Stream of Reading (Prepare to be Forwarded) – An Archive of What I'm Reading
Many Times readers have taken issue with two letters in this week’s Travel section, which criticized a Nov. 27 article about National Park sites that address issues of race and ethnicity in America’s history. The letters employed cultural stereotypes to suggest that the mass internment of Japanese Americans during World War II was justified, and…
“The interned Japanese were housed, fed, protected and cared for.” This is some kind of bullshit. On Sunday, the Los Angeles Times published two letters from readers arguing that the forced mass removal and incarceration of thousands of Japanese Americans during World War II was necessary and justified. The letters, published in the paper’s print…
Note to readers: Two letters published in the L.A. Times Travel section in print on Sunday, Dec. 11, and here online did not meet editorial standards. Our Readers’ Representative will address this issue shortly. Japanese internment I see that writer Carolina A. Miranda has attached herself to the “I feel-good” contingent that feels sorry for the…
On an early morning in May, my fellow Chinatown residents and I were trudging through our day when a horse cart full of food broke through a gated barrier on the edge of the neighborhood. The sky was gray. All of us, hungry and abandoned, rushed toward the cart. I watched as faster people leaped…
Some 70 years ago, this was the Asian stereotype. (Russell Lee, July 1942, Twin Falls, Idaho. Library of Congress) For those who doubt that racial resentment lingers in this nation, Asian Americans are a favorite talking point. The argument goes something like this: If “white privilege” is so oppressive — if the United States is so hostile…
Steve Bannon, the man President-elect Donald Trump has chosen to be his chief strategist, expressed dismay at the number of tech execs who are immigrants from Asia. But Trump, who has pledged to build a wall along the U.S. border with Mexico to keep people out, has said he wants immigrants educated at Ivy League universities and therefore capable of…
Sigh. Another year, and another group of pop idols dressed as Nazis. In the past, Asian pop groups have gotten in trouble for wearing Nazi inspired uniforms (here, here, uh, and here). Back in 2008, for example, one Japanese idol group got in trouble when its members nominated Adolf Hitler as a “great person” on…
Enlarge this image South Korean adoptee Adam Crapser poses with his 1-year-old daughter, Christal, in the family’s living room in Vancouver, Wash., in 2015. Crapser, who was flown to the U.S. 37 years ago and adopted by an American couple at age 3, has been ordered deported back to South Korea. Gosia Wozniacka/AP hide…
Actress Madeline Kahn was yelling at me to take action, but I was too blinded by my own anger to listen. “Speak! Speak! Why don’t you speak?” Kahn screamed in a scene from “Young Frankenstein.” The clip is spliced into the now infamous “O’Reilly Factor” segment after Fox News correspondent Jesse Watters asks an elderly…
“Asian women are not” is an installation displaying 100 posters that read “Asian women are not” followed by whatever online submissions were received by 100 different women. The army of posters served to list and communicate disgusting Asian woman stereotypes to passerbyers and drivers. Source: Olivia Park Asian Women Are Not