To JK Rowling from Cho Chang

THIS. THIS SO MANY TIMES OVER. We're grown up enough now to challenge Rowling on her racist and closeted writing. I love the story, but damnit we deserve better than caricatures and tokenism.

Worth watching

1 - For Poor, Leap to College Often Ends in a Hard Fall. From NY Times, an article describing how class differences are leading to greater gaps at college level for students. This is of course complicated by racial links, as more people of color are poorer than whites.

2 - Dear Liberal Allies, what your classes on oppression didn't tell you. A Wellesleyunderground article on the people of color perspective on oppression.

3 - LGBTQ People from India. "Often QPOC get ignored in favour of white people during conversations about gender and sexuality, so I guess this is my attempt to try and push for greater visibility of lesser known people of colour in the LGBTQ movement in other parts of the world and try to debunk the notion that LGBTQ movement is primarily a white one."

4 - Things not to say to Asians. Seriously. We're tired of this shit.



5 - China's Female Imams and Mosques

Last Call to Prayer; China's Female Mosques from sharron lovell on Vimeo.

Experiences of QPOC students at Smith College & Junot Diaz on decolonial love

This was just passed onto me. A great short documentary made by a senior at Smith College on the experiences of queer people of color (QPOC) students on campus. Check it out!!



While I'm at it, check out Junot Diaz's keynote speech at Colorlines' Facing Race 2012 convention. He speaks about decolonial love and the difficulties of facing the privileges that we each hold.



A quote from Diaz's Q&A session:

The funny thing about our privilege is that we all have a blind spot around our privilege, shaped exactly like us. Most of us will identify privileges that we know we could live without. So when it comes time to talk about our privileges, we’ll throw shit down like it’s an ace. And that shit is a three! I understand that. You grow up and you live a life where you feel like you haven’t had shit, the last thing you want to give up is the one thing, the couple of things that you’ve really held on to.

I’m telling you guys, we’re never going to fucking get anywhere—if you want to hear my apocalyptic proclamation which I would never repeat, but which I know you motherfuckers are going to tweet about—we are never going to get anywhere as long as our economies of attraction continue to resemble, more or less, the economy of attraction of white supremacy.

Awesome videos

1 - BONES: Season 8 Episode 6 was kickass for a number of reasons; heartwrenching murder mystery, stories of 9/11, real character development. My favorite part though was this: intern Arastoo Vaziri (Pej Vahdat) relaying an interesting and awesome speech about separating 9/11 from the Muslim religion as a whole.


2 & 3 - Brave New Voices Slam Poetry: Spoken word amazingness! Call out that racism and shadeism.



White hipsters who care about animals more than other human beings? Fuck that shit.


Shadeism of the light skinned brown folk

Affirmative action and other social justice articles

An Open Letter to Abigail Fisher: Really amazing opinion letter about affirmative action case at University of Texas. "Your white skin is not an entitlement pass. Mediocrity wasn’t adequate at the University of Texas at Austin and it is not acceptable in life." Agreed.

Top five myths about Asian Americans and affirmative action from Angry Asian Man. Affirmative action does Asians good, so don't hate it!

How media clearly reflects the sexism and the racism we cannot see in ourselves. A teacher reflects on a casting exercise with film students and how people of color/women are constantly being stereotyped into the same roles, even though these students are 'liberal'. It's NEVER just a book or movie, the media is how society learns these stereotypes in the first place.

We're a Culture, Not a Costume. For Halloween, choose costumes that don't perpetuate racist stereotypes!

I’m Not Interested in Finding a Truce in the Culture War. I’m Interested in Winning It. This is an interesting article. The author cites a book by Jonathan Haidt about how the Democrats and Republicans are locked in an endless war of pushing each other's buttons, refusing to give in on women's rights/abortion and religious freedom. But the author argues that access to healthcare (ie birthcontrol pills or abortion) is not an equal comparison to religious freedom, so is adment that the so-called culture war is not a real debate.

Affirmative Action at US Colleges

The affirmative action case in the US: I haven't read many articles on it yet, but man oh man. If they overturn affirmative action on the basis that "we don't need it anymore" or "it's unfair to white kids", I think I might throw up. There is still such a huge achievement gap between African American and Hispanic students with white or East Asian students and guess what, a lot of that is attributed to socioeconomic class. It's not because different ethnicities are inherently better or worse, it's that they don't have the same opportunities as white kids. Sorry, white girl who appealed to the Supreme Court about this, but I'm willing to bet that your job opportunities NO MATTER WHERE YOU GO TO SCHOOL will ALMOST ALWAYS be better than the Hispanic, African, Southeast Asian, or Native American kid. That's the white privilege kicking in. Poor whites might lose out on this, true, but I'm still pretty certain that their chances of success are still better than poor minorities if said minorities weren't offered that spot in the university. Racism is inherent in the system and we HAVE to fight this by giving our kids as many opportunities in education as we can. Affirmative action isn't perfect, but damnnit, it's still necessary.

amazing articles and videos

1 - Glamourbaby Diaries



Ruby Veridiano nurtures young women of color to challenge the fashion world and what it means to be beautiful, especially for Asian Americans. Amazing workshops!! I wish I could participate!

2 - PSY and the Acceptable Asian Man

PSY is the Korean pop star who wrote the song Gangnam Style that mainstream US has caught on. Very interesting article about how Asian pop stars are having trouble breaking into mainstream US music (hint, it's because of the Asian stereotypes/caricatures in American society).

3 - ChristianMuslim



Check out this music video for "ChristianMuslim," written, recorded and performed by Jason Chu and Rah Zemos. It's a really cool hand-drawn stop-motion animation piece speaking out against violence and bloodshed between people who "believe that we're all God's children".

4 - Refusing to Date Asian Men

Essay by Kathy Zhang '11 on the Patriarchy in US society and how stereotyping of Asians as feminine and non-sexual came from the need to suppress the minorities to uphold the dominance of white supremacy. An excellent read.

5 - Islamic History and Women You Never Hear Of

Kahula bint Azwar is the legendary woman you've never heard of. My new heroine!!

6 - PSY's Gangnam Style and what it ACTUALLY means

Analysis of PSY's hit song and putting it into context of Korean history. Excellent read.

7 - Citation Needed by allmypenguins

Article on how China isn't as suppressed as you think it is.

Check these out!

A few articles and videos worth checking out!


CinderFella - a twist on the heteronormative Disney stories

Shadeism from ammabia productions on Vimeo.

This documentary short is an introduction to the issue of shadeism, the discrimination that exists between the lighter-skinned and darker-skinned members of the same community. This documentary short looks specifically at how it affects young womyn within the African, Caribbean, and South Asian diasporas. Through the eyes and words of 5 young womyn and 1 little girl - all females of colour - the film takes us into the thoughts and experiences of each. Overall, 'Shadeism' explores where shadeism comes from, how it directly affects us as womyn of colour, and ultimately, begins to explore how we can move forward through dialogue and discussion. Worth a watch!

Sexism, Racism, and Swimming: Article about the "controversy" over Ye Shiwen's world record gold medal swim, which basically amounts to the Western world being racist against the Chinese.

Jessica Colotl: Eye Of The Storm. Jessica Colotl is an undocumented immigrant who was brought to America as a child – and who now faces deportation. Reporter Ryan Schill and artist Greg Scott bring to life the story that has become a flash point for America's immigration debate. Really great comic.

A story of a Muslim lesbian couple. Family can surprise you sometimes.

Remnants of Anti-Chinese Violence. This New York Times photo gallery highlights the work of Seattle photojournalist Tim Greyhavens, whose new online project, No Place for Your Kind, visits and photographs the sites of anti-Chinese incidents and vicious racial violence in the American West that occurred over a century ago. The photos are mundane, but the history behind them are not.

But We're Not Muslim! Article on the Sikh murders and stereotyping. When minorities feel they have to distinguish themselves from the "bad" minorities, what are we actually telling people? It's just perpetuating the stereotypes.

Pollution, Poverty, and People of Color

One of the biggest environmental justice issues is the interconnectedness between pollution, poverty, and people of color. Too often, the victims of pollution are those already marginalized in mainstream society by class or race and those with fewer voices to fight with. But even with the difficulties facing them, some communities managed to win against the big corporations and industries polluting their water, air, and land. This past June, the Environmental Health Network launched a special news series highlighting the environmental justice issues facing seven different communities across the United States. Check out the articles!

Day 1: The Factory on the Hill. The people of Richmond, CA live within a ring of five oil refineries, three chemical plants, eight Superfund sites, dozens of other toxic waste sites, highways, two rail yards, ports and marine terminals.

Day 2: 'We are Richmond.' A beleaguered community earns multicultural clout. Richmond's jumble of smokestacks and storage tanks overlooking a port is one of the most industry-dense areas in the San Francisco Bay Area - and one of the poorest and most beleaguered.

Day 3: Stress + pollution = health risks for low-income kids. Facing financial strain, racial tension and high crime rates can wear down immunity and disrupt hormones, making kids more vulnerable to everything around them, including the lead in their yards and the car exhaust in their neighborhood.

Day 4: No beba el agua. Don't drink the water. “They think it’s normal not to drink water from your tap, that it’s normal to have to go buy bottled water. Part of our job is telling people, ‘This is not normal,’ ” said Susana De Anda, co-founder of the Community Water Center.

Day 5: Sacred water, new mine: A Michigan tribe battles a global corporation. The Keweenaw Bay Indians are fighting for their clean water, sacred sites and traditional way of life as Kennecott Eagle Minerals inches towards copper and nickel extraction, scheduled to begin in 2014.

Day 6: Dirty soil and diabetes: Anniston's toxic legacy. As a cleanup of West Anniston stretches into its eighth year, new research has linked PCBs exposure to a high rate of diabetes in this community of about 4,000 people, nearly all African American and half living in poverty. Even today, people there are among the most highly contaminated in the world.

Day 7: Falling into the 'climate gap'. Climate change is adding a new dimension to the three-decades-old environmental justice movement as researchers and activists focus on the inequities of the impacts. The rich can turn up air conditioners, move to higher ground, get bailed out by insurance. The poor and minorities are left – as with other environmental injustices – to cope as best they can.

Day 8: Asthma and the inner city: East St. Louis children struggle with life-threatening disease. What is it about this city, and other poor, African American cities, that leaves children with a disproportionate burden of respiratory disease? Is it the factories? The traffic exhaust? The substandard housing? Medical experts have struggled to unravel the mysterious connections between inner-city life and asthma, and they suspect they know the answer: All of the above.

Day 9A: Birth of the movement: "People have to stand up for what is right." A Q&A with two environmental justice pioneers. Just before the 30th anniversary of the protests against a toxic waste landfill at Warren County, North Carolina, Ferruccio and Ramey talk with EHN about their days as pioneers in the environmental justice movement.

Day 9B: Opinion Essay by Bullard: Much of America has wrong complexion for protection. In commemorating the 30th anniversary of the Warren County protests, we cannot celebrate too long because the “NIMBY” (not in my back yard) practice continues to be replaced with the “PIBBY” (place in blacks’ back yards) principle.

Day 10A: Opinion: Fighting environmental racism in the name of charity and justice . The “have not’s” or “have nothings” of the world often get blamed for their poverty as a moral failing on their own part. But perhaps the “haves” are the ones whose hardness of heart is the true moral failure because they don't act upon environmental inequity and destruction.

Day 10B: Opinion: Environmental policies must tackle social inequities. Even today, 30 years after residents of a poor, rural, predominantly African American county in North Carolina tried to block a hazardous waste landfill, the burden of proof still is placed on communities to demonstrate hazards and push for action. This needs to change. Social equity concerns should be incorporated into environmental policies and regulation.

Why Art? Community Art Project Video

Ever wondered what the point of doing art was, what benefits there are to participating in the arts, or how you might get involved? You've come to watch the right video!

I've been involved in a year long community arts project with the Centre of Multicultural Youth. The artist in residency project started off as focused on the very broad topics of building relationships between young people of color and art organizations, developing best practice models for art organizations, and ways to encourage families and young people to participate in art. Over a series of brainstorming sessions and discussions, we spoke a lot about of the role of art, identity and labeling, addressing social issues with art, skills developed during the process of art, challenges art practioners and organizations face, and more. Eventually, we narrowed down our focus to getting families and young people involved in the arts through examining why art is important. We interviewed a bunch of people over Nov 2011-Jan 2012 (including me!!) and came up with the short documentary video below. I'll shut up now and let you watch the video because it is AWESOME and speaks for itself.


The long term intention is to build on this short video and develop a feature length documentary on the many issues touched upon in this video. But for now, the goal is to get the word out to as many people as we can about this video. We're planning on distributing it to as many families and young people as we can. But they won't be our only target audience - it's important for city councils, community organizers, youth workers, and funding bodies to watch this video too. If you can forward it to your networks and get them to watch it, it will really help!

Guerrilla Girls: Conscience of the Art World

I went to a lecture tonight by two of the founding members of the Guerrilla Girls. Best decision I made in a while, I must say. The lecture was AWESOME, very enlightening and humorous. I remember the first poster I saw of them was of a nude female statue with a gorilla mask on and the caption, "Do women have be naked to be in US museums? Only 3% of artists in the Met Museum are female, but 83% of the nudes are female". Apparently they did a resurveying of the Met a few months ago and now the statistics read, 4% female artists and 74% nude female statues. So CLEARLY, there's a lot of work to be done still about the representation of female artists and artists of color.

Guerrilla Girls 2007 Shanghai poster
The two Guerrilla Girls spoke a lot about the lack of museum ethics (trustees paying their way to show their private collections, fixed art auctions, tokenism), the evolving set of issues they've addressed over the years (from complete lack of female artists in exhibition to token multicultural or female artists to the bad money issues to other social justice issues), politics, and many a museum protest. Who knew museum directors make so much money?? The black market for art is 5th behind drugs, sex, guns, and human trafficking. I mean, I kinda knew that art was lucrative, but not THAT lucrative. It's funny how the museums have now started to invite the Guerrilla Girls to exhibit their work and they've taken the opportunity to make some criticial pieces of tough love against the system. But it does get the message out.

The take home message at the end (and directives for future aspiring Guerrilla Girls):

1. Complain, complain, complain. Every person who stands up to demand more female and minority presence in museums and other institution makes a difference.
2. Be anonymous. There's a lot of power in the mask - it takes the focus off the personality and on the issue.
3. Don't be afraid to make liberal use of the F word - FEMINISM.
4. Do one thing at a time and if it doesn't work, try something else. There are a lot of social justice issues out there and trying to battle them all at once is pretty overwhelming. Just take it one step at a time and don't give up.
5. Be funny! A little humor goes a long way in getting awareness about social justice issues.
6. Tough love to the system! Don't be afraid to speak your mind about it.

Mother's Day

Happy Mother's Day! We often think of Mother's Day as a holiday of those Hallmark cards with the perfect blond mother with her perfect children giving her breakfast in bed and dear husband with flowers and chocolate. But really, there is so much more to motherhood than that. So here's to all the strong women out there, the single mothers, the women of color, the disabled, the queer, the incarcernated, the poor, the stay-at-home carers, the professionals, and everyone in between. Keep fighting the good fight. Today is the radical envisioning of what can happen when you put women in the center of action. Make sure to check out the Strong Families Initiative, read the stories from all the complexities of motherhood, from nursing to sexuality to working to race and immigration, and show some appreciation for the women in your life today!

Mother's Day card from the Strong Families Initiative

Style = Substance

I came across a great little article yesterday. There are so many stories on the women who didn't fit into the same old depressive stereotypes of minorities in the US, but we always hear about their hardships and the pain, never their ability to just be normal women. Here is a short article celebrating just those women, defying the time and age while looking real slick (poofy hair and everything).

Excerpt:

Here’s what I wish I knew back when I was in high school and so proud of myself for being the exceptionally compassionate, caring person I believed myself to be: focusing only on the pain and degradation of any oppressed group of people does another kind of damage to those individuals. It turns them into stereotypes of pain and damage and ignores everything else about them, including whether they’re funny, or stupid, or weird, or brilliant, or irreverent, or stylish, or creative, or boring, or selfish, or anything else that people are capable of being. It takes away their complexity and vastness and reduces people to one-dimensional figures. So yes, this is a post about style, but more than that, it’s a post about not denying these girls the dignity of their multitudes.

Never underestimate the power of small acts. Even something as trivial as hairspray can be a radical act.

Atlanta Entrepreneurs Think Outside the Boxcar with Healthy Corner Store

Reposting a Daily Good article on rebranding the food movement. Read more!

Atlanta Entrepreneurs Think Outside the Boxcar with Healthy Corner Store

As entrepreneurs and food activists attempt to bring fresh produce to more and more urban food deserts, they're setting their crosshairs on one target in particular: the corner store. Packed to the gills with cigarettes, lotto tickets, liquor, and processed foods, the shops do little to nourish the communities where they operate, and in many urban areas—particularly black, Latino, or low-income neighborhoods—these stores are the only places to buy any food at all.

According to Alphonzo and Alison Cross, founders of The Boxcar Grocer in Atlanta (and winners of GOOD's contest to redesign the supermarket), this needs to change. Their just-opened corner store alternative, where local and organic food options get prime shelf space, is an attempt to respect "the fact that every community desires fresh food, and locally made food is just about as fresh as you can get," says Alison.

The Castleberry Hill neighborhood, where Boxcar sits, is full of preserved railroad warehouses (hence the name), but doesn't have another decent grocery store within five miles, despite its proximity to City Hall and college campuses. "We chose to put the store here exactly for this reason," says Alison. "The demographics, to us, looked like a sure sign of success."

The brother-sister duo's mission is to broaden the appeal of the food movement to embrace more black eaters. The first step is the vintage train-themed brand. "Railroads are great connectors," according to Alison. "They are also what took African Americans out of the South, saving our lives in many instances, as well as brought them back to visit their families." While the typical branding on the nonprofits and businesses of the local food movement tends to idealize an agricultural lifestyle, that's "something the African American community does not really desire to go back to, even though we need to address lots of health issues directly related to the type of foods we're eating," Alison says.

The store has enjoyed the support of "the entire Atlanta community" since its launch in November, with residents of other neighborhoods already asking the Crosses to open outposts. "The only real challenge," Alison says, "is how to keep enough food on the shelves on a daily basis."

Find out more about Boxcar Grocer here!

Anti-Asian violence in Philadelphia

This news on the anti-Asian violence in Philadelphia makes me so frustrated at the glossing over of racist violence by explanations of the marginalized black minority who are resentful of other minorities. Seriously?! There are so many problems with that argument.

1. Just because you had been wronged by other people does not give you the right to hurt others. That goes for ANY situation. Do onto others as you would like them to do onto you. Basic KINDERGARTEN principles.
2. The long history of injustice against the Africa American community is valid and it certainly can contribute towards the culture and perspective within the community, but it doesn’t mean that you can just wave that around like some magic excuse for everything. You have to treat this group of students as individual perpetrators of violence because that’s what it was.
3. The attitude of the superintendent ("These problems are long-standing and go beyond the school and into the community") pretty much puts the blame and responsibility away from the school administration and onto the shoulders of the community, which isn’t right. Schools have just as much responsibility, if not more because of how many years are spent in school, to properly EDUCATE the kids on what’s right and what’s wrong, including racism.

The comments about the difference between the perspective of African American students and Asian immigrant students have some truth to them, but I think the "model minority" stereotype of the hard-working academic Asian student tends to be of the East Asian background. There are plenty of Southeastern Asians from refugee backgrounds who probably don’t fit all too well with that "optimistic outlook" of America as the land of limitless opportunity. That being said though, I do think that to succeed, marginalized people of every sort need to step out of the self destructive cycle of race and learn to "grab a helping hand [rather than] pull others down". It doesn’t do anyone any good to just sit and complain or lash out against others who have it "better". There are always going to be barriers and obstacles, but unless you take them on with determination, optimism, and willingness to work hard, you won’t get far.

I must laud the activists who got the Asian students to boycott and stand up for the injustice. There are times when you just power through it and times when you have to fight, and it was definitely a time to fight. I really am disappointed by the superintendent’s silence on all this racist violence. What happened to educators taking a role in shaping the kids’ future? What kind of example is this setting for the kids?