I received the following email asking for my help in announcing a survey on political attitudes, by researchers at SUNY Stony Brook:

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Hello. I am writing to ask for your help with a survey which is part of my dissertation project. I was wondering if you would be willing to post a link to the survey on your blog? Your help would be greatly appreciated, and I think you and your readers would be ideal candidates for the survey.

The survey is about people’s reactions to the presidential candidates in the upcoming election. If you are willing to help, please post the
following information:

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The purpose of this survey is to examine how people think and feel about the political issues, parties, and candidates in the upcoming election. In the survey, you will be asked a series of questions about two political candidates, John McCain and Hillary Clinton. We are very interested in how
individuals that find information on the web think about politics, and your participation would be greatly appreciated. In total, the survey should take about 15 minutes to complete. The survey is completely anonymous and you can skip any questions you do not wish to answer.

Click here to take the survey: http://www.ic.sunysb.edu/stu/crweber/TAKESURVEY/election_2008.htm

Please feel free to contact Chris Weber (crweber@notes.cc.sunysb.edu) at Stony Brook University with any questions or concerns. Thanks for your help!

Thank you,

Chris Weber
PhD Candidate
Stony Brook University

Stanley Feldman
Professor
Department of Political Science

A colleague send me this YouTube video link, entitled “A Land Called Paradise.” It’s a short video montage based on the following: In December 2007, over 2,000 American Muslims were asked what they would wish to say to the rest of the world:

I found it very touching and another example of the fact that, in contrast to the stereotypes that all Muslims are terrorists, most Muslim Americans think the way most other Americans think.

I hope many of you have already heard of Eric Byler -- he was the director of Charlotte Sometimes and Americanese (an adaptation of Prof. Shawn Wong’s novel American Knees), both being critically-acclaimed independent movies.

Eric’s latest project, in collaboration with fellow independent filmmakers Annabel Park, Jeff Man, and Zhibo Lai, is entitled Project 9500 and is a multimedia documentary of the issues of illegal immigration in northern Virginia.

While much of the focus of this project is on Latino immigrants, Eric notes that Asian immigrants have been brought into the issue because many illegal immigrant critics argue that Asian immigrants are the “good” immigrants because they learn English quicker and are perceived to be more willing to assimilate into American society, as opposed to the “bad” Latino immigrants.

They are putting together a feature-length documentary film, but the project also involves short video essay clips that capture different aspects of the issue. Their YouTube site contains several dozen such video essay clips but two “introductory” clips that were recently featured in the Washington Post are below:

As I told Eric, these clips do an excellent job in capturing the individual-level emotions and institutional-level influences that are involved with such a complex and controversial issue. All signs are that their project is coming together quite nicely.

I encourage you to view some of their other video essay clips on their YouTube site and to keep an eye out for their upcoming documentary -- it would be very, very interesting.

I recently got wind of some controversy surrounding Lincoln’s latest ad for their MKX luxury SUV that features Harry Connick Jr. driving through his hometown of New Orleans and talking about its rebuilding efforts. For those who haven’t seen the ad, click on the video clip below.

As expressed by a writer at Ad Age, the controversy centers on the question of whether Ford Motor Company (parent company of Lincoln) is exploiting the tragedy in New Orleans to sell cars and make some money:

[Ford] seems to have persuaded themselves somehow that they are doing something positive -- celebrating the spirit of a city, shedding light on its challenges, recognizing its heroes.

Bullshit. What they are doing is exploiting its victims to advertise luxury SUVs. It is vulgar. It is grotesque. It is disgusting.

And not even remotely surprising. With every catastrophe comes the inevitable sleazy marketing thinly disguised as sympathy, philanthropy, encouragement or public service. We’ve witnessed it in the wake of Oklahoma City, when Makita power tools took out newspaper ads ostensibly to honor the search-and-rescue volunteers but transparently to brag about donated merchandise.

After the Kosovo crisis, Philip Morris spent tens of millions of dollars to produce and air an elaborate spot recreating the refugee exodus, by way of patting itself on the back for airlifting about $150,000 worth of macaroni and cheese.

As an Asian American myself, I am certainly sensitive to cultural exploitation -- as I’ve written about before on my Asian-Nation site, in many cases where elements of traditional Asian culture are used to sell non-Asian products, almost always the traditional cultural meaning gets lost and the element almost always ends up being used as a caricature with little cultural meaning left.

But in other situations, it’s harder to draw the line between sincerity and exploitation. In the case of the Lincoln SUV/New Orleans commercial, my initial reaction was that generally, I did not find it exploitative. It certainly could have become quite exploitative if Lincoln had just shown their SUV driving around New Orleans without any mention or context of what the city has been through.

But in this case, Lincoln used a well-known resident of New Orleans (Harry Connick Jr.) and (I assume) pretty much let him speak freely and honestly about what the city is going through trying to rebuild. Sure, there were some “glamor” shots of its SUV, but I did not find them to be gratuitous or excessive. If anything, I found Visa’s commercial set in New Orleans to be much more blatantly opportunistic.

However, I am not African American nor a resident of New Orleans, so in the end, my personal opinion carries less weight than that of someone who was, and is, directly affected by the devastation that New Orleans endured.

With that in mind, the ultimate judgment about whether this Lincoln commercial is exploitative really belongs to those who are there in the city itself and who have been directly affected by its struggles. We need to hear more from them.

One of the fundamental tenets of the Internet is that it gives marginalized groups and people the opportunity to express themselves more easily and freely than traditional media. As The Boston Globe reports, that promise is increasingly becoming fulfilled by bloggers of color (thanks to AngryAsianMan.com for pointing out the article):

These intellectual challenges to mainstream and other viewpoints are some of the opinions Latino, Asian/Pacific Islander-American, and black bloggers are exposing on a growing number of sites focused on social, political, and cultural issues. The sometimes facetiously named blogs range from Angry Asian Man to The Angry Black Woman.

Readers can find Latino viewpoints at Guanabee, The Unapologetic Mexican, or Latino Pundit. Those interested in information from an Asian angle head to Ultrabrown, Zuky, or Sepia Mutiny. Sites created by blacks include The Field Negro, Too Sense, and Resist Racism. But often these bloggers discard the handcuffs of their ethnic origins to tackle subjects affecting a range of racial or ethnic groups.

These sites - many of which launched in the past year, although a few are older - have become places where people of color gather to refine ideas or form thoughts about race relations, racial inequities, and the role pop culture has in exacerbating stereotypes. The writers often bring attention to subjects not yet covered by mainstream media.

Overall, the Boston Globe article portrays bloggers of color very positively. At the same time, I could not help but notice the quote (cited above), “these bloggers discard the handcuffs of their ethnic origins to tackle subjects affecting a range of racial or ethnic groups” (emphasis added).

I’m not really sure what the article’s author means by that statement. Is she implying that covering an issue that predominantly or most immediately affects one particular racial or ethnic group in a particular story is counterproductive and ultimately divisive? Does she mean that it’s not useful to point out specific issues, experiences, or characteristics of a particular racial/ethnic group?

I certainly hope that these are not the implications she intended because that only plays into the whole “colorblind” myth of American society -- that everyone is all the same and should be treated according to a “standard” manner or set of rules.

In fact, I would guess that most if not all of these bloggers portrayed in the article would probably agree that while there are certainly many commonalities that different racial/ethnic groups share, there are many things that make each group unique.

Further, pointing out these unique characteristics ultimately benefits us by educating us and expanding our knowledge of others, rather than dividing or separating us. Let’s not fall into that colorblind (some would even say White supremacist) way of thinking.

Many people on both sides of the political ideology aisle criticize contemporary media companies for a whole host of offenses. To try to compare different media outlets around the world on their level of transparency (how openly their disclose their ownership, conflicts of interest, editorial policies, openness to criticism and complaints, etc.), the International Center for Media and the Public Agenda at the University of Maryland has just released the results of their study.

As the results, show, the Guardian (UK) and the New York Times are at the top, followed by the BBC, CBS, the Christian Science Monitor, and NPR. Personally, I wasn’t surprised to see Fox News near the bottom, but I was a little surprised to see ABC and The Economist to be near the bottom as well, as I’ve generally respected the reporting of both of these outlets. I guess I should be a little more wary from now on.

I’ve written before that research continues to support the notion that in general, immigrants produce more benefits than drawbacks for American society and its economy. As further reinforcement of this argument, Diverse Education reports on a new study that again demonstrates that immigrants --particularly from Asia -- create a disproportionate number of high-tech businesses in American society:

[O]f 2,054 hi-tech companies founded during 1995-2005, around 500, or 25.3 percent, were founded by immigrants. The companies had more than $1 million in sales, 20 or more employees, and company branches with 50 or more employees. Out of the 500 companies, 144 were surveyed and it was found that 96 percent of founders held bachelor’s degrees, 47.2 percent held master’s degrees and 26.8 percent held a doctorate degree. More than half (53 percent) of the immigrant founders completed their highest degrees from U.S. universities.

“Census data shows immigrants are better educated than average Americans,” says Vivek Wadhwa, co-author and adjunct professor at the Pratt School of Engineering. “No one can refute this data. If the U.S. wants to be a world leader in technology and innovation, then we have to support them.”

The study also found that very few immigrant founders came to the United States with the intention of starting a new company. Around 52 percent came to study, 39.8 percent came for a job opportunity and only 1.6 percent for the sole purpose of entrepreneurship. Immigrants from India, China and Taiwan were interviewed for the survey, but Indians founded more companies than any other group combined. . . .

“As foreign-born engineers start businesses, they collaborate with former classmates and colleagues from their home countries, sharing the business contacts and know-how as well as market information that support entrepreneurial success,” Saxenian says. “Successful entrepreneurs not only contribute to the regional economy, but also become powerful role models and mentors, attracting subsequent generations of immigrants to the area.”

These immigrant-founded high-tech companies are most visible in California but their effects can be seen on the national and international levels since, as the article notes, such entrepreneurs draw resources from all around the world and directly or indirectly attract more highly-educated immigrants to the U.S., all of which lead to numerous benefits for American society.

We should note, as the article does, that such findings do not reflect directly into the current debates on immigration reform. If anything, it strengthens the argument that we should let in more of these highly-educated and skilled immigrants. I certainly do not oppose that particular suggestion, but I do oppose it when it comes at the expense of reducing the number of immigration visas for family reunification, which as I’ve argued before, is a severely short-sighted plan that disproportionately hurts Asian Americans and ignores the significant benefits that family members bring with them to the U.S.

In short, the solution is to keep family reunification immigration visas at their current levels (if anything, they need to be increased to reduce the significant backlog of current applications) and also increase the number of H1-B visas for highly educated immigrants because, as research continues to show, both sets of immigrants produce notable benefits for American society and its economy.

I just came across the DismalWorld.com site that contains a collection of historic and poignant photographs taken through the years. As the title of the site implies, the photos do not depict “happy” scenes. Rather, they illustrate in very stark ways the tragedies and suffering that we as humans perpetrate against our own kind. Many of the photos I had seen before, but many were new to me. In fact, the one that really struck me and made me take a few minutes to think about was this one: