Journalist, Author & Syndicated Columnist
I do believe that beauty is in the eyes of the beholder. But it’s clear that for many people, who say these offensive things, they refuse to see beauty in men who they view as inferior. More than a decade ago, I wrote a piece about Asian-American actors. And the response from women was overwhelmingly positive. But several men felt compelled to e-mail the newspaper to inform us that Asian men are ugly and that no one in their right mind would find them sexy.
Too many people have brushed off Lochte-Gate with, “Boys will be boys.” Which makes me question, just what kind of boys are we raising?
My bullies were the worst kind of dude bros: educated men who should’ve known better, but who cloaked their misogyny, racism, jealousy and entitlement with words they thought made them appear hip and clever.
Vincent Chin’s murderers served no jail time. They killed him, but the legal system allowed them to literally get away with murder.
News organizations are making the claim that Korean culture is partially to blame for the Sewol ferry disaster. Some even insist that had these been American children onboard, they would’ve escaped death. Shame on them for blaming the young victims of this tragedy.
Our local Boy Scout troop could’ve had an opportunity to learn that there are repercussions to their actions; and that sometimes, the worst action is in pretending that a wrong never happened. Instead, they learned that if they deny something enough, they can get away with being cruel to youngsters and disrespecting members of their community.
There is no excerpt because this is a protected post.
I thought that all the hoopla surrounding Miley Cyrus’ performance with Robin Thicke on this past weekend’s Video Music Awards would’ve died down by now. But, it hasn’t. And while there has been some fantastic commentary about the meaning of their performance (as it relates to sexism and racism), I was disappointed to see that the majority of comments boiled down to this: Miley Cyrus is a little slut with a flabby rearend.
Someone privately messaged me and asked why I wrote so much about things that had happened in the past. Do I write about it so much? I’ve been writing professionally for the past three decades and I’d estimate that my pieces surrounding race issues encompass less than 1% of everything I’ve ever written.
A while ago, I used to do segments on a local radio station. It was a popular show with a host who was vaguely shock jockish. We got along fine, and it was a good forum to promote the newspaper I worked for. One day, they called me at work and put me on the air live to tell them about some of the music acts coming to town that weekend. They kept me on the line as they began another segment, in which they called a bunch of establishments that were operated by Asian Americans — dry cleaners, Chinese restaurants etc. I would soon find out that the sole purpose of these calls was to make fun of the people speaking accented English.