Tuesday, February 28, 2012

this post is not about jeremy lin

i got a text message from a friend in boston a few weeks back asking me if i'd heard of this kid from harvard named jeremy lin - that he is playing for the knicks and posting up some amazing stats. and i replied, "i work for an agency that is almost 100% asian; he is all i've heard about."

but i will not do a post about jeremy. i think he is getting a little worn out on all the attention. so i won't post on his amazing start in the nba, or his actually pretty funny youtube videos. i won't mention all the racist comments (what is wrong with you espn people?) especially the taunts when he played for harvard. and i'm not gonna review all the funny little puns made out of jeremy's last name. i'm not writing about his attempts to get into stanford or the pressure he got from his family to get a real job. i won't even go into his christianity, and i won't even talk about all the press he's received, (even the new entertainment weekly has a 1 page article about him), or the pride that asian americans feel inside when watching him play. and i definitely won't post a bunch of links to a bunch of articles about him.

nope. this blog is about Laos afterall. so once again, this is not a post about jermey lin.

but here is a pretty good article i found:

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2012/02/22/MN2N1NB2OL.DTL&ao=all

Wednesday, February 15, 2012

bullied

i wonder if the rates change based on the number of asians in the school? i know that this happens quite frequently, but i am surprised by the high numbers. well, this article appeared on the google news service. i would just post the link, but what the heck. here is the full text.

Asian Americans most bullied in US schools:
By Shaun Tandon (AFP) – Oct 28, 2011
WASHINGTON — Asian Americans endure far more bullying at US schools than members of other ethnic groups, with teenagers of the community three times as likely to face taunts on the Internet, new data shows.

Policymakers see a range of reasons for the harassment, including language barriers faced by some Asian American students and a spike in racial abuse following the September 11, 2001 attacks against children perceived as Muslim.

"This data is absolutely unacceptable and it must change. Our children have to be able to go to school free of fear," US Education Secretary Arne Duncan said Friday during a forum at the Center for American Progress think-tank.

The research, to be released on Saturday, found that 54 percent of Asian American teenagers said they were bullied in the classroom, sharply above the 31.3 percent of whites who reported being picked on.

The figure was 38.4 percent for African Americans and 34.3 percent for Hispanics, a government researcher involved in the data analysis told AFP. He requested anonymity because the data has not been made public.

The disparity was even more striking for cyber-bullying.

Some 62 percent of Asian Americans reported online harassment once or twice a month, compared with 18.1 percent of whites. The researcher said more study was needed on why the problem is so severe among Asian Americans.

The data comes from a 2009 survey supported by the US Justice Department and Education Department which interviewed some 6,500 students from ages 12 to 18. Asian Americans are generally defined as tracing ancestry to East Asia, the Indian subcontinent or the South Pacific.

Officials plan to announce the data during an event in New York on bullying as part of President Barack Obama's White House Initiative on Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders.

New Jersey parent Shehnaz Abdeljaber, who will speak at the event, said she was shocked when she saw her son's middle school yearbook in which not only classmates but also a teacher wrote comments suggesting he was a terrorist.

Abdeljaber soon learned that her son had endured similar remarks at a younger age but had kept silent. She complained to the school principal but has since pushed for workshops on bullying that involve teachers and students.

"We need a more creative approach and more interaction with the youth, empowering them to do something rather than just going through the framework of authority," she said.

The Obama administration has put a priority on fighting bullying. In March, the president joined Facebook for an online anti-bullying conference, where he warned that social media was making the problem worse for many children.

Duncan, the education secretary, warned that bullying had serious effects as it can lead to mental and physical health problems including dependence on drugs or alcohol.

Duncan also voiced concern about high rates of bullying at schools against gay and lesbians, an issue that has come into greater focus since a spate of suicides last year among gay teens who were harassed.

"We're seeing folks who somehow seem a little different from the norm bearing the brunt," Duncan said.

"We're trying to shine a huge spotlight on this," he said.

A number of Asian countries have also wrestled with bullying.

Japan stepped up measures in 2006 after at least four youngsters killed themselves in a matter of days and the education minister said he had received an anonymous letter from a bullied student who was contemplating suicide.

Friday, February 10, 2012

debbie spenditnow racist superbowl commercial



this mess aired in michigan during the superbow, and this here is some crazy. where do they get these people to run for public office? does he really think this is okay? and here is the kicker (superbowl pun intended): the girl that is supposed to be speaking with an asian accent here & her attempt at the accent is really bad. she clearly is american; she keeps slipping out of her fake asian accent. what are her friends saying about her on facebook - if they didn't unfriend her already. and what's up with all the weird colors? is that supposed to be bali hai?  i swear, richard and oscar should sue this guy for copyright infringement.



wow. once more, say it together: wow. and whatever you do michigan, don't vote for this goon.

http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2012/02/senate-candidate-under-fire-for-very-disturbing-super-bowl-ad/

thank you alena for making me so painfully aware of this mess.

Friday, February 03, 2012

the following preview has not been approved for appropriate audiences

so i got some questions about the last short movie i posted. it was made by this Lao film company, Lao new wave cinema. they had a movie in the luangpraband film festival and i've posted the preview for their entry below. and although the first 40 seconds of the preview don't show you nothing but who made the film, let me warn you: the 10 seconds after that is a little much. in fact it explodes into a scene of violence reminiscent of some korean films i've seen. and then the preview drops into the usual thai drama fare: scenes of pretty people in everyday situations, a car chase, and someone crying - all with bad pop music overlaying it all.

well, i first heard about the movie from thaan thout karen's blog. link below. she couldn't stay for the whole movie, but she hopes it comes out on dvd because it looked as "slick and professional as anything coming out of hollywood." (i would agree that it mos def looks better than the princess movie... although it ain't outa hollywood.)

http://usambassadortolaos.tumblr.com/

so hurray for Laos! and watch or don't watch. but it ain't approved for all audiences.