A couple of weeks ago, I attended the 2nd Annual Asian Summit here in Cincinnati, presented by the Asian Community Alliance and hosted by Northern Kentucky University. I went with an open mind, not really knowing what to expect. It was good to meet people within the Asian-American community, but there was something missing—young people. So here’s a recap. I hope my coverage encourages you to get involved with similar events in your city.

At the opening session, I scoped out the fruit and doughnuts, then looked around for a table to eat with. A couple of white college students sat at a back table, but I felt that NOT sitting with them was my personal stand against segregation. A bunch of middle-aged Asian women were very glad when I brought out my secret weapon—a brag book of my adorable sons, aged almost three and eight months. Now, if you’ve read my blog at all, you know that my husband is Korean. One of the ladies asked me, “Will you send your sons to Korean school?” I hedged a bit, feeling that decision was better left to hubby.
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Tags: Asian Community Alliance, Asian Summit, chinese, Deepa Iyer, japanese, korean, Macy's, Mr Tanaka, Pawan Dhingra, racism

Paris Hilton has gone through best friends just like she goes clothes so now she’s in search of a new one in her MTV reality tv series, Paris Hilton’s My New BFF.

In the most recent episode, Paris flies off to Tokyo, Japan taking 4 of the contestants with her and leaving the remaining 8 behind. While she’s in Tokyo, the 8 left behind get into a little cat fight: one of the contestants, Onch (Asian male), offered to give one of the other girls a pedicure who then asked if he could really do pedis. Corrie butts in and states in a matter of fact tone “He is Taiwanese“. Talk about being racist. The other girls ended up ganging up on her telling her she was wrong and that racism is so gone. It did get a little out of control and Zui even threatened to stab her. Gg?

Throughout the entire time, Corrie never admitted she was wrong and kept saying that “Asians do nails“. Honestly if she admitted she was wrong it could have been avoided. Now I hope Paris eliminates her, not that she had a chance anyways. If you’ve been keeping up, she’s quite slutty.

Tags: asians, best friends, mtv, my new bff, paris hilton, racism, reality show, taiwan, tv series

Why is it the most important thing for some people is that the candidate has the same religion as you, or talks the same way, or has the same skin color?  Would most of America be happy with a moron they identified with and felt was most similar to them, even if it meant the country was being run into the ground? Do their similarities trump anything, even performance and ability?  And in today’s world where so many people are influenced by mass media and group-think, doesn’t the lack of independent thought result in the breakdown of true democracy? You can’t have real democracy if among the public too many people are bigots, xenophobes, or idiots; at some point the system breaks down that way.  Check out the article below about the problems his campaign is facing in talking to voters who simply can’t bring themselves to vote for a non-White Christian male.  Also, check out this article about The Bradley Effect. Finally, here is a somewhat related Rolling Stone article about what this election is showing about America, not only in people’s hesitancy towards Obama, but also towards Sarah Palin.  Excerpts below.
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Tags: election, mccain, obama, racism