Tag Archives: Asian American

Voices

OPINION: Bringing Affirmative Action Back to Washington State Is a Step in the Right Direction

by Maryam Noor

Last month, Gov. Jay Inslee signed an executive order to rescind Directive 98-01, a part of 23-year-old legislation in Washington banning affirmative action policies in public sector employment and education. Inslee called the Directive “overly restrictive.” He also announced a new executive order that calls for increased diversity in public sector contracting and institutions of higher education. 

Continue reading OPINION: Bringing Affirmative Action Back to Washington State Is a Step in the Right Direction →
Voices

OPINION: Lunar New Year in the Seattle Asian American Diaspora

by Amanda Ong

Like many Chinese Americans of the diaspora, I have never spoken the dialects of my family with any fluency. There were the words I knew only in Chinese to speak in public without anyone understanding, like “that’s cheap” in Cantonese, ho pang, or “too expensive” in Shanghainese, gesu. There were the words we used at home because they were intimate to us, like pet names, but there were never words that flowed into full sentences, conversations, articulate thoughts. Still, I always knew the language of food. And there is no time that is more important for food than the Lunar New Year. Long noodles are for a long life, whole fish is for abundance, egg dumplings are for money, mandarin oranges are like gold. 

Continue reading OPINION: Lunar New Year in the Seattle Asian American Diaspora →
News

Asian American News Anchor Criticized for Being ‘Very Asian,’ Turned Message Into AAPI Unity

by Patranya Bhoolsuwan

This article is part of a special project between the International Examiner and the South Seattle Emerald to produce content in 2022 addressing Asian and Pacific Islander racism and resilience. This content was made possible by a grant from the Seattle Human Services Department.

Unity took a #VeryAsian turn earlier this month when an Asian American TV news anchor turned a viewer’s comment she called “ugly and racist” into something quite beautiful and amazing.

On New Year’s Day, KSDK-TV’s Michelle Li posted a video of herself listening to a voicemail from an unidentified woman who had watched a news segment on traditional New Year’s Day dinners. In that segment, Li, who is of Korean descent, made the comment that she “ate dumpling soup. That’s what a lot of Korean people do.”

In the voicemail, the viewer left a message complaining about the news segment, saying, in part, “I kind of take offense to that, because what if one of your white anchors said, ‘Well, white people eat this on New Year’s Day.’ I don’t think it was very appropriate that she said that, and she was being very Asian.” The viewer went on to say, “She can keep her Korean to herself. All right, sorry. It was annoying.”

Continue reading Asian American News Anchor Criticized for Being ‘Very Asian,’ Turned Message Into AAPI Unity →
Community

CID Saturday Food Walk Features Small Businesses and Delicious Eats

1 Comment

by Amanda Ong

This Saturday, Nov. 27, is the annual Chinatown-International District (CID) Small Business Saturday Food Walk. From 11 a.m. to 4 p.m., you can visit a variety of small CID businesses to find offerings from retail to food, with each participating with a selection of treats for only $6. The CID Food Walk features items for dozens of CID businesses — from egg rolls and hum bao at ChuMinh Tofu Vegan Deli to cream puffs at Beard Papa’s and discounted merchandise at the Wing Luke Museum. 

The Small Business Saturday Food Walk is an event held by the Chinatown-International District Business Improvement Association (CIDBIA), a nonprofit organization based in the CID that does work in public safety, sanitation, marketing, communications, neighborhood events, and advocacy. It is one of 10 Business Improvement Associations throughout the city. During the event, the CIDBIA will be hosting a table at Hing Hay Park where you can ask questions, find recommendations, and receive a bag of small goodies. 

“It’s a really good opportunity to just highlight collectively the entire neighborhood, and call out to all the great things that we have besides just a certain cuisine of food,” said Connie Au-Yeung, communications and marketing manager at CIDBIA, in an interview with the South Seattle Emerald. “There’s drinks, and there’s different pastries and retail items, and a really great variety within Chinatown, Japantown, Little Saigon.”

Continue reading CID Saturday Food Walk Features Small Businesses and Delicious Eats →
Arts & Culture

24-Hour Asian American Play Festival Aims to Diversify Asian Stories in Theatre

by Amanda Ong

The oldest Asian American theatre group in the Pacific Northwest will put on a 24-hour play festival this Saturday, Nov. 13. Pork Filled Productions’ Resilience! An AAPI 24-Hour Play Festival will showcase seven 10-minute plays, conceived, written, rehearsed, and performed all within 24 hours. Each play will be put on by a team of distinguished Asian American writers, directors, and actors. The online production will be livestreamed on Youtube. 

Pork Filled Productions was founded in Seattle in 1998 as an Asian American sketch comedy group dedicated to blending community activism with theatre. While their genres have expanded in years since to include science fiction, noir, fantasy, steampunk, and more, they have continued their mission to imagine fantastical universes informed by diverse perspectives. 

Resilience! was conceived by senior producer Kendall Uyeji in response to the surge of Asian hate crimes and the #StopAsianHate movement in the spring of 2021, particularly after the shooting of six massage parlor workers in Atlanta, Georgia.

Uyeji said he felt he wanted to do something to help raise the profile of the movement. “We want to write about the now,” he told the Emerald. “And the best way to write about the now is to literally have [playwrights] write the night of and then produce it the next day.”

Continue reading 24-Hour Asian American Play Festival Aims to Diversify Asian Stories in Theatre →
Voices

OPINION: Coalition Building to Fight Against Hate and Bias

by Sameth Mell

The invisibilization of Khmer and Southeast Asian communities poses harm to our collective community. At the same time, we are also working to address health disparities, food insecurity, inability to afford basic needs, rent insecurity, economic vulnerability, and violence against our most vulnerable elderly populations who are Asian/Southeast Asian Americans. The problem is a systemic and structural issue that spans centuries of invalidation, marginalization, and “othering” of Asian/Southeast Asian Americans. 

We have seen a huge influx of hate and bias crimes, sentiments, and attitudes against Asian/Southeast Asian Americans in the past two years since the pinnacle of the Trump Administration’s failure to address the pandemic. So many of us have witnessed the deterioration of logic, rationale, and decency in American politics and civil society. When Trump termed COVID-19 the “kung flu” and the “China virus,” it led to an uptick of anti-Asian/Southeast Asian American hate and bias, primarily instigated by right-wing and hate groups. 

What I am here to share with you is the harm that is caused by further alienating and hyper-marginalizing Southeast Asian Americans into terrorizing pandemic invisibility, and stories about what a few of our community coalitions and organizations have been working on to address this issue.

Continue reading OPINION: Coalition Building to Fight Against Hate and Bias →