stuck in the constant educating role when I'm in a positive mood about the place and conflicted history of South Asians in Asian American movements. Usually I just take that as the lumps that come with being in this weird space. But sometimes things get to me.

In the beginning, there just weren't a lot of desi folks working in Asian American spaces. I've written about how many of the people I came up with or learned from cut their teeth in "pan-Asian" organizations on the East Coast, but I don't know if that's the same on the West Coast (but it's interesting that there aren't very many strong South Asian community groups on the West Coast). Then we created our own spaces, and there have always been weird conflicts around turf, resources, and inclusion. South Asians often feel like our own spaces are important because it's hard to reach our communities - and pan-ethnic/national/lingual/cultural coalitions even between different South Asian communities are a new concept to begin with.

But that doesn't mean that in the interest of certain coalitions, and particularly in the places where community issues and interests intersect, that we shouldn't work more collaboratively and learn from one another. There's no need (and the opportunity for this has kind of passed at this point) for "pan-Asian" groups to try to co-opt or subsume South Asian groups, but there are a lot of places where we could be working together. Trust me, I fault a lot of South Asians for not thinking about possible ways to reduce inefficiency and work strategically with allies in the "pan-Asian" context.

But I'm so sick of groups, particularly those on the West Coast, though we have our share on the East Coast and in DC, who take up the space as "pan-Asian" but never do anything significant with South Asian communities. They get the funding, they shape the pan-community's stories in the media and to the funders, and they shape the little space that all APAs get on any legislative or policy agendas. 

Most groups still don't have any South Asian staff in senior level positions, and few even in entry positions. They don't understand the complexities of the communities at all and are not culturally sensitive or understanding in any way (i.e. getting veggie food at many APA events is still a huge hardship, and no one understands various desi holidays). But because these groups are larger, they get first crack at the crumbs thrown down from funders, and they don't have to change their ways to better incorporate the desi communities issues. That leaves even less for South Asian groups, many of whom still feel betrayed by "pan-Asian" groups after September 11th, when they all looked the other way as our communities were targeted and became public enemy #1.

Motherfuckers, we are a full 25% of the community population and growth numbers that you use to get your funding. Stand up or get out of the way. Your relevance was always somewhat questionable, particularly on a national policy level, but now you're just pissing me off. And you know, the academy, the so-called API Progressive/Left Movement, and the Asian American media all perpetuate this. I read the AA Movement Zine online, and there are so few articles on the South Asian American left movement that it's not even worth mentioning it and I may just read SAMAR instead.

This whole thing was precipitated when I read this article in New America Media about possible APA cabinet/presidential appointments. The dude doesn't even mention one South Asian, and the only mention of the community at all is through a quote from Dale Minami. What the fuck? Can't this writer even ask a follow-up question like "who are you talking about?"

Arghhhhhhh. End of rant.

For now.

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The Abuse of APA Agencies by Mainstream Service Groups

Stop me if you've heard this one before. Mainstream service organization that's been around for a long time always gets a big chunk of money to work with a large subset of the population - such as children in the City or seniors in the County. Said organization does not have bilingual staff, usually at all, though there are now more Spanish-speaking white folks around, particularly in legal service organizations.

But regardless, they just don't have bilingual staff, and they use LanguageLine or that old AT&T service to call in people with the language ability (but who may not be local, or have any knowledge about the subject matter at all - a critical need in health and legal service provision, let alone mental health). But of course, their actual mandate is to serve all people, often regardless of immigration status, who fit into their slice of the population (women, seniors, children, whatever).

So what happens? Often, they only do one or two outreach events a year in the APA community, in particular. They use community organizations instead of other spaces like libraries because they have absolutely no way of reaching out themselves (and many traditional legal service organizations don't outreach much at all anyway). And here's the kicker: they don't have the bilingual staff and don't hire interpreters to effectively communicate with the community members. For some reason, that's not important enough for these people, and they just don't get it.

These organizations end up asking (i.e. telling) the community-based groups to do last-minute translations and interpretations. You know the groups - those that are hanging on with bare bones budgets, in spaces that are too small, staff that is underpaid, directors who are often first generation and sometimes not the best managers, but groups that the communities trust and that have been there for their community day in and day out.

This is totally unacceptable. Asian American community organizations should be supported to work directly in their own communities - it makes sense in larger cities to have larger, mainstream service organizations that can take care of common problems, and I feel strongly that they should work with all communities, but they have to step up and integrate language and cultural competence across the board - from their staffing to their processes and expectations of clients. Until that happens, it ever will, there is a critical need that organizations serving immigrants fulfill.

Some Asian American community organizations can work with individuals in a number of different languages, which is still better than the mainstream organizations, but the established groups actually have other resources for the smaller language communities (like Ilocano or Thai) that the mainstream groups cannot even begin to understand. But our groups are not interpreter agencies. And our value should not be limited to just filling in the gaps that the big groups don't want to accept are their responsibility too.

This is why most of our organizations should move from just direct service provision to both advocacy within service circles for full and equal community access, and organizing within our communities so that they can create their own solutions and raise their voices against business as usual in the nonprofit-industrial complex.

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The Dawn of a New Age of Disappointments

Went to a benefit dinner tonight for a group in the area, and their keynote speaker was, as I think much of the free and not-so-free world are still, running a high Obama fever. I don't begrudge him or the rest of them that. I mean, like I said, I was in the streets (or at least the bars) celebrating the victory too.

But I guess Tuesday already feels like a long time ago. And even though I'm not watching the news or following the twitter-like monitoring of P.E. Obama's (not Public Enemy, but Prez-Elect(ed) of course) every move, I feel like I've been disappointed a lot already.

I know - people will say "well, you people on the left are never satisfied. First Bush was terrible, now you get your liberal man, and you're just going to tear him apart for not being a freegan or something." Well, yeah, we can get a little critical and have issues with just celebrating once in a while. But I think I know how to celebrate real victories, and I'm not getting anything out of writing these things - not money, and no, not kicks. I want so much to believe in the hope hype.

But really, all I've been getting since Tuesday night is O-Bummers. I mean, we get built up to think change is coming, but first the Rahm Emanuel pick, which is bad news for Palestine, and bad news for a lot of other reasons as well. Now I feel like we're facing the prospect that while the vetting process for the transition team and appointees will likely knock out anyone who has even a touch of pro-Palestine leanings, possible ties to Hindu fundamentalists who say and do all kinds of things to Christians, Muslims, Dalits, and other "undesirables" in India are perfectly fine.

I hope this string of O-Bummers ends soon.  It hasn't even been a week, and I was on such a high with the rest of the country, but I feel like it could be a long and painful hangover.

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The First Signals of Business as Usual for Palestine/Israel

I wrote earlier this year about Obama's statement at AIPAC, staking out territory far right of most moderate Israelis and certainly most Palestinians in his staunch lovefest with the racist, hostile government of Israel. Well, his choice of Rahm Emanuel for Chief of Staff seals the deal: the new Administration will not step away from the failed policies of the Bush and Clinton regimes in Palestine/Israel. It will continue them.

I can continue to rail on this choice and what it seems has been a systematic staking out of the far right, far zionist positions, but I'll just link to today's Democracy Now report on some of this so you can read it directly. It will be critical for people to raise up their protest and resistance immediately, and not allow the idealogues who exist on either side of the corporate duopoly's "aisle" to dig in and spell the real end of any hope for peace in the region, or for the Palestinian people.

ALI ABUNIMAH: But I think the important thing here is not just the appointment of Emanuel, but the greater context here, which is that from the days we knew Barack Obama as a small-time politician in Illinois, I won’t tell you, and I’ve never said that he was incredibly progressive on Israel-Palestine, but he was certainly more open-minded than he is now. And what he’s done systematically throughout the campaign is to distance himself or to throw under the bus, as the term goes, any adviser or friend who was suspected of having pro-Palestinian sympathies. In other words, he has succumbed to the McCarthyite and racist campaigns that says if you associate with even very moderate Columbia University professors, for example, or take their advice, that that’s the biggest crime.

So the signal he’s sending here is that that is not going to change, that people who could give him more balanced, more objective, more realistic advice that could change the course from the disastrous Palestine-Israel policies of the Bush and Clinton administrations, that that’s not going to happen. And that should be very, very worrying, because a lot of progressive people, a lot of people in the Middle East, a lot of leaders, have pinned hopes on Obama being quite different on this issue, and I just don’t see any evidence so far that that’s going to be the case. And it worries me that people will stay silent, rather than putting on the table now and loudly the demands for a more balanced, more objective, more fair policy that could bring peace for Palestinians and Israelis.

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A New Day

So he won it after all. I was in DC the night everything was declared, at a Blue Scholar show in fact, and first off, it was amazing to be with the Scholars when the declaration was made. But after that, it was so inspirational to see how the majority of Ethiopian and other African folks in the city were just jubilant about his election. People were dancing in the streets, ya'll. I never thought I'd see the day in the U.S.

This is the first day, so while I voted my conscience and have much to share about what that means, I'll keep other thoughts until later. For now, I think we should just take a collective deep, and tired, first breath. It is indeed as if the pallor of the last 8 years (or 16 or 40 depending on what marker you use to designate "when things were hopeful or better" if that's objectively possible when talking about American politics) has finally lifted.

People had a bit of spring in their step, really. Morning in America, and it was a new day. Maybe for one day, maybe for a brief stretch beyond that, this victory gives a little seldom-found relief to black men throughout this country. Plagued by negative images, stereotypes, and most every deck stacked against them, I will not make the audacious claim that this election is a game-changer in any way. But self-worth does not arise solely from what we have inside ourselves, and it's got to be hard to carry all that heaviness if you're conscious of it. While nothing has changed physically yet, I definitely felt optimism in people's hearts today, and just taking it at face value, more people of color, and in particular men of color, were smiling.

Not to mention the lines in front of the little corner stores that sell 2,000+ magazines and papers from around the world. Everyone wanted the papers that had cover stories. Everyone wants to keep that souvenir, that I was there, that memento that says "it's not just a dream anymore!" It's morning in America, and with this dawn came the promise, at least, of a new brighter day, if not in what actually happens, then at least in people's perception of what is possible.

But just to keep this real, here's a little perspective. There's much work still to do.

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Election Eve

We stand at a crossroads, America. A crossroads that has been hyped up a lot more than it may actually represent. I think the crossroads is not between a splintered America and a post-race America, or even one that has a more sophisticated take on its own complex racialized heritage and history.

I think more than anything, a peaceful change of power with a large part of the eligible electorate actually participating that just results in more snide comments and bitterness rather than bloodshed, would mark the movement of America from the democracy that is more concerned about defending its "freedom" by bombing others to one that celebrates the exercise of that basic tenet of true liberty: the ability of a nation to say "enough is enough"... even if the subtitle would be "and now for something not entirely different."

So here we are, America. It could be that today is the last day of an old era. Not just that of Bushs and Clintons in the White House, but also of the undercurrent of national discourse that recognizes that there has always been and still remains great inequality in this nation. I don't know whether the whole post-race and post-affirmative action angle will come in quickly or later as the conservatives in both parties regroup and rethink their attack on the poor, the dark, and the newcomers, but it will come.

The backlash towards whatever is left will definitely come. The brunt of anger and distrust will not fall upon the new leader, surrounded as he can be by the best that our money can train. The battleground, bloody or cold and calculated, will be in many states and towns across this nation. The targets will be simple, unchanged folks who hadn't suddenly felt like they won a lottery just because someone who looks like them but has had all kinds of access through education and opportunity was just elected president.

That's the funny thing: privilege seems to be okay if you don't realize you have it no matter how much you benefit from it. But if people in power even suspect that someone else will get some shade under that parasol of privilege, it's over: they will do what they can to stomp that out early. That ground game will be demoralizing if it happens, but mainly to those of us in the know, I think, because we won't write it off as just a coincidence or random events.

We'll connect those dots.

So this is a crossroads America. And it isn't. We'll travel together down the next road that you choose, but if it's another dead end or dive off a deep end, you're on your own this time.

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Ever Have One of Those Weeks?

Sorry dear faithful reader(s?) of DotBS. I've been sidetracked and crazy busy. Busier than I thought. Busier than makes it possible to get in all the writing I'm hoping to do for work, let alone getting up on here to ponder a bit. But you know what happens when a person like me doesn't have a venue like this to vent a little steam? I go a little crazy, for one, but then I also kind of let things go against people I don't even really know.

It's just that even as I want to walk the path of righteousness rather than self-righteousness - to stay focused on building and not tearing down (too much) - I slip up. I have to ask forgiveness sometimes of folks whose opinions aren't that important to me at the end of the day. It's like this: it takes a long time to build personal capital up with people who you don't politically align with right away, even if they are blood (or in my case, extended family). But once you do, you can still blow the load of it if you just pull a McCain and throw a tantrum.

I did just that on email today, in reaction to a racist/anti-Muslim Obama smear email that an uncle of mine, of whom I've written in the past, forwarded out to our family list serv. Rather than just say "that was stupid" to myself and my trusted partner and/or sister I decided to engage via email. Needless to say, it didn't become a flame war between me and my 75 year old uncle, or all his kids who have kids of their own who are approaching college. But it could have been, and I didn't see through the red enough to be tactical.

I'm usually okay in this regard - strategy is something I've tried to learn and teach myself, particularly in the last few years. And especially with the kind of work I want to do - tempers don't build things. And anger is okay, but we have to use it constructively, with a greater purpose in mind. And against true injustice. So I kind of messed up. I think need to write more often. Rage on these pages is better than rage on the internets. Better luck on Friday.

Be safe, have a good weekend, and no matter who you vote for: don't vote for McCain/Palin.

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Remembering Gujarat

It's a funny thing: get a job doing work you want to do, and suddenly all that spare time you thought you'd have after the years of grueling/non-relevant law school doesn't really materialize. I have a lot of things I want to do in my spare time, but the train ride home at night is barely enough to write a quick note to self about the day, or jot down an idea in my other notebook that I'm keeping to store brainstorms, or read even a short article in the New Yorker, which I can love to hate, but still enjoy digging into deep stories that are disappearing quickly across the landscape of American journalism.

So today, on the ride home, I decided to open up a collection of Arundhati Roy essays called the Algebra of Infinite Justice that my partner brought back from a trip to India (that shit which would cost $15 here was Rs. 225: i.e. about 5 dollars. I now believe the best deal to be had from India is books, believe it or not). The book collects some of her best essays, including "For the Common Good," her brilliant essay about the Narmada Dam Project (before the dam-builders won).

As expected, I didn't get through a lot, but I read the better part of two pieces: the title piece, which was an amazing piece she wrote right after 9/11, presciently calling Osama Bin Laden the "dark doppelganger" of Bush. You have to read this piece to fully appreciate her mastery of language -- and the truth.

The second piece was written after the 2002 communal massacre in Gujarat, which she and many others have called pogroms orchestrated and enabled by the BJP-led government. On the shaky grounds of retribution for a train burning in Godra earlier that week that resulted in the death of more than 50 Hindu "pilgrims" that was attributed to Muslim activists (the truth came out later - the train was not lit up by Muslim anything, and the people on the train, though they did not deserve death, were enroute back from a Masjid destruction tour), Hindus in the state of Gujarat killed more than 2000 Muslims, destroyed thousands of homes and businesses, and forced over 100,000 people into refugee camps in their own home state.

The detailed horrors of what happened are unspeakable, but Roy outlines some of it to start her essay (titled "Democracy"). Reading even these slivers that profile what happened shocked me to remember and realize what I did not really know. Gujarat in 2002, and Indian communal violence in general, are talking points of the South Asian left. But how much do those of us living comfortably in the United States really know of what happened? How do you reconcile "pride" in your heritage with this history?

And for me - as a non-Hindu, but someone who can easily pass because my people have strayed and are confused - how do I have an honest dialogue about these things with Gujarati Muslims? I feel like I haven't even started that process - and I want to do something about that, because this memory cannot fade, and it's not good enough to just namecheck it once in a while.

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Three Cheers for the U.S. State Dept: Modi Denied Visa

Well, this is what happens when the government actually does what it's supposed to do. Chief Minister Narendra Modi, the butcher of Gujarat, whose anti-Muslim (and anti-Christian, which I'm sure is most relevant here) positions and actions are legion, was denied his visa request by the U.S. State Dept. Modi was going to come to the U.S. to speak at the World Gujarati Conference, to be held this weekend in NJ. 

Here's a link to the letter confirming their position on his "severe violations of religious freedom." Again, the reasoning is connected to the Religious Conversion legislation in Gujarat that required people to register with the state before they could convert their religion, which was largely seen by the media/West as a strong anti-Christian move.

I think the legislation was a hindutva move to address a history of conversion or perceived forced conversion in India (Hindus in India sometimes "Muslims in India used to be Hindu and were forceably converted en masse" instead of recognizing that people convert, it's part of human history). I wish the letter and the State Dept.'s stance reflected the genocide that Modi oversaw in Gujarat in 2002, when more than 2,000 Muslims were slaughtered and more than 50,000 displaced from their homes while the military and police stood idly by (or helped out). But we take what we can get, I suppose.

Flash forward to tons of hate mail to the government (this is what they choose to get upset about) and angry letters to the Indian American media by capitalist Gujaratis who don't care about hindutva (though they benefit from it) but see Modi as the chief architect of the economic boom that the area has witnessed in the last 5-10 years.

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Tropic Thunder: Appropriation Revisited

Tropic Thunder's much reported take on blackface (and Ben Stiller's dismal record in movies) kept us from seeing the film until this past weekend. We were hoping to see Wall-E, but in yet another cruel twist of this bar summer, it wasn't playing anywhere near us. So Tropic Thunder was the best thing that fit into our schedule. I had read enough to know that Robert Downey, Jr.'s take on blackface would either make me want to leave the theater, or get me to think about what it means and where we are now that a film not made by people of color can actually address some of the interesting aspects of representation and appropriation that we find ourselves confronting nowadays. I'm happy to report that it was more of the latter than I expected.

Without ruining too much, the whole film is a satire on the industry, and Downey plays a five-time Oscar winning Australian actor who is such a method actor that he decides to undergo a medical procedure to "look black." Downey plays his role to perfection - making fun of extreme method actors (Day-Lewis, anyone?), cultural appropriation, and the seeming paradox of actors with huge egos and overwhelming insecurity. There was also a black actor on the team calling him out each step of the way ("there's only one role for a black man in this film, and you get it!").

Stiller surprised me: I was expecting nothing but slapstick and bathroom humor (they make fun of some of that as well). I know there are criticisms of the film regarding its approach towards the mentally disabled, but I have a feeling that some of that was also tongue-in-cheek (saying to the viewer, we're so clever about race that we have multiple levels about that, but Hollywood doesn't get everything). Maybe that's giving them too much credit, but some of the "retard" comments were so over the top that I feel like they knew what they were doing.

But this also makes me think about representation and appropriation, particularly in light of some of the weird Mickey Rooney denial of the racism inherent in his much reviled Asian caricature in the otherwise classic Breakfast at Tiffany's.

Is there a space where this kind of caricature is acceptable? And does it matter who is doing it and for what reason? The film features Asian actors playing members of an Asian drug ring, and it begs the question: we get pissed off when white people play our people, even in "sympathetic" roles, but then our people play our people in crazy terrorist/trafficker/bad driver/whatever roles, and we're okay with it? Because an Asian/POC actor has to live and "Hollywood's fucked up - you have to play the game so you can get to where you don't have to play the game"? I'm not feeling that. But I guess I'm not an actor, either.

***

Anyway - if you want to see two octogenarian actors/movie people talk about this film (it's not perfect because they get caught up in the whole "PC" discussion) check this review out. But it's kind of funny to hear them talk to each other and about this film. Woah - just watched their review of the Dark Knight. Not cool.

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What is Meat? (Pt. 1)

With the early onslaught of Halloween preparations, a holiday that's never been the same for me since I found out that many of my favorite candies have shredded beetles and other unsavories in them, I thought this as good a time as any to post my consideration of the more-complicated-than-I-thought-it-was question: "what is meat?"

I have been surprised by the different ways that people in the Northeast (my only frame of reference) consider the various subgroups of "food" and justify the exclusion of each from their personal definition of "meat." I don't know if this is true in other parts of the U.S. or if even this is another one of those uniquely American propositions. But it just knocks me out that this is as debated (or at least contested) as it is. Pescatarian, Vegan, Non-Red-Meatatarian... the variations have promulgated in a way not unlike the many permutations of American Christianity.

I actually think it's not so complicated for people who aren't in the United States. Or maybe that's a massive generalization that isn't large enough - perhaps it is more the whole Western, Christian world that doesn't quite get the difference between a carrot, a crab, a carp, and a canary. Whatever it is, there are a number of observations and impacts on people who are trying to stick to one or more of these diets, and more importantly, the assumptions that come from people who just don't get the difference. It also has ramifications for movement work in communities that have heterogeneous and specific diets.

I know it's been a source of frustration for the older desi generation (well, my Mom is the sample for me here) when someone asks if they eat seafood or poultry right after they've said "I don't eat meat." Because to them, "meat" is anything that used to be an animal. And "animal" means anything that's not a plant, fungi, monote, or phytoplankton. For many of them, even eggs are included in that definition, but milk and dairy are not "meat" because they are not directly "animals" but rather animal products, I guess. For some reason, this is really hard to understand for a lot of people - I don't know if it's the penetration of the concept of "vegan" into the American psyche or sheer, complete ignorance. The number of questions about whether "x" or "y" are acceptable under old school immigrant definitions of "vegetarian" is sometimes frustrating. It used to be basic questions like "where do you get your protein?" and "that's weird!" but now that the concept of vegetarianism has permeated mainstream American life more, the questions have actually multiplied and become more specific.

Anyway, I believe that the regular exclusion of fish (and even poultry) in the Western conception of "meat" strongly normalizes carnivorism. Anthropomorphism is also a fairly common way of describing diet: "I won't eat anything with a face" translates to me that some of the Disney animated shows with cute talking animals must be having some lasting effect, at least on the subliminal level, and maybe some of the kids who watch the films over and over again will grow up wondering why Bambi equals venison, and Thumper makes a good stew. But then, why is Sebastian the crab is less sympathetic and more likely to find himself taking his final dip in a giant hot tub that is really a hot pot? Let's not even get to the fact that people get all freaked out by insects and spiders, but are more than happy to crunch into other, larger, many-legged arthropods like lobsters, shrimp, and crabs. I just don't get the logic: eat a damn spider already. And that's not because I'm an Indian, and we eat that kind of stuff regularly.

I also think that the inability of some people to fully understand that fish, crustaceans, mollusks, and the various other exceptions to the meat rule seem, at least to me, to signify one of two things: 1) "I don't care about science, I'm proud that I don't know what an animal is, and you should go screw yourself," or 2) "It's too hard to include all of these things, and as long as I'm not taking a bite out of a live whale's trachea or something, you should leave me alone to my drumstick. At least I don't go hunting these things (off season)."

Ah. Yes you do. You may not lay the trap, throw the net, or reel in the line, but you are hunting them as you maneuver between the CostCo, the Super WalMart, and the other discount food retailers (the nutritional-industrial complex?) to get your best price. You're driving this crazy market for faster, cheaper, and more "consistent" tastes in meat products. Your attenuated tolerance for variation and regional nuances in food and food preparation have lead to the mass production of these food products. For shame! Your burger just had to taste the same as what you just had in Chicago after your week away from home. I may have philosophical and faith reasons for rejecting a carnivore's diet generally, but I can accept eating for the sake of sustenance and survival, and in a way that doesn't turn fellow species into a commodity. But that's not what the modern method of meat and food production is about.

The furthest extreme includes so called "white meat" in the list of acceptable and consumable flesh. And does anyone remember the posters in the NYC subway announcing "pork: the other white meat"?! Man, come on. You've got to be kidding me - pig is the meat forbidden even to the most meat eaters. I'm convinced that the campaign was some crazy Christian right thing to piss off the Muslims, Jews, Hindus, Buddhists, Jains, and other assorted veggie heathens in one fell swoop. Ugh. I'll take those annoying peanut ads any day of the week.

I'll revisit this theme in at least one more post, to go through some thoughts on vegetarianism as a framework for social and political consciousness, and also for the challenges that remain for vegetarians in Asian American spaces.

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Endless Campaign

I'm venting a little, but I feel like some of the people supporting Obama are the reason I'm not embracing his candidacy (oh, well that and the positions that I feel he's moving further and further right on). They're crazy. I actually fear getting into the conversation about third-party options with them. It's a legitimate threat to my ability to voice my damn opinion. So I keep my mouth shut in social gatherings. Which, if you know me, is a really hard thing to do.

I woke up to C-SPAN today, with a Hillary supporter calling in saying she's voting for McCain. "I heard him say he's been to all 57 states. I don't know where he's been, but the U.S. has 50 states. If he doesn't even know that, he shouldn't be president." WTF?! That's the reason to dismiss the candidate?! I guess even the party Dems aren't that faithful to the Dems when their candidate isn't the chosen one. But this is a bit nuts, isn't it? And I don't know the quote, but was he talking about Guam, Puerto Rico, D.C., and the range of other U.S. "assets" that don't rise to the status (or rights) of states? This may just be unnecessary details for the voter looking for a way out of saying "yo, he's black, are you kidding me?!"

I guess I'm more conflicted about this than anything else. I thought McCain didn't have a chance, but I'm reminded about how much racism there is in this country, and how threatened the middle-of-the-road white person feels (based on what, I have no idea, but maybe they are too stupid to read the signs: i.e. statistics of incarceration vs. education, AIDS and other other health indicators vs. prosperity, and all the other things out there that suggest the status quo isn't going to change anytime soon).

It's going to be a long few months.

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Tom Dubois, Ralph Nader, and Barrack Obama

One of the things I loved the most about The Boondocks when it first came out was that Aaron McGruder was pretty raw about some characters that we see out there. He had a pretty sharp take on otherwise successful black characters, with prosecutor Tom Dubois being at the top of the pile. Straight-laced and uptight, Dubois (the irony of the name choice does not escape us, Aaron!) wasn't wholly clueless about the fact that he was black: he just didn't really know how to connect with either the more radical vision that Huey represented, or the popular culture side of things that Riley represented. He was the archetypical buppie. Actually, his white wife Sarah seemed a little more down than he (she worked for the NAACP, I think, and told him to chill out on more than one occasion).

Without going too far into a breakdown of the comic strip (and when I thought it was awesome vs. when I thought it started to stray), I thought that McGruder gave us a perfect model for some of the people we come across in progressive/radical work in communities of color generally. Well-meaning but often more than a bit clueless about issues of power, privilege, and the people. I feel like a lot of these folks are involved in partisan/"political" organizing in the name of our communities. Ever try to have a conversation with them about what it means to take certain money or certain kinds of stances (or not) on things outside of their comfort zone (i.e. see my posts on Palestine and Asian America)? Many of them take up spaces that could be held by real community members, or at least people who will try to bring their voices to the table. But they are the folks white people point to when they say "the black vote" or the "Hispanic vote," at least for the Dems.

So that brings me to Nader's bomb against Obama last month, which you have have missed if you were paying attention to news on North Korea, gun control, capital punishment, or whatever else. Basically, read this CNN report on Nader's comments that Obama is feeding off of white guilt, "talking" white, and ignoring the real plight of African American and other communities of color. He calls him out on brashly supporting AIPAC/Israel and moving so far from his initial position on Palestinian rights that he's no longer recognizable. When I first read his comments, it should come to no surprise that I thought "yeah!! This is what I've been thinking! Go go Ralph!"

Then I started to think about his comments and put them in the context of the last 8 years, communication strategy, and what could be going on here. I started to wonder - why is Nader going so hard against Obama? These criticisms are equally apt for both Obama and McCain, so why isn't he taking that angle?

And I started to think about how Nader is saying things that McCain can't say directly as a candidate. McCain can't presume to step in the black community's shoes and say anything on their behalf. He knows as much (in other words, he ain't no Bill Clinton). So Nader is levying some of the far left criticism against Obama, kind of hitting him on a flank that's otherwise sort of safe from the Republicans - they aren't going to raise any of the issues that I take with Obama - they are just going to keep pushing the Islamophobic, xenophobic buttons of their willing audiences.

But Nader has the ability to actually get both whites and blacks upset at Obama. And while I think that people need to wake up, I don't know what Nader's real game is, and it makes me wonder - he has a lot of other angles he can work on Obama that might even be more effective, but why be a runner for the GOP in this way? Who are his target, beyond Obama's people and the handful of radicals in the nation who are still tuned in and have a racial justice lens that would allow them to recognize what he's saying?

I'm just saying - to tie it back - what would Tom Dubois say or think about Nader's statements? Would he agree or would he wonder where Nader's coming from? Or would his post-Civil Rights context make him think, "well, it's racist to tell Obama to focus on the black community, and suggesting that the black candidate should be the standard-bearer for issues like mass incarceration, public assistance, and any of these other "black" issues is also racist."

Because the Toms we know in the world know how to say things are racist, but most of the time, it's not a structural lens that they are using: Tom's drunk deeply from the pitcher of "American kinda multicultural society" Kool Aid. Generalizations about race and what candidates of color are supposed to focus on are the most offensive to him, because in the end, Tom Dubois does not want to be identified with those issues.

If Obama's candidacy can be "reduced" to a discussion of the issues that most directly affect the poor and disenfranchised black community, well, that means that Tom should be thinking about those issues too. And frankly, he'd rather live his buppie life, play basketball once in a while with other folks like him, and call it a day. So I'm asking, what are Nader's statements doing to these folks - the educated, successful, 30- and 40-something middle class people of color who are so excited about Obama's candidacy (and not asking questions because of it)? I say he's getting them to circle the wagons to protect Obama - because though he will bring change, they're hoping that it's more of a change of who can seen and identified as successful in the U.S. In essence, creating a slightly improved status quo, that they will be right in the middle of (no radical challenge to the social order here!). And Nader's comments strike at the heart of that premise - they aren't going to hear any of it.

Makes me feel like he's just trying to play to the media, and who knows, maybe it's the only way he can get CNN coverage now. But because he is largely unrestricted by the traditional barriers to honest and thought-provoking speech that other politicians accept, he has a lot of ways to go with this stuff. I'm not particularly happy with the angle he chose. He done confused Tom.

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Vincent Chin, 26 Years Later

I wrote about Vincent Chin a little when I found out about the film called "Vincent Who?" I don't want to revisit that discussion, read it here if you care to.

Just taking today to reflect a minute: hate crimes are a terrible, dangerous breed of crime. There are many people who just don't want to recognize that there is a special kind of intent behind these crimes, and a broader impact than just on the immediate victim. Part of their logic is that there are already statutes and laws in place to deal with the crime committed - that of beating someone up, killing them, or in the "lucky" situations, merely ridiculing or harassing someone.

But the point of hate crimes is that they affect communities - the victim is a symbol, and so are the acts. By not embracing much more strict hate crime laws, we're basically saying, you can hate all you want - just don't cross the line of beating or killing someone. But the kind of intimidation that naturally flows from these acts is also behavior that we should actively be pushing against. We don't want to - or at least shouldn't want to - allow people to act out their hate in the public arena without knowing that the society we live in won't tolerate these individual acts against groups of people. That's not the America we want to live in.

But it's all a policy discussion, and in this country, substantive policy discussions quickly devolve into surface political sparring. That's not going to change anything.

So what did Vincent Chin die for? Nothing. His death, just like his attack and his attackers, have become symbolic to some people. But in the end, it means nothing more than that striking, heart-breaking image in Christine Choy's original film about his killing, when his grief-stricken mother said solemnly, fighting back the tears, "We want justice. We want justice."

That we organize, that we coalesce around these watermark moments (or build them into focal points to help us rally for our work), is not a bad thing. It's just sad that it takes this kind of event, and the countless others - small and large - to rally people around creating a more safe, respectful, and polycultural society.

It's sad that mothers who understand their kids' English at home, but didn't have to make public statements in that tongue, have to come forward and put their grief on display in an awkward language, in words wholly inadequate to capture what they are feeling.

***

People gather in Strawberry Fields in Central Park every year to sing and remember John Lennon on December 8th, the day he was murdered in 1980. I used to think, wow what a wonderful thing that people do that, and that they get together in that way. But Yoko Ono has asked people not to - she said the day was not a day people should commemorate - it was the day that he was taken from us. Remember his birthday instead.

People often create monuments for those who have fallen - from formal statues to street art tributes. The best of these remember the lives of those who we have lost, but often, it's the day that they die that we remember and commemorate. And stories of their lives are superseded by the sad/angering memories of how they were killed/taken from us. While these things are important, we can't lose sight of the stories behind these stories - the stories of triumph, strength, or just people (flawed as they may be) just trying to live their lives.

But I couldn't find Vincent Chin's birthday anywhere - Wikipedia only says that he was born in 1955, and that he was adopted by his parents in 1961. Vincent Chin wasn't trying to be a hero or a martyr. He was at a strip club, celebrating his bachelor party with some of his friends, before his wedding, which was supposed to be on June 27th. Maybe I'll just remember June 27 from now on and think about his loss then instead.

***

Regardless, remember Vincent, or at least the story of his life and how he was killed. Remember that something is happening to someone right now - whether Asian, black, Latino, white, gay, woman. That person feels alone, feels trapped, feels angry/suicidal/unknown, unheard, unseen. That person may be someone you know, or someone you don't know, but it is someOne.

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Co-opting Struggle?

I had a really interesting conversation with a good friend last night about Palestine/Israel that got me thinking. She was saying that a good number of her Pakistani friends really take the issue of Palestine to heart - but as a matter of Israel/America and Muslims. She said that the conversation is sometimes couched as a matter of faith, as if the "holy war" narrative that we hear sometimes is actually true (if even just because Muslims feel like they are under attack and Israel/Palestine is the front line). But she felt, and said that a lot of people she's spoken to, that this is more of an anti-Arab thing that's happening in Israel - that the Israelis couldn't really care less about other Muslims, as long as they aren't attacking (physically or verbally) the state of Israel. She said her feeling was that Israel was more concerned about getting rid of the Palestinians - Muslim, Christian, whatever.

I found that to be so interesting, and didn't anything to say that added to the conversation, an outsider myself to all sides of the question. But it made me think more about my recent posts about Palestine and the way that the cause of Palestinian people is so below the radar, and so politically unpalatable in the U.S. that we don't hear or see much. Why have I taken up the issue now - can I just attribute that to having more friends who talked about the right of return, widespread human rights abuses, and family members who are directly affected?

Or is it just a badge of being "down" and/or radical (enough?) by taking an alternative position to the norm in U.S. dialog (from the elections to most other conversations about race/religion in liberal spaces here). I don't want to question it too much - but it made me think about it more - motivation is important.

Maybe I've just really whole-heartedly accepted that Zionism is the new white colonialism, and if I'm anything, I'm anti-colonial, and Palestine is ground zero for that.

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HR Clinton and AIPAC/Israel

Had I the time or the inclination, I would go ape-shit (in a bad way) about Clinton's speech to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) tonight. I didn't hear Obama's, but I'm sure it was adequately fucked up, as I'm sure Bush and his underlings and all the others are as well.

But I got to hear HRC on C-Span live, and her terrible characterizations of Palestinians and her chauvinistic statements about fully supporting Israel ($2 Bn a year for "defense"?!) boiled my blood.

I guess it's a quintessential American value: the brutal subjugation of an entire people on the justification that "this land is now our land, now get the fuck off or die." Like I've said before, Manifest Destiny, anyone?

So I'm not surprised, but she even got the "debacle in Durban" -- the first global conference on racism, where there was a motion to characterize Zionism (the militant political ideology to expand Israel at any cost - human or otherwise) as racism, that resulted in the U.S. happily (and conveniently) walking away from the discussion. We're going to get to a point where the U.S. and Israel are alone in their inability to fully confront the evils associated with their founding, while the rest of the world moves on. I mean, even Australia is moving closer to understanding that its shameful legacy with its own aboriginal populations must be confronted. But it's easy to stick your head inthe ground when no one else can bully you into accepting the brutal truth of your own nation's sins.

Thing is, many Israelis know better, and there's definitely some level of understanding with regular people about how the question of Israel/Palestine should move beyond "they don't want to recognize our right to exist" to a more detailed parsing of the issues. I don't know if Americans can do the same with the legacies of slavery, decimation of the native population, and everything that came after these things.

But that speech was intolerable, and I'm so sick of hearing every politician with any aspiration to keep or advance in their political careers remaining 100% wholly uncritical of Israel's actions. Shit, I'd consider it something noteworthy if they even mentioned anti-Arab racism and xenophobia in the same speech as antisemitism (no hope for the same paragraph or sentence of course, and disregarding the fact that Arabs are also Semites, but somehow that has been lost in every modern discussion at this point).

The state of Israel is not just a victim: it's also an aggressor in this whole situation. Perhaps the image of besieged state fighting for survival is romantic, or perhaps some kind of national guilt from America's failure to intervene in the treatment and slaughter of the Jewish people for years before finally getting involved in WWII has permeated American politics (I doubt it). Whatever it is, this one-sided approach to the whole thing is incredibly troubling. How can America have any moral authority when it is so totally biased in an arena where one side is using sophisticated war technology that we've provided and the other is using the military equivalent of slingshots and bows and arrows?

What happened to "We are all Palestinian"?

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Where Are the South Asians: "Vincent Who?" Preview and Critique

I just caught wind of this new documentary, directed by Tony Lam and produced by Curtis Chin/Asians Pacific Americans for Progress, called "Vincent Who?" which looks at the legacy of the murder of Vincent Chin and the activism that galvanized some Asian American communities afterwards (it was 25 years in 2007). Here's the preview:



Okay - so I have some issues with this, and I'm hoping that they won't play out the same way once I see the full film, but I'm not hopeful. First, for Asian American activists of any color/ethnic configuration, Vincent Chin's story represented a senseless murder that underscored the sometimes severe anti-Asian sentiment that remained in the United States (i.e. passing new laws to get rid of racist old laws didn't get rid of Asian as foreign and other sentiments). The film "Who Killed Vincent Chin?" really captured the spirit of the time; the pain on his mother's face still haunts me, and the images of Asian activism around this particular hate crime were very important for me to feel connected and understand the injustice involved.

But the raising of Vincent Chin's story to this level of importance also does the same thing as focusing heavily on the 1960s and 1970s APA activism (I Wor Kuen, I-Hotel, Third World Student Strike, Basement Workshop, the Internment reparations movement and various other things): they shut out the importance, activism, and organizing in newer immigrant communities. Vincent Chin's story is the touchstone, but Navroze Modi, Balbir Singh Sodhi, Rishi Maharaj, and the many Southeast Asians who have been senselessly murdered are forgotten.

This film's preview tells me two things: first, the question is posed to a lot of South Asian students as well as other Asian students. They're as ignorant of Vincent Chin as anyone else, it seems, and I think the point should be that they should know. But second and more importantly, the people who are interviewed about the impact of the case and the resulting activism only includes (in my quick review of the preview and the written materials) one South Asian, who's on the WEST COAST (and who I've never heard of). Anti-Asian violence has been a huge deal in South Asian communities, and organizers and activists continue to use the lessons of the Vincent Chin advocacy to guide their ongoing work. But they are ignored in this new documentary. People who have no direct connection with the case are asked about how it affected them. I know a lot of people that it affected who committed their time and work to fighting anti-Asian/anti-immigrant/anti-gay/anti-black hate crimes. But they aren't included here (or at least, don't have any marquee presence, and I would think some of them would).

This just makes no sense to me at all - it seems like a glaring mistake that could have easily been rectified. I will wait to pass final judgment, but it was a great opportunity, I can come up with a long list of names of people who could have been interviewed, and I can't understand why, if the purpose was to show ways that APAs now are affected and could still be connected to this story, that step wasn't taken. Shut out again, even when hate crimes against South Asians have risen tremendously in the years after 9/11. I'm not whining here, just asking what gives, and wondering why there aren't more truly representative efforts out there by non-South Asians in things that are very obviously relevant.

Maybe I'm wrong. I'm not saying it's deliberate, but is that an excuse?

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Obama's Speech

Okay, I didn't hear Obama deliver the speech. I read it the morning before he delivered it, and I have to say a few things from the moment I read it:

1) Why did he make that comment about "staunch ally Israel"? Was that really necessary? He took the cheap shot, dismissed the real suffering of the Palestinian people, and kind of bent backwards when he really didn't need to go there. So that was annoying.

2) We've been saying for a long time that Obama had to talk about race in some real way. Running the campaign as a "post-race" candidate just appealed to the neo-cons who have hijacked the idea of a "color-blind society" from Dr. King and turned it into a crusade to ignore the devastating and real impact that race still has in the United States. It's not just about the past, either. It's about how things are right now and how they will be if we keep going the way we're going. Obama running for office was presented by some people - liberals who didn't seem to have a more critical analysis, especially - as a big step towards "healing" the country's wounds and divisions. A lot of people said to me, well of course he believes the same things we do about institutional racism and how far this nation still needs to go. He just can't talk about that right now, to get elected. Just get him in office, and you'll see.

Well that wasn't good enough for me. If other issues were handled that way - we would just work on faith that health care was a priority for Hilary but she wouldn't have to talk about it. Or national security for McCain. But that's not how it works, and just ignoring race, when it was clearly the subtext of the polling analysis and the undercurrent of "what will middle America, the white folk who don't live in cities do when it's time to vote?" didn't seem right. I felt like it was racist in itself to say that talking about race is too "controversial." Maybe Obama wouldn't have gotten this far if he'd had the dialog that his speech is said to have kicked up, a while ago. Maybe this is as soon as he could have had it. I don't know, but I think the way he approached these questions earlier (or didn't) really troubled (and puzzled) me.

3) I don't know, is it just me (I know it's not) - but I found Reverend Wright's sermons - at least the snippets we kept hearing - quite refreshing. It's funny that the media is calling the sermons so problematic. They should do the same about all the anti-gay sermons, literature, talk-show appearances that the mainstream evangelists do all the time. Or even just the simple "nonbelievers will go to hell" litany that immediately makes me feel pretty angry and powerless. But there have been some great pieces about how this may be the first time that white people in the mainstream are actually hearing the tone of what a lot of people feel. Maybe it's the first time that a lot of white folks are actually getting a glimmer of a sense of what it's like to feel powerless against someone speaking so patently against your closely held beliefs. Now imagine what it would be like if you really didn't have the political and race-based power that you have. I don't think you can.

4) Obama's speech surprised me. I didn't expect him to go as straight on with some of the points that he did. I was actually happy that he didn't make light of the anger, of the history that people all remember. That he didn't bring things up to say "all is fine now" but to reinforce his message of hope. I think he could have taken a safer road (though I don't know how revolutionary his speech was - he was towing some lines while saying "hold up, things aren't perfect"), and I'm happy that he didn't. I don't know if he's won away my vote in the general election from Nader/Gonzalez, but he finally showed me that he gets some of what we've been talking about in radical circles of color for a while.

5) That said, some of my friends have just trashed the speech. They hated it, they thought it didn't push the debate at all, they say that it was a purely political speech. I guess I'm not as cynical about it - though I can be pretty brutal in the post-mortem. I think that political operatives and the whole SAFO crowd are a little nutty, and not objective at all, but there's also such a thing as being over-critical without giving people the moment that they kind of deserve. I have to give Obama this moment - it was impressive, he's been getting and will continue to get a lot of slack for whatever he says, and really, the man said I'm not going to back down but I'm not going to yell in your face. I don't know if I'd be able to do that, myself. Because emotions are clearly running high, and he has been able to keep his poise and take the higher road through all of the b.s. It almost seems like he's too good at it - but that's not a fault. We may just be too cynical on the left to acknowledge and accept that.

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Arthur Who?: Confronting Anti-Islamic Opinion in Asian Week

In today's Asian Week Opinion, Arthur Hu posted a vitriolic response to Michelle Obama's statement (a lifetime ago, it seems) that a particular moment was the first time she'd been proud to be an American (taken out of context and clarified ad-naseum, so I'm not going to go there).

His text includes this nugget:

Nearly half of America is crazy about the man, but I haven’t seen a survey asking if America was ready to promote a son of Islam, Christian or not. Even McCain had to apologize for a host who emphasized Obama’s middle name.

You should get the idea from that. I'm getting fed up of the islamophobia or just flat out bigotry that's coming up in "Asian American" spaces. I want to think that it's just ignorance, but I suspect that it's worse: Asian Americans, even those who think that they are representing some kind of dissident or civil rights voice, have bought into the American bias hook, line, and sinker. It makes navigating Asian American spaces really difficult for Asian Americans who are either Muslim or work in Muslim communities (read: South Asian). I'm not taking this shit anymore. I'm calling these people out.

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