Minority Report

On a Happier Note

The Dashboard Widgets in Apple's new OSX Tiger are really friggin' cool - not just the functions which are readily available on Windows platform, but the design, look, and feel just makes you the envy of all the other people in the computer lab. I especially like the dictionary/thesuarus (no more crappy MS Word dictionary!) and the weather forecaster with detailed graphics. No plans yet to download the Star Wars line webcam for San Jose.

Also really cool feature is the screensaver that utilizes RSS news feeds. I've got mine set to my favorite source, the New York Times... Absolutely no chance I will switch to a PC other than for work...

Oops. Mustn't Upset the "Authenticity Police"

There's an old joke about how South Asians are like crabs in a pot - as soon as one climbs up, the others pull him down. Lurking in the corners of this blog are my very own South Asian crabs. They tend to leave me alone for the most part but occasionally when I get out of line, they appear from the shadows to righteously tear me down. In this case, it's because I dare to criticize the civil rights movement. Ordinarily, I would ignore this kind of thing - it's just your typical "hater" attitude - except that there's some hypocrisy and arrogance that they themselves need to recognize.

The best demonstration of their "crabbiness," if you will, is that despite their ambitious effort to be contrarian, they actually don't contradict the point that I am making.

I agree with the premise that national groups need to better leverage and be more in touch with the grassroots.  In my line of work, I see the effects of the disconnect between local and national all the time. 

I don't actually claim to be a "grassroots guru,"- I am only pointing out that one reason why the Asian American groups aren't taken more seriously is that they don't seem to have very many followers. In politics, numbers (or at least the perception of numbers) is everything. I know from past experience working with national APA leaders on "rapid resonse networks" that most of them didn't have the capacity to facilitate a national response - this wasn't just a function of lack of resources, but also lack of interest. The national APA leaders I worked with tended to distrust local leadership and chose not to invest in building a dedicated network of responders. This suggests that the lack of a grassroots network is at least partially a failure of leadership. My detractor  rationalizes this failure as the national groups coming from the "old civil rights" framework. To me, that simply is no excuse - if you are not results-oriented, especially when it comes to civil rights, what good are you?

The argument that I have with my detractors most is the positioning of themselves as the authorities on what constitutes an authentic grassroots network. In the South Asian community, authentic and grassroots have become codewords for social class, i.e. you can be neither authentic nor grassroots unless you hail from, work in, and work for the working class.

They make this transparently clear by attacking my future job, which is in fact with a large corporation. There are fewer things more mean-spirited than begrudging a person's living. Having worked for five years for a scandalously low nonprofit salary, I'm be the last person to begrudge anyone wanting to be paid a salary that would allow them to gain the things that they want in life.

Ultimately, this is nothing more than a cheap smear and red herring to distract from the uncovenient truth that I worked for five years as the head of a national civil rights group and I spent another five years on the board of another national civil rights group. These individuals apparently believe that a person's life and values can be defined and determined by where they choose to work. With ten years invested in civil rights, I'm not that easily defined.

Which brings me to the next point where my detractors suggest that grassroots mobilization on the computer is plain "out-of-touch." They might want to mention that to Joe Trippi and the guys behind MoveOn.org. I'm no expert, but I know that success is determined by getting results. Getting results is a function of getting people to respond. Who responds is less important than the fact that they respond, therefore a successful grassroots network is a network that can reliably respond, regardless of what they do for a living.

My detractor finds the suggestion that blogs mobilizing people is laughable, however, you can find truth in googling. Look how many times the HOT 97-incident is mentioned by a blog versus an APA civil rights group. Or even the Power 99-incident. Blogs and email sent by individuals, not organizations, were the primary drivers of successful action. This isn't me claiming credit for either - the individuals responsible responded more quickly than the civil rights groups. To deny their power is to deny an important vehicle for action. Look at Trent Lott - he was brought down by blogs, not organizations.

The bottom line is that nothing is black and white. The tired old paradigms are the ones pushed by the "authenticity police" who are good at defending the status quo and attacking those who would question its underlying assumptions.

Ultimately, you have to question the motives and priorities of my detractors, who claim zealously that they work actively in the civil rights movement. Aren't their energies better focused there, as a reformer, rather than attacking the views of a former civil rights advocate sitting on the sidelines typing away into a small, unread blog? As someone else notably said on their blog, "my thoughts are my own for whatever that gets me."

The Little Asian American Emperors

Reader MC points out the unshocking bad news:

A pioneer study on the representation of Asian Pacific Americans on television reveals a dearth of quality roles for APAs in prime time
programming.

The percentage of regular APA characters on prime time television amounts to less than half of the actual APA population in the United States.

APA regular characters are often absent from programs set in cities with high APA populations, such as San Francisco and Los Angeles, or severely under-represented in places like Hawaii and New York City.

APA regular characters on prime time television generally feature less prominently than other characters, as demonstrated by their significantly lower screen times.

On average, non-APA regular characters have four times as many romantic or familial relationships as APA regular characters. APA regular characters are generally absent from prime time situational comedies that feature families.

Click for the full report. While the news that you can't find Asian American actors is hardly shocking, what IS shocking is how long Asian American civil rights groups have been working on this issue without any progress at all. When I left professional civil rights in 1999, the major Asian American civil rights groups were just getting started on this. A report was produced that showed the shocking absence of minorities on television. Minority groups staged "brown-outs" and "black-outs" of television in protest. Meetings were held with network executives. Norm Mineta came in on behalf of Asian Americans.

So what is shocking is that five years later, the national APA groups are still issuing reports with exactly the same findings that we had before (well, with perhaps more precision). Clearly, more needs to be done than to issue an annual report complaining about how there's been no progress. Network executives aren't afraid of reports.

What frustrated me the most about the national Asian American civil rights groups was their sluggishness in responding to incidents that demanded their attention. It took several months to get the APA groups to respond strongly to the campaign finance scandal in 1996. When Wen Ho Lee was wrongly accused of spying for the Chinese government, I remember offering my organization's support to one of the national Chinese American organizations, who ended up biting their tongue because they didn't want to criticize a Democratic Administration. Can you imagine it? It's shocking - leaving one of your community members to wallow needlessly in a prison cell because you're more concerned about your own image with the Administration.

What makes this even more comical and ironic is that Asian Americans are often sterotyped as avoiding conflict - time and again, the national leaders do the same thing. I think the avoidance of conflict, however, is not due to a stereotyped behavior but because the reality is that these groups don't really represent anyone. They stake a claim to representing Asian Americans, but these little emperors are wearing no clothes. How many Asian Americans have heard of these organizations? Moreover, if they were to put out the call for action, how many Asians would actually respond? I think there was a time when the absence of Asian Americans from the national fold gave these groups instant credibility, however, that time has now long since past. Unfortunately, they still have a distaste for grassroots organizing and politics despite the fact that therein lies the only real power that they can ever realize.

How do you convince a Congressperson to change their position unless you have constituents in their district? How can you convince a company to change its practices unless you have a lock on some of their customers?

The recent successes in Asian American advocacy aren't the result of leadership by Asian American national groups, but by grassroots action generated by blogs and email from regular people. The Asian American groups have tried to stake a claim to that grassroots energy, but they no more control it than you or I do. That's why when it comes to something other than racist comments on a radio station, they can't generate the letters and outrage needed to make a real change.

The failure of Asian American groups to sufficiently invest in grassroots infrastructure and communication means that APAs will forever be toothless when it comes to real needs. That will be true until some group spontaneously realizes this deficiency and makes amends - that group will end up leapfrogging these old dinosaurs. I hope that day comes soon. I'd like to see some goddamn Asian American actors on TV.

How Hate Crimes Occur

There are many people, including many South Asians who believe that racial slurs and comments are essentially harmless. That we ought to merely consider them 'jokes' and get on with our lives. My argument is that slurs serve to dehumanize people and the danger is that once someone is dehumanized enough, it becomes possible to pursue violent acts against them. Bob Herbert makes my case in today's Times providing one insight as to how US forces are making the situation worse for themselves and for Americans as a whole:

Mr. Delgado's background is unusual. He is an American citizen, but because his father was in the diplomatic corps, he grew up overseas. He spent eight years in Egypt, speaks Arabic and knows a great deal about the various cultures of the Middle East. He wasn't happy when, even before his unit left the states, a top officer made wisecracks about the soldiers heading off to Iraq to kill some ragheads and burn some turbans.

"He laughed," Mr. Delgado said, "and everybody in the unit laughed with him."

The officer's comment was a harbinger of the gratuitous violence that, according to Mr. Delgado, is routinely inflicted by American soldiers on ordinary Iraqis. He said: "Guys in my unit, particularly the younger guys, would drive by in their Humvee and shatter bottles over the heads of Iraqi civilians passing by. They'd keep a bunch of empty Coke bottles in the Humvee to break over people's heads."

He said he had confronted guys who were his friends about this practice. "I said to them: 'What the hell are you doing? Like, what does this accomplish?' And they responded just completely openly. They said: 'Look, I hate being in Iraq. I hate being stuck here. And I hate being surrounded by hajis.' "

"Haji" is the troops' term of choice for an Iraqi. It's used the way "gook" or "Charlie" was used in Vietnam.

Mr. Delgado said he had witnessed incidents in which an Army sergeant lashed a group of children with a steel Humvee antenna, and a Marine corporal planted a vicious kick in the chest of a kid about 6 years old. There were many occasions, he said, when soldiers or marines would yell and curse and point their guns at Iraqis who had done nothing wrong.

He said he believes that the absence of any real understanding of Arab or Muslim culture by most G.I.'s, combined with a lack of proper training and the unrelieved tension of life in a war zone, contributes to levels of fear and rage that lead to frequent instances of unnecessary violence.

It's pretty easy to kick a six-year old if they're a "raghead" or "haji" instead of a human being.

The 101.5 FM Campaign

South Asian American Leaders of Tomorrow (SAALT) has initiated a letter-writing campaign to 101.5FM. They offer some helpful tips on what to ask for in your letter. Be sure to send a copy of your letter to them at [email protected].

• Meet with community leaders representing Asian, South Asian and immigrant groups in the New Jersey area about this incident, and then on a regular basis to understand the concerns of the community.
• Apologize on the air and on your website for the offensive portions of the broadcast.
• Take disciplinary action against the deejays [Carton and Rossi].
• Take active measures towards providing diversity and cultural competency training for all current and future management and employees of your station.
• Develop clear written policies against the use of slurs, bigotry and hate speech and how your station will respond to future incidents similar to the April 25th broadcast.
• Provide equal time: air a public forum in which Asian community leaders can respond to or address the offensive portions of the broadcast and their implications on the air.
• Commit to building understanding among the diverse communities in New Jersey through regular public access programming that is focused on Asian/South Asian and immigrant communities, and forums and cross-cultural conversations with various ethnic groups in the New Jersey area.
• Create a diversity committee comprising of community members and radio staff to promote diversity and tolerance in the workplace.

Given the program manager's position, I doubt letters alone are going to do it. This isn't Hot 97 where the radio company had positioned itself as a station committed to the urban community. This is a station that hired these guys specifcally to offend people.

SAALT's ultimately going to have to do more than angry letters. Best options - embarass them a little by getting the Republican gubernatorial candidates to disavow the broadcast; squeeze them financially by going after advertisers; and squeeze them legally by complaining to the FCC and the FEC (after all, these guys were essentially suggesting that it would be wrong for Edison's voters to vote for one candidate).