This is starting to feel like satire. AsianWeek, the paper out of San Francisco, ran a (shitty) column by one Kenneth Eng in which he lays down why he hates black people. Then they fired him. But what about his editors? The column, an unprovoked slap in the face to San Francisco's African American community, is another reminder that cross-ethnic prejudices in California are begging for adequate efforts to counteract ignorance and fear, and the perils of ethnic essentialism. In this NPR report by Richard Gonzales, one of the co-owners of AsianWeek notes ruefully that recent Asian immigrants arrive with no historical appreciation for African America or the Civil Rights Movement. Which is also often the case with recent immigrants from Latin America, as I noted here. Repeating the obvious is getting a little tedious: Asian Americans face discrimination, too. And, everyone is merging ...
In the blogosphere, author Jeff Chang says AsianWeek is Dead. But at least people are talking about this stuff now, thanks to ... Gawker? Humor helps. Here's a link to the San Francisco Bay View, the city's black newspaper, which has a (broken link to a) story by Ron Wilkins headlined: Mexico welcomed fugitive slaves and African American job-seekers. For conscious and cutting analysis of Asian America, the Asian diaspora, and everything else from the Asian-Am perspective, see hardboiled, out of UC Berkeley, and its blog.
* Photo above from Biochemical Slang, where the Eng column is reproduced besides an interesting map of Africa highlighting recent Chinese investments there.