SAJAforum

CONV: ESPN Anchor Kevin Negandhi to debut on SportsCenter

The dreams of a 14-year-old sports fanatic will come true on Friday when ESPN sportscaster Kevin Negandhi makes his debut on SportsCenter.

Negandhi, the first national South Asian sports announcer in the U.S. who spoke at the SAJA convention, joked that his parents will finally believe that he has a real job now.

"My mom still wants me to be a lawyer," he said, laughing.

His upbringing in an Indian household provided Negandhi with a strong work ethic but no role models in his chosen field of sports journalism. He decided to get as much hands-on experience as possible, and had five internships at radio and television stations on his resume by the time he graduated from Temple University.

Negandhi's  trategy was to start his career working in smaller markets, which would give him a chance to fine tune his skills without embarassing himself in front of a large national audience. He worked on developing his own style, an on-air voice that matched his personality. Eventually, he said an anchor has to learn to transfer his own personality on screen.

"You gotta just be yourself," he said. "If you're not yourself, the audience will figure it out."

His first jobs taught him to be aware that things constantly changed in sports. To broaden his expertise, he covered basketball, baseball and football. But his favorite is football, both NFL and college leagues.

"I think college football could be the best sport in America if we had a true playoff system," he said.      

Negandhi said he works on forming relationships with athletes by being the guy who asks them questions that dig deeper. His favorite interview: "The guy who really stands out is Warrick Dunn from the Bucs; he's just a great guy."

PREZ RACE: Clinton, McCain, Obama to address Asian American in virtual town hall

A note from Democratic strategist Toby Chaudhuri: "SAJA members might find this particularly interesting. All the presidential candidates just confirmed their participation in a national forum with Asian American voters scheduled for this evening. The event will be streamed online at Punjabi Community Hour Inc. at http://www.passionfortruthtv.com. (Punjabi Community Hour Inc. and Passion for Truth produces two television channels with programming regarding Sikh issues.) The presidential town hall is historic. I'm including a detailed news advisory below. Please be advised."

MEDIA ADVISORY:
SATURDAY, MAY 17, 2008
CONTACT: Toby Chaudhuri, 978-884-8626 or Naomi Tacuyan, 202-460-2644

CLINTON, OBAMA, McCAIN TO ADDRESS THOUSANDS OF ASIAN AMERICANS AT TOWN HALL FORUM TODAY

With Thousands Of Asian American Voters Gathered And Logged In, Presidential Candidates To Make Their Pitch

WASHINGTON -- Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., and Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., will address thousands of Asian American voters by satellite and teleconference on Saturday. More than 2000 Asian American leaders and activists will gather across the country to discuss solutions to problems facing their community with all the major presidential candidates. Participants plan to gather in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Florida, Michigan, Colorado, New Jersey, Texas, Illinois, Massachusetts and throughout California.

The presidential town hall, sponsored by APIAVote, is historic for Asian Americans who represent the fastest growing minority group in the U.S. Studies show that almost one in five US-born Asian-American voters have donated to a political campaign, larger than any other racial community. More importantly, as a bloc, their votes could make a decisive impact in key states this year.

APIAVOTE PRESIDENTIAL TOWN HALL

SATURDAY, MAY 17, 2008
*All Times Eastern*

7 p.m.              Sen. Hillary Clinton addresses thousands of Asian American voters and answers questions via satellite. Sen. Clinton will be introduced by Calif. State Controller John Chiang.

7:30 p.m.         Sen. John McCain addresses thousands of Asian American voters and answers questions by teleconference. Sen. McCain will be introduced by Calif. State Assemblyman Van Tran.

8 p.m.              Sen. Barack Obama addresses thousands of Asian American voters and answers questions by teleconference. Sen. Obama will be introduced by Rep. Xavier Becerra.

**NOTE: Media representatives interested in watching the forum remotely may do so online. The event will stream live on http://www.imdiversity.com/townhall.asp and http://wwwpassionfortruthtv.com. For more details about the presidential town hall and local events across the country, please visit www.apiavote.org or here.

THE ARTS: EnGendered 2008 Festival - a report

EnGendered 2008, a multi-disciplinary arts festival exploring the complex gender and sexual identities in South Asia was held recently at Lincoln Center in Manhattan. The three-day event presented by the Nayikas Dance Theater Company, was, in the words of founder Myna Mukherjee, “was a conversation between New Delhi and New York”. Through visual arts, performing arts, film and writing, EnGendered encouraged an open dialogue on gender identities and gender roles, the still taboo subject of sex, sexual choice and the intersections of all these with religion and ritual.

The visual arts exhibition Pardah, featuring artists from India, Pakistan, Germany and the US, opened the festival. The works exhibited included paintings, prints, photographs, digital art, installations and the works of the traditional art form Mithila painting.

The opening night titled Linga Sarita (Rivers of Gender) explored the possibilities of interpreting and constructing gender through neo-classical forms of dance, followed by a keynote plenary. The backdrop for the evening was the cityscape of Manhattan seen through the enormous glass wall of the Allen Room, and definitely a world apart from the usual dark curtains or panels printed with advertiser information, and at certain times of the year, a temple shikhara (dome).

ASIAN AMERICA: White House declares annual "Asian/Pacific American Heritage Month"

A note sent by Angie Tang, the Secretary of Labor's regional representative, intergovernmental liaison and spokesperson in the northeast  and Caribbean region. Post your comments below.

The White House
Office of the Press Secretary
April 29, 2008

ASIAN/PACIFIC AMERICAN HERITAGE MONTH, 2008

BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

A PROCLAMATION

     Americans who trace their ancestry to Asia and the Pacific Islands have contributed much to our Nation.  During Asian/Pacific American Heritage Month, we highlight their importance to our great Nation.

     Asian/Pacific Americans have made our country better with their talents and hard work.  Their values and commitment to family and community have helped shape and strengthen America.  These citizens speak many languages, honor countless traditions, and practice different faiths, but they are bound by a shared commitment to freedom and liberty.  The diversity among Asian/Pacific Americans adds to the cultural fabric of our society.

     Asian/Pacific Americans have enriched our culture, excelling in many fields, including education, business, science, technology, government, sports, and the arts.  We especially honor those Asian/Pacific Americans who have answered the call to protect the cause of freedom by serving in our Armed Forces.  These brave men and women set a powerful example for all Americans.

FOOD: Costco, Sam's Club limit rice purchase as costs soar

Hey, New Yorkers, if you're a fan of the countless chicken/lamb-over-rice carts that dot the Manhattan streetscape, you might need to start getting worried. A stomach-full of rice and chicken for only four or five dollars might not be an option for much longer.

As the price of rice soars to an all-time high across the world, America's two big retail stores, Sam's Club and Costco, have decided to limit how much rice customers can purchase because of what they call "recent supply and demand trends" (You can buy four 20 lbs. bags at one time).

From The New York Sun:

“Due to recent supply and demand trends, we are limiting the sale of Jasmine, Basmati and Long Grain White rices to four bags per member visit,” a Wal-Mart spokeswoman, Kristy Reed, said in an e-mailed statement today. “This is effective immediately in all of our U.S. clubs where quantity restrictions are allowed by law.”

The limitation in purchase of rice is the latest reminder of a major challenge that the world is facing, which the World Food Program has called - "a silent tsunami which knows no borders sweeping the world."

The problem of food shortage and rise in costs - first wheat and now rice - has been making headlines over the last several weeks. Increasing food prices had set off alarms among humanitarian groups, which fear that over 100 million people around the world could be pushed into more severe poverty due to increasing food prices.

From the Consumerist:

"You can't eat this every day. It's too heavy," a health care executive from Palo Alto, Sharad Patel, grumbled as his son loaded two sacks of the Basmati into a shopping cart. "We only need one bag but I'm getting two in case a neighbor or a friend needs it," the elder man said.

The Patels seemed headed for disappointment, as most Costco members were being allowed to buy only one bag. Moments earlier, a clerk dropped two sacks back on the stack after taking them from another customer who tried to exceed the one-bag cap.

The price of rice in itself has increased by 60 to 70 percent from what they were a few months ago, according to Markeplace.

What do you think about the rising food costs and the challenges that we face? Please post your thoughts below.

BOOKS: Interview with Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni on "The Palace of Illusions"

Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni’s new novel, The Palace of Illusions is ambitious, to say the least. It is an adaptation of the Mahabharata, the ancient Indian epic which weighs in at a little under 2 million words. The original is set in a man’s world of battle and politics, but Divakaruni’s narrator is Draupadi, the fiery-tongued princess whose main role in the original work is setting off the war that annihilates society. Divakaruni’s vivid imagination and sure command of storytelling turn Draupadi into a complex and ultimately admirable figure while remaining true to the familiar story of the Mahabharata. (Listen to a recent SAJA audio interview with Divakaruni)

Divakaruni is the author of several novels for adults and young adults, most recently The Mirror of Fire and Dreaming and Queen of Dreams (see her personal site). She also teaches creative writing at the University of Houston.

She visited New York last week as part of her book tour and spoke to SAJAforum about her new book: how to make ancient characters sound modern, rooting a powerful female within a patriarchy, and writing in ways that appeal to Hindus and Westerners alike.

Q: Your first books were poetry but you’ve moved on to short stories and novels. Why is that?

Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni: I think I was becoming more and more interested in story, in narrative. And I found that all of my poems were becoming narratives. They were becoming little stories told in verse. And I wanted to explore it through a medium which would allow me more space: stories. Then I got greedy; I wanted more space. I moved into writing novels.

Q: And so for this one you picked one of the longest stories ever told. Why the Mahabharata?

CBD: I think I have a personal connection to it because from the time I was little my grandfather would tell me stories out of the Mahabharata. And so I sort of grew up with it. I thought a lot about it, especially about the women. And I always imagined the inner life of the women because the focus is on the men, on the heroic battles, the politics, all of that. So I wanted to change the focus and look at the lives of the women, especially their internal lives.

PHOTO FORUM: Tibetans in New York, by Albertina d'Urso

The SAJA Photo Forum presents the work of photographers covering South Asia and its global diasporas in order to highlight important but often overlooked stories.

Tibetans in New York

Text and photographs © Albertina d'Urso

At the end of last year I moved to New York city for few months.  One of my goals was to pursue a story on the Tibetan community because I am involved in a long-term project about the Tibetan diaspora.  I had already shot extensively in India and Nepal, and I knew that about 2,000 refugees live in New York, so I was curious to see how the Tibetans could settle in a place so different from their homeland.

The story began the day after I arrived.  I was walking around Soho when my roommate called and said, "Run to Union Square. It's packed with people who may be Tibetans.  I am not sure, but you should come and check."  I recognized them as soon as I arrived.  They were all dressed in traditional customs and were celebrating the Gold Medal awarded to the Dalai Lama by the United States Congress.  If it were not for the skyscrapers in the background, I could forget being in New York. That same evening, I joined them at a fundraising party, where they were all dressed in Western styles, especially the teenagers.  But I was still amazed at how, even if they were not wealthy, they are always thinking of ways to help their needy compatriots back home.

Tibetans in Union Square celebrate the Dalai Lama's Congressional Medal of Honor

Young Tibetans at a fundraising party

GLOBALIZATION: Migrants send $300 billion home each year

A recent World Bank study led by Dilip Ratha says that global remittances--the money that migrants send home--exceeds $300 billion per year. Jason DeParle of The New York Times covered the study, "World Banker and His Cash Return Home":

India ($27 billion), China ($26 billion) and Mexico ($25 billion) are the leading beneficiaries. But in relative terms, small countries gain the most, with some increasing their national incomes by more than 20 percent. Egypt gets more from remittances than it does from the Suez Canal.

More on Ratha’s pioneering work (also view an audio slide show, "Return to Sindhekela"):

When Mr. Ratha reached the World Bank in the early 1990s, most economists saw remittances as small private sums that were irrelevant to development. After years of sending money home, he took a closer look.

Given the scorekeeping at central banks, it was an exercise in forensic accounting.

The International Monetary Fund said the Philippines received $122 million. Mr. Ratha produced an estimate 51 times higher: $6.2 billion. His tallies, first published in 2003, showed that remittances, once dismissed as the equivalent of a rounding error, were nearly three times greater than the world’s combined foreign aid.

“That was a bombshell,” said Kathleen Newland, a founder of the Migration Policy Institute, a Washington research group. “Putting it in that context made people see there was this enormous flow of money into the developing world. Dilip really is the person who put remittances on the map.”

Phil Izzo has more at the WSJ blog Real Time Economics (which also cites Ratha):

The U.S., which was the top immigration country in 2005 with 38.4 million immigrants, is by far the largest source of outflows, with $42 billion in recorded outward flows in 2006. Saudi Arabia ranks as the second largest, followed by Switzerland and Germany. The Mexico-U.S. corridor is the largest migration corridor in the world, the Worlds Bank said, accounting for 10.4 million migrants by 2005.

However, there has been plenty of criticism of remittances. From the Times:

When officials from more 150 countries met in Brussels last summer, remittances figured high on the agenda. Skeptics smell a fad.

“Remittances: the New Development Mantra?” asked an article by Devesh Kapur of the University of Pennsylvania. He sees the money as a palliative that, while at times helpful in easing poverty symptoms, leaves underlying structures unchanged. “If I ask can you name a single country that has developed through remittances, the answer is no — there’s none,” he said.

J-ORGS: AAJA's new Governing Board elected

Some SAJAers and good friends of SAJA are in AAJA's new governing board, which was elected today. Congrats - we look forward to continuing to work with AAJA.

From the press release:

Six new AAJA Governing Board members were elected by the Advisory Board during its meeting in San Francisco March 7. Newly-elected were: Abe Kwok, Arizona chapter; Cheryl Tan, New York chapter; Don Chareunsy, San Diego chapter; Matt Dunn, San Francisco Bay Area chapter; Sharon Chan, Seattle chapter; and Ameet Sachdev, Chicago chapter.

The six will serve a two-year term. The Governing Board ensures that the organization fulfills its mission, meets the needs of its constituencies, and operates legally, effectively, and efficiently. The other members of the Governing Board are the elected National Officers: Jeanne Mariani-Belding, president; Janet Cho, Vice President for Print; Jam Sardar, Vice President for Broadcast; Cynthia Wang, Treasurer; and Doris Truong, Secretary.

More information is available on the Board of Directors page.

Three positions for National Officers are up for election at the UNITY Convention in Chicago this July: President, Vice President for Broadcast, and Treasurer. Their new terms begin on January 1, 2009. Nominations are due March 17.

 

PREZ RACE: Asian American ads need to think of South Asians, too

Almost exactly 10 years ago today, I submitted an essay for NewsWatch Quarterly, a project of the Center for Integration and Improvement of Journalism at San Francisco State University, about the how South Asians get lost in the broad term that is "Asian American." I wrote, in part:

Complaining about the U.S. media's coverage of foreign regions is nothing new, and it is easy to find a paucity of stories about almost any area of the world. But the inadequate coverage of South Asia and its emigres to the U.S. is particularly remiss. For the media, "Asia" too often means East Asia and Southeast Asia, while South Asia--with its nuclear ambitions, growing economic ties to the West and a billion-plus population--is relatively ignored.

Re-reading the piece, "South Asians: The Forgotten Minority," I see a lot has changed in a decade. The amount of coverage about the subcontinent has increased dramatically - thanks to the Pakistan's politics, India's economy, the 9/11 attacks and much more. South Asians have since made much progress in various parts of the American consciousness. I wrote the essay before Jhumpa Lahiri won her Pulitzer; before M.I.A. and Norah Jones released their first albums; before M. Night Shyamalan made "The Sixth Sense" and Kal Penn had even earned his first small parts on "Buffy the Vampire Slayer"; and before movies like "Monsoon Wedding," "Bend It Like Beckham" and "The Namesake" made waves in some U.S. circles. Several South Asian business execs run a variety of companies with household names (Citigroup, PepsiCo, Ethan Allen). And, as I discussed with a group of South Asian actors (Aasif Mandvi, Manu Narayan, Kavi Ladnier) on Friday (see notes and audio here), there are a lot more opportunities in TV and film than ever before (but there are never enough, of course).

But I am writing today to bring attention to the fact that to some (just some) Asian Americans, South Asians still don't count as Asian Americans.

HEALTH: The problem of binge drinking among young South Asians

If you or your children fall in the age bracket given to binge drinking and you’ve considered yourself beyond such predispositions, think again. Rupa Dev’s Generation X-cess in India Currents warns us about the “work hard, play hard” fallacy (more on Dev at the end of this post).

“Work hard, play hard” is the most well-known term that categorizes the lifestyles of many college students. These days, we might more appropriately refer to it as “the binge lifestyle.”

Author and nutritionist Sylvia Escott-Stump defines “the binge lifestyle” as one that “promotes a lack of balance. Usually it entails overwork, overeating, and overplay, with excessive eating, drinking, shopping, and negative health behaviors.”

So what exactly qualifies as binge drinking? The National Institute of Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism defines binge drinking as a pattern of drinking that brings a person’s blood alcohol concentration to 0.08 grams percent or above. Typically, this happens when men consume more than four drinks and women consume more than three drinks in the span of two hours. Statistics show that about 75 percent of the alcohol consumed by adults in the United States is in the form of binge drinking.

A 2006 research project titled “Switchovers: Indian American Drinking Culture At Cornell” looked at 12 Indian Americans students who started drinking after abstaining for their first year in an attempt to understand the change. Dev adds that Indian parents are unaware of their children drinking, let alone having a problem, thereby making matters worse for the youth.

ELECTIONS: Report finds discrimination against Asian-American voters in 2006 elections

[ SAJAforum's RESOURCES FOR 2008 PRESIDENTIAL RACE ]

A new report released yesterday by the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund (AALDEF) says that Asian Americans voters faced discrimination in the 2006 elections due to improper voter identification checking.

AALDEF's report, Asian American Access to Democracy in the 2006 Elections, documents violations of the Voting Rights Act and Help America Vote Act (HAVA) and other incidents of anti-Asian voter disenfranchisement in 25 cities in New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Illinois, Washington, Virginia, Maryland, and the District of Columbia.

The full report is available here | press release is here. Press contacts: Glenn D. Magpantay, staff attorney, gmagpantay[at]aaldef.org or Margaret Fung, executive director, mfung[at]aaldef.org.

The South Asian Angle

In AALDEF's survey, 40% of Pakistani, 38% of Bangladeshi, and 17% of Indian voters were limited English proficient. One-third of Urdu and one-third of Bengali-speakers stated that they needed the assistance of interpreters or translated voting materials in order to vote. Although only 17% of Asian Indian voters needed language assistance, most of these were Punjabi speaking Indians.

In Brooklyn, New York, a South Asian voter's name was missing from the list of registered voters, even though he had voted at the same poll site for years. He attempted to complete a provisional ballot but may not have filled it out correctly because no Bengali-speaking interpreters were present to assist him. The New York City Board of Elections should translate voter registration forms and provide Bengali interpreters at poll sites in Queens and Brooklyn, and Urdu interpreters in Brooklyn.

From p. 17 in the report,

In New York, 83% of voters who were required to show identification were not legally required to do so. At one poll site in Sunnyside, Queens, at least twenty voters complained that they were required to show ID and were offered no explanation as to why ID was required. In Manhattan's Chinatown, one poll worker demanded identification from all Asian American voters waiting in line. In "Brooklyn, three South Asian voters were required to show ID, even though they had registered several years ago and had voted in multiple elections."

And here's something from the section on the poorly-trained poll workers. Note the last part:

Poll workers were hostile towards Asian American and limited English proficient voters. In our survey, 30 Asian American voters complained that poll workers were "rude or hostile." Other poll workers were unhelpful or unknowledgeable about proper election procedures, prompting 59 Asian American voters to complain. In Arlington, VA, a Filipino American voter complained about a white female poll worker who said to him, "Do you know how to read?" while the voter was casting an absentee ballot before Election Day. In Brooklyn, NY, an Arab American voter in Kensington complained that poll workers continuously stared at his traditional clothing and beard, making him feel uncomfortable.

Some poll workers made disparaging remarks about minority language assistance. One poll worker in Woodside, NY said that she thought it was a waste of the taxpayers' money to pay for so many interpreters and for the multiple copies of materials in different languages. Another poll worker commented that she did not think they should be required to provide multilingual materials because voters "should learn English." Poorly trained and inefficient poll workers resulted in chaotic poll sites that deterred voters from exercising their right to vote.

BOOKS: Shashi Tharoor's India - an interview with the author

Shashi Tharoor dwells on the good side of India in his new book The Elephant, the Tiger and the Cell Phone, but is not afraid to face the bad. The collection of essays begins with an animal parable — itself an ancient Indian tradition — representing India’s incredible growth over recent years and the world of possibilities that a booming economy opens. Nonetheless, especially in the first essays, the spectre of intolerance in Indian society frustrates him. He writes, “I am proud that Hinduism is a civilization and not a dogma” and has sharp words for those who would make it a dogma. What he, like Amartya Sen, a Harvard economist who has written on Indian culture, finds most remarkable about Indian culture is its historical ability to absorb traditions and ideas, and to debate thorny issues. (Tharoor profiles Sen in the book.)

Tharoor is a relentless commentator and the range of the 67 essays is astounding, given that his day job until last February, UN Under-Secretary-General for Communications and Public Information, not to mention being a candidate for Secretary-General, would seem to allow little time for such prolific writing. Among the articles are musings on Indian culture for example the penchant for renaming streets and whole cities) with a healthy dose of politics, what it means to be from Kerala, being an Indian abroad and of course cricket. He has profiled some remarkable people including Former Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, the mathematician Srinivasa Ramanujan, the painter M.F. Husain and his own father, Chandran Tharoor.

As brilliant as each essay is individually, the book is a bit diffuse. Tharoor has clearly written the essays for different readerships (some appeared in Indian news outlets and others in Western ones) and though the same elegant prose carries through all of them, some will be rather opaque to American readers and some will strike South Asian readers as a little basic or even preachy. Nonetheless, collections of essays are meant to be thumbed through so this is hardly a fault.

CHINA: The "Beijing Brown" Connection

[Adding a China category to SAJAforum to occasionally track items about the country that, along with the U.S., has the most influence on South Asia as a whole.]

SepiaMutiny has an interesting post about Indian culture in China, building on this short PTI report, "Bharatanatyam Gaining Popularity in China."

After Bollywood films, classical Indian dance has caught the imagination of the Chinese, with a young woman actively promoting Bharatnatyam among her compatriots, especially the tiny-tots.

For 33-year-old Jin Shan Shan, a Jawaharlal Nehru University alumnus, it has always been a passion to become an exponent of Bharatnatyam. She has established a school for Bharatnatyam here. [PTI photo of Jin and her daughter, Jessie.]

Among the 90+ comments, this one caught my eye:

ASIAN AMERICA: Kenneth Eng arrested, takes credit for Virginia Tech massacre

NYU student Kenneth Eng, he of the black-people-hating persuasion (see our earlier post), is rumored to have been arrested. Here's the sole report, from a blogger with Wired News...

Specifically, he's been charged with the rather vague sounding crime of 'menacing.' In addition to saying that he would have gone on a shooting rampage at NYU except "couldn't afford a gun," Eng has apparently threatened the life of a neighbor, even going so far as to creep onto her property brandishing a hammer.

The timing of his arrest was meant to coincide with this year's NYU graduation, which happened on Thursday. They wanted him under lock and key, just to be sure.

We'll have to wait and see how accurate this report is; but the news was also given to me by an instructor at NYU, who told me Eng's inclinations were far darker than what's been reported. He apparently threatened to sexually assault the daughter of a dean, and had physically assaulted classmates on several occasions. The Village Voice has this report about a YouTube video he posted in the wake of the gun massacre at Virginia Tech, in which he aims for martyrdom by association:

"Good morning, America," says an exuberant Eng from his New York apartment, "I'd just like to say that I just read about the Virginia Tech incident and it was the funniest thing I ever read in my life." The video was pulled, and then reposted a week later. But now, Eng tells the Voice that he has something else to say about Cho Seung-hui's bloody rampage in Virginia: He wants credit for it.

Eng likes to believe that his own hate-filled writings about non-Asians motivated Cho, and as far as we can tell, he's serious. Eng also claims to "admire" Cho for the worst individual mass-murder in American history, and tells the Voice that he, at one time, planned to go on his own killing spree while he was a student at NYU, but couldn't afford a firearm.

[snip]

...Eng believes he understands why Cho felt compelled to commit the murders and applauds him for doing so. "A part of me wishes I was Cho," says Eng, who is the same age as the murderer, 23. "He is my hero."

ASIAN AMERICA: Top 10 Companies for Asian Americans

DiversityInc magazine has published its list of "Top 10 Companies for Asian Americans."

How are companies recruiting, retaining and promoting Asian Americans? How are they using Asian-American employee-resource groups and top talent to reach this fast-growing community? Which companies are having the most success answering these questions?
The DiversityInc Top 10 Companies for Asian Americans.

Here are some key points about the Top 10 Companies for Asian Americans:

 

• An average of 11 percent of new hires are Asian American, compared with 9.5 percent for The 2007 DiversityInc Top 50 Companies for Diversity^�. Nationally, Asian Americans are 4.5 percent of the adult U.S. work force.*
• An average of 9 percent of their managers are Asian American, compared with 7 percent for the Top 50. Nationally, Asian Americans are 4.3 percent of managers.* And an average of 11 percent of management promotions went to Asian Americans, compared with 9 percent for the Top 50.
• An average of 12 percent of the top 10 percent highest-paid women in these companies are Asian American, compared with 8 percent for the Top 50.
• Forty-three percent of managers in these companies participate in mentoring programs, compared with a 31 percent average for the Top 50.
  <snip>

PUBLICIST: Carolynn Johnson - cjohnson[at]diversityinc.com

The top three companies are Cummins, Ernst & Young and Novartis. See the full list of the 10 companies here. Please post your comments below.

MEDIA WATCH: NYT "Styles" section needs a diversity - and geography - lesson

In January 2007, we covered a cover story in the New York Times "Education" supplement that wrote about Asian Americans in U.S. colleges, but chose to ignore South Asians among them. Quoting ourselves:

It strikes me as classic American blindness to the diversity within diversity stories and the presumption that Asia means East Asia. I am not saying that every mention of Asians needs to be broken down into subgroups. I just think this race story comes up short for not being truly representative.

Well, two months later, it's the "Sunday Styles" section that needs a diversity and geography lesson. It ran a cover story called "Trying to Crack the Top 100," about Asian Americans and their lack of success in pop music and shows like "American Idol."

There are Asian-American stars in sports, movies, television and classical music. But the “Asian thing” is what Mr. Lee and many other aspiring Asian-American singers say largely accounts for the lack of Asian-American pop stars. People in the music industry, including some executives, have no ready explanation, but Asian-American artists and scholars argue that the racial stereotypes that hobble them as a group — the image of the studious geek, the perception that someone who looks Asian must be a foreigner — clash with the coolness and born-in-the-U.S.A. authenticity required for American pop stardom.

You can guess where this is going: No mention of South Asians in the piece - struggling or otherwise. This despite the fact that the current #1 album (since Feb. 17) in the country (see graphic at right, from the Billboard chart) is by a South Asian American named Norah Jones (see her Billboard history, including three #1 albums) and one of the most visible and successful contestants on  "American Idol" is 17-year-old  Sanjaya Malakar (who has done at least as well as better than the East Asian "Idol" contestant featured in the article, Paul Lee).

And in yet another sign that the writer and the section should be reading more pop culture news, the piece quotes an expert - “We don’t have BET,” said Mr. Hong of ImaginAsian. “We don’t have Telemundo, to have these artists be taken seriously.” -  without mentioning the recent troubles facing the three networks that aimed to fill that niche: MTV Desi, MTV Chi and MTV K (all part of the cuts at MTV World and various MTV franchises). 

Either the NYT should switch to using "East Asian" exclusively for such stories, or should be more inclusive going forward.

Read this NYT piece here. Read the NYT education piece here. Read about Norah Jones on "60 Minutes" here (I don't think whether Jones, whose father is famed sitar player Ravi Shankar, "feels" South Asian or Asian American should enter into the picture here - the NYT story had references to "Asians of mixed race").

What do YOU think? Post your comments below, please - and we will pass them onto various editors at the paper. Or write to sree[at]sree.net

[ PLEASE NOTE: All opinions expressed in SAJAforum do not necessarily reflect those of SAJA or its Board. ]

CONTROVERSY: Kenneth Eng's "Why I Hate Blacks"

A February 23 column in AsianWeek (circulation: 48,000+) by Kenneth Eng has created a huge uproar among Asian-American community leaders, politicians such as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the Asian American Journalists Association. The column, "Why I Hate Blacks," is not nearly as ironic as I thought it might be; it's a straight-out, racially-supremacist diatribe that claims the following:

• Asians are superior to blacks
• Blacks are weak-willed (eg., tolerating 300 years of slavery before deciding to "fight back")
• 90% of blacks exhibit bigotry towards Asians

The entire piece is meant to justify why Asians should discriminate against blacks. The entire column can be seen here, in pdf format. Here are some excerpts:

"Blacks hate us. Every Asian who has ever come across them knows that they take almost every opportunity to hurl racist remarks at us."

"Contrary to media depictions, I would argue that blacks are weak-willed. They are the only race that has been enslaved for 300 years. It is unbelievable that it took them that long to fight back. On the other hand, we slaughtered the Russians in the Russo-Japanese War."

"Blacks are easy to coerce. This is proven by the fact that so many of them, including Reverend Al Sharpton, tend to be Christians. Yet, at the same time, they spend much of their time whining about how much they hate "the whites that oppressed them. Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't Christianity the religion that the whites forced upon them?"

EDUCATION: NYT on Asians at Berkeley

Today's New York Times Education Life supplement has a cover story on Asian Americans in big colleges and the debate over affirmative action: "The Asian Campus." The tag line on the print cover says: "At 41 percent Asian, Berkeley could be the new face of merit-based admissions. The problem for everybody else: Lots less room at elite colleges."

That 41 percent compares to 24 at Stanford; 18 at Harvard; 13 at Princeton; 27 at MIT; 13 at Columbia and 22 at Rutgers. The overall percentage of Asians in this country is just 5 percent.

Below you will find excerpts from the story and links to some of the charts and graphics from it.

Meanwhile, take a look at this photo montage of Berkeley students. It's what ran with the online story, a cropped version of a bigger montage on the supplement's cover. Not a single South Asian in this version, though there's a small photo of a South Asian-looking young woman on the cover. The text of the story is filled with references to East Asia, the Pacific and East Asian immigrants. None of the examples and interviews are of South Asian students or parents. It strikes me as classic American blindness to the diversity within diversity stories and the presumption that Asia means East Asia. I am not saying that every mention of Asians needs to be broken down into subgroups. I just think this race story comes up short for not being truly representative.

The only two desi mentions themselves are problematic:

A little more than half of Asian freshmen at Berkeley are Chinese, the largest group, followed by Koreans, East-Indian/Pakistani, Filipino and Japanese.

[ Note the use of "East Indian," a term the SAJA Stylebook warns not to use.]

Dr. Birgeneau [Berkeley's Chancellor] agrees on at least one point: “I think we’re now at the point where the category of Asian is not very useful. Koreans are different from people from Sri Lanka and they’re different than Japanese. And many Chinese-Americans are a lot like Caucasians in some of their values and areas of interest.”

[ So if a (the?) major source in the story points out that Asians are diverse, why doesn't the reporter pay attention? ]

Anyone know the percentage of Berkeley students who are South Asian? Please post in the comments section below, along with other reactions to the story - which I found informative and interesting; my objection is to how it went about illustrating the story and picking sources. I complain regularly about South Asians being lost in Asian stories; see this essay I wrote in 1998, "South Asians: The Forgotten Minority," I don't think much has changed since then. Would love to hear your thoughts.

More from this NYT story below.