For some time now, I’ve been a fan and supporter of AsianWeek magazine, a free weekly news-magazine published in San Francisco. Unfortunately, I have now lost virtually all of my respect for them after they printed an opinion piece by one of their regular columnists, Kenneth Eng, entitled “Why I Hate Blacks.” As the San Francisco Chronicle reports, Eng’s column has set off a storm of controversy and backlash against AsianWeek:

Eng called himself an “Asian supremacist” in January in another installment of the column, which runs under the label “God of the Universe.” Prominent Asian Americans immediately condemned Eng’s current column. “The hate is based on ignorance and is very similar to the rationales that the KKK uses against African Americans,” said Henry Der, director of Chinese for Affirmative Action. “What gives me the greatest concern was AsianWeek’s judgment in printing such a piece out of context,” Der said. “It is so trite and hateful, it doesn’t speak well for the publication.” . . .

Eng’s “reasons” for hating black people include: * “Blacks hate us. Every Asian who has ever come across them knows that they take almost every opportunity to hurl racist remarks at us.” * “Contrary to media depictions, I would argue that blacks are weak-willed. They are the only race that has been enslaved for 300 years.” * “Blacks are easy to coerce. This is proven by the fact that so many of them, including the Rev. Al Sharpton, tend to be Christians.” . . .

Leaders of the Asian Law Caucus, Asian American Justice Center, Chinese for Affirmative Action and other groups and individuals began circulating a petition Friday calling for the paper to apologize, terminate its relationship with Eng, print an editorial refuting the column and review its editorial policy. The leaders’ statement, issued in Washington, D.C., called the piece “irresponsible journalism, blatantly racist, replete with stereotypes and deeply hurtful to African Americans.”

Beyond the excerpts quoted in the article, I haven’t read Eng’s column and AsianWeek has since pulled it from its website. Nonetheless the excerpts are enough for me to join the chorus of other Asian Americans -- for that matter, other human beings -- and denounce it as unequivocally racist and unimaginably ignorant, and AsianWeek’s decision to publish the piece as blatantly irresponsible and completely unprofessional. For that reason, I have decided to remove AsianWeek from my list of APA news links on this blog.

Of course, free speech gives Eng the right to have an opinion about anything or anyone he wants. But that freedom of speech also gives the rest of us who have some intelligence the right to call his opinion deeply offensive and to call him an embarrassment to the Asian American community -- or for that matter, to the human race.

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Update: On Feb. 28, 2007, AsianWeek issued a statement and apology. It reads in part:

AsianWeek rejects Eng’s biased views on a critical segment of American society, African Americans. While AsianWeek continues to truly believe in diversity of opinion and freedom of the press, we are also very aware that the promotion of hate speech is not appropriate, nor should it be encouraged. . . . [T]he failing of our editorial process in allowing this opinion piece to go forward, was an insensitive and callous mistake that should never have been made by our publication.

We will be reviewing that editorial process and making any changes necessary to prevent this from ever happening again. The condemnation of this serious lapse in editorial judgment was rightfully taken by civic and community leaders and organizations. . . . [W]e are humbled and overwhelmed at reader response not only chastising our editorial process, but strongly urging our paper to sever all ties to this contributor. We have heard the call and Mr. Eng has been terminated from writing for the paper.

I applaud AsianWeek for issuing the apology and admitting that the publication of such racist garbage was a serious breakdown in judgment on the editorial staff’s part. However, you cannot simply just say sorry and walk away from an offense as heinous as this. For AsianWeek to regain the trust and respect of the Asian American community, it needs to put its money where its mouth is.

That is, some initial suggestions that come to mind are that they need to fire the editor who approved this in the first place, have a community forum to discuss their monumental failure, devote an entire issue to the positive relationships between Blacks and Asian Americans, and show their face in the Black community to support their issues and needs. This is just the beginning. AsianWeek, the ball is still in your court. Until then, my opinion has not changed nor am I ready to forgive anything.

Better late than never -- Sunday, February 18, 2007 was Lunar New Year (as known to many as Chinese New Year), the Year of the Pig. In my article about Tet, a Celebration of Rebirth, I describe how Lunar New Year is celebrated among the Vietnamese. But for a more detailed description of how the Year of the Pig is likely to play out on an international scale, the Associated Press/Salon.com reports that unfortunately, it’s not likely to be a banner year for most people:

Sunday marks the start of the Chinese New Year and it’s a lucky one for those starting out in life. But the rest of us are in for a rough ride. Expect epidemics, disasters and violence in much of the world. “The Year of the Pig will not be very peaceful,” said Hong Kong feng shui master Raymond Lo. . . . Pig years can be turbulent because they are dominated by fire and water, conflicting elements that tend to cause havoc, Lo said.

“Fire sitting on water is a symbol of conflict and skirmish,” he said. “We’ll also see more fire disasters and bombings.” . . . It’s an occasion to have family feasts, buy new clothes and exchange red envelopes stuffed with gift money. Not everything about the future looks bleak. Most soothsayers said the world economy will continue to boom, though they advise people to be cautious about their investments. . . . Ronald Reagan was a pig. So are Arnold Schwarzenegger, Woody Allen and Elton John. Not to mention Hillary Rodham Clinton.

So it appears that on a worldwide scale, while financial matters seem relatively secure, people may need to be especially diligent in preparing for health epidemics, natural disasters, and violence. While that may or may not be true, I hope everyone has a happy and prosperous new Lunar Year!

As another example of how so many social institutions -- and by implication, social problems -- are interrelated, according to Diverse Issues in Higher Education, a new study argues that if we can reduce by half the high school dropout rate, that could save the country $45 billion dollars each year:

The savings would come from reduced costs in the welfare and criminal justice systems. Currently, the overall U.S. dropout rate hovers around 30 percent, but the problem is particularly severe for Blacks and Hispanics, as about half of those students drop out each year. . . .

“A recent study for California’s prison system estimated that if you’re a minority male [and] you were a high school dropout, your chances of spending some time in the prison system before you were 35 were 100 percent,” Belfield says. “You had virtually no chance, if you’re a minority dropout, of avoiding some interaction with the criminal justice system.” For minorities who graduate high school, the likelihood of being involved in the criminal justice system drops dramatically, he says. . . .

The study highlights five strategies to boost high school graduation rates. Of these interventions, two take place in preschool, one in elementary school, one in high school and one throughout the K-12 years. Among successful school strategies, the study cities small-size schools, personalization, high academic expectations, strong counseling, parental engagement, extended time in school and competent and appropriate personnel.

I commend the authors for reinforcing what so many of us have been saying all along -- that if American society wants to legitimately address the problem of crime, welfare dependency, and unemployment, we need to attack the root cause of the problem -- lack of opportunities due to having no education. So with that in mind, I never cease to be completely dumbfounded whenever governors and the federal administration continue to cut education budgets across the board.

In the face of overwhelming evidence such as this most recent study that shows the benefits of giving our young people a good quality education, why is education treated with so much blatant disregard and even contempt in so many political circles?

You remember the Ku Klux Klan (KKK), right? For a while it seemed as though they had pretty much vanished from the public spotlight but as the Christian Science Monitor reports, fueled by recent controversies such as illegal immigration and gay marriage, the KKK shows some signs of reemerging again as a disruptive influence in American society:

“Due to the successful exploitation of hot-button issues,” the Klan has seen “a surprising and troubling resurgence,” states a new report by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL). Gay marriage and urban crime are part of the picture. But, in particular, it is the debate over what to do about the nation’s nearly 35 million immigrants, of whom about 11 million are in the US illegally, that has become the Klan’s main recruiting tool. . . .

There is no centralized organization, and membership numbers are estimates at best – 5,000 to 8,000 in as many as 179 Klan groups, according to the ADL. . . . But it is the increase in activity, including rallies, recruitment drives, and distribution of racist literature, and the partnering with skinheads, neo-Nazis, and other kinds of hate groups, that civil rights groups find troubling. . . .

It is this trend in attitudes that the Klan hopes to use in recruiting new supporters among those opposed to US immigration policies and practices, according to Klan leaders and expert observers. In a way, it’s a reversion to the Klan’s nativist origins.

I suppose I shouldn’t be shocked to learn that hate groups such as the KKK are capitalizing on the divisive nature of the illegal immigration debate to recruit new members and to reinvigorate their racist activities and campaigns. This is also combined with using the Internet to spread their ideology and recruit new members, as demonstrated by the apparent rising popularity White supremacist sites such as Stormfront.

But this time around, I have some hope against how powerful they might become and the reason for that is mostly demographic -- Whites are slowly shrinking as a percentage of the total U.S. population. Census Bureau predictions note that by 2050, Whites will cease to be a numerical majority in the U.S. They will still be the largest racial/ethnic group by far, but non-Whites will eventually comprise most of the U.S. population.

Therefore, based on that likelihood alone, the KKK and other racist hate groups are trying to fight against an overwhelming wave of demographic change. They may be able to pick up a few new members here and there, but something tells me that they won’t be able to undo this kind of fundamental societal shift.

However, that doesn’t mean that they can’t cause some damage in the meantime. While they may face an uphill battle, hate groups like the KKK need to be taking seriously, especially by law enforcement authorities, because the damage that they can inflict -- physical and psychological -- is certainly very real.

As an academic field of study, sociology clearly encompasses many issues that have important effects upon the lives of people of color in the U.S., such as racial discrimination, education, income and wealth inequality, crime and violence, etc. But the question becomes, how well represented are students of color in sociology? A new comprehensive study on this question presents a decidedly mixed picture:

[U]nderrepresented minority groups are more widely represented in sociology than in other social science disciplines: About 15 percent of sociology Ph.D. recipients are black or Hispanic, compared to 13.1 percent in political science, 8.3 percent in economics and 12.8 percent in psychology. . . .

While both black and Hispanic students are more likely than their white peers to report a desire to go to graduate school (with 63.5 percent of black students and 57.4 percent of Hispanic students, compared to 40.9 percent of white students, indicating plans to attend), they are also far more likely to report plans to attend graduate school part-time while working. . . .

The study finds that the ratio of black to white students, 1 to 4, stays constant through the awarding of master’s degrees but that it falls, based on 2004 data, to 1 to 9 among Ph.D. recipients. The study reports that 85 percent of black master’s graduates are lost from the pipeline at the Ph.D. level, compared to 51 percent of their white counterparts. . . .

Black and Hispanic instructors are also far more likely to get tenure-track jobs, with 71.8 percent of black applicants and 63.6 percent of Hispanic ones gaining tenure-track positions, compared to 57.6 percent of white applicants and just 31.3 percent of Asian candidates. . . .

But while “the protected minorities,” in Spalter-Roth’s words, seem to be in demand on the job market, and will be more handsomely rewarded financially at the full professor level than their white counterparts, with black full professors making $1.30 for every white full professor’s dollar, they are far less likely than their white counterparts to persist through the tenure process.

As you can see, there is both good news and bad news in regard to how Black and Latino students fare in terms of “succeeding” in the sociology discipline. The good news is that they are more likely to have success in sociology than in other academic fields, are more likely to want to attend grad school than Whites, are more likely to get a tenure-track job, and likely to make more money than Whites once they reach full professor status.

The bad news is that they are more likely to attend grad school part time than Whites, are less likely to receive mentoring once in grad school, are more likely drop out of grad school altogether, and are less likely to persist through the entire tenure and academic career ladder than Whites.

The article notes that mentoring in grad school seems to play a large role in increasing the chances that Black and Latino sociology grad students will succeed in the discipline. In fact, this finding consistently appears as a crucial factor in many studies of academic and career success, whether it relates to all grad students in general or female minority lawyers, etc. In other words, social support goes a long way toward facilitating professional success.

Now, perhaps we can pay a little more attention to the finding that Asian American sociology grad students are the least likely of all groups to end up with a tenure track job. Stay tuned . . .

On many (perhaps even most) college campuses around the country, wireless Internet access is almost ubiquitous, even in classrooms. The question becomes, does having Internet access inside classrooms actually help students do better? A new study argues that contrary to that belief, in most cases, having Internet classes turns out to be a distraction that ultimately hurts students:

Instead of zeroing in on the lecture, students who brought laptops to class spent considerable time e-mailing, surfing the Internet and playing games, posing a “significant” distraction to both users and fellow students.

Further, the study found a relationship between laptop use in class and a weaker understanding of course material and a lower overall course performance; the students with laptops earned an average grade of five per cent lower than if they hadn’t brought the computers. . . .

Checking e-mail during the lectures was the most common distraction; 81 per cent admitted to this transgression compared to 68 per cent reporting that they used instant messaging. Forty-three per cent reported surfing the Internet, while 25 per cent reported playing games, the study found.

Honestly, I’m not surprised to learn that many students spend more time being distracted using their laptops than on paying attention to the course material. The article notes that in response to these kinds of situations, many professors around the country have banned the use of laptop computers in their classrooms.

While I have serious doubts about their usefulness inside a classroom, I will probably never actually ban them from my classes because ultimately, I believe in treating my students as adults who can make their own choices about their actions (or inactions) -- but along with that, be willing to accept the consequences of their actions or inactions, which in this case, seems to be lower grades for bringing their laptops to class.

In the increasingly crowded world of academic rankings, the latest one to make the news is the Faculty Scholarly Productivity Index (2005), which ranks doctoral programs in the U.S. by number of publications, grants received, and awards and honors (in that order of preference). The results for my undergrad and graduate alma mater, along with my current employer, are as follows:

University of California, Irvine:
Atmospheric sciences: #1
Geosciences: #2
Information science: #3
Criminology and justice studies: #5
Public administration and policy: #4

State University of New York, Albany:
Educational leadership: #7
Criminology and justice studies: #10
Social work: #5

University of Massachusetts, Amherst:
Animal science: #1
Food science: #2
Architecture: #9
Industrial engineering: #6
Materials science and engineering: #4
African-American and African studies: #3
Hispanic studies: #4
Linguistics: #4
Fisheries science and management: #9

To be honest, I had no idea that so many of UMass Amherst’s programs were ranked so highly -- a very pleasant surprise. Congratulations to my colleagues in those departments and keep up the good work.

These days, television has the ability to give us detailed images of what war is like. But what about images of what devastation caused by an atomic bomb looks like? After the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were destroyed on August 6 and August 9, 1945 respectively, and after some 250,000 people had died in their immediate aftermath, the U.S. government imposed strict restrictions on any photos that had the potential to “disturb public tranquility.”

However, a few photographs that portray the true devastation of what happened eventually surfaced and this blog has gathered them together in one collection of images. Although many of the pictures are very hard to look at (the picture above is one of the milder examples), I hope you’ll take a moment to have a look for yourself -- it puts life in a much more clear perspective.