There has been much interest in this case concerning a black high schooler charged with "aggravated child molestation" in a case of statutory rape in Georgia. A lot were aghast that this law, which has never been used before in a case of consensual, underage sex (well, the defense alleges the sex was consensual but certainly, few would call sex between a 17 and 15 year old "child molestation") was suddenly brought to bear here, especially since the defendent was black and the teenage woman in question was white. Georgia's Supreme Court overturned the conviction on the molestation charges but the vote was 4-3. WTF? What did the other 3 people think was going on?
Did Kanye West's College Dropout deserve 5-mics? My question: what rational folks still lend any credence to The Source's ratings, especially after the fall from grace the magazine has suffered these last few years? Kanye - the people have voted for your album's quality: stop whining dude!
(credit: Hardly Art, Hardly Garbage)
Wow, a rational story on William Hung that doesn't play the race card for once. Bravo Detroit Free Press! I had a revelation this afternoon: the reason why Asian Americans have such an issue with Hung is because of that age-old ABC vs. FOB conflict that I grew up witnessing in the 1980s. This is where ABCs (American Born Chinese) witness the kind of racism that FOBs (Fresh Off the Boat) have to contend with and rather than stand in solidarity with their persecuted brethren, they try to distance themselves as far as possible from their immigrant peers, even to the point of ridiculing them too. David Henry Hwang captured some of this tension in his play, F.O.B. but you can find it at any high school where there's a large community of both American-born and foreign-born people of the same ethnic group. I think it's telling that Hung is cheered in Asian cities like Singapore and Hong Kong: they see Hung as "one of theirs" whereas many of America's APIs see Hung as the embodiment of everything they've spent their lifetimes trying to escape. Oh, the irony that America's two biggest Asians are both unabashed immigrants: Yao Ming and Hung. Reality check twinkies!
Even though I didn't get a chance to spin (what kind of DJ set-up doesn't have two turntables? WTF?) at last night's Quannum World Tour show, the event was off the ching-a-ling, especially considering Lyrics Born stepped to the stage with rip-away sweatpants and rhymed for two songs rocking his boxers. Plus, DJ Shadow debuted how to properly put a DVD turntable in full e-f-f-e-c-t. I thought Quannum's revue-style performance schedule was a smart way to balance all those acts by rotating a new artist every song or two.
Was there a lynching in Mississippi? Or was it a suicide? If you saw the body of a black man hanging from a tree, which would you presume? Yeah, exactly.
Contrary to the idea that we're sexless, Asian Americans are apparently rutting around at a prodigious rate considering that APIs are the fastest growing ethnic group in America. Ok, ok, it's not all through reproduction but immigration that our numbers are swelling, but by 2050, the API population is projected to hit around 33 million, fueled in large part from countries like India and Vietnam (hey, wait a minute - aren't these the same countries where we're outsourcing American jobs to? It'd be ironic for Indians to move out here, only to realize that their neighbors back home just got the computer programming job they were hoping for. Ah, the magic of global capitalism).
As usual, The Melting Blog is on top of this. Read his short analysis but also make sure to check for Thomas Tseng's discussion of "New Chinatowns" that are spring up across America. He points out that with the case of example of Las Vegas' immensely successful Chinatown Plaza,
"places like Chen's Chinatown Plaza are now being replicated by like-minded pioneers in new residential subdivisions across the country -- places where, though there may not be a densely concentrated Asian community, there are enough patrons willing to traverse relatively lengthy distances for a small taste of home. Subsequently, these "New Chinatowns" have become the catalyst for further economic development, as consumers begin purchasing homes and forming communities in proximity to them."
Field of dreams for real: build it and they will come (so long as "it" is a 99 Ranch Supermarket and not a baseball diamond).
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