DEAR EDITOR: In her most recent editorial, “A Changed America” (Sept. 5), editor-in-chief Neela Banerjee once again reveals her failure to understand this country by expressing her contempt for its culture. She begins by expressing her disgust at expressions of national pride and goes on to fantasize about the people sitting next to her reporting Grandma to the police for morning prayers.
Unfortunately, this is not surprising. AsianWeek is consistently characterized by a deep undercurrent of hostility to this country, its culture, its history and its people. Especially if they happen to be white. Or if not white, those who identify with American society and live happy, content, fulfilling lives within it. How many times have we read articles in AsianWeek in which assimilated Asian Pacific Americans are divisively referred to as “whitewashed” or dismissed as “unauthentic”?
Then there is the issue of historical accuracy. Rarely in AsianWeek is there a thoughtful attempt to explain or understand this country’s complex, historical events in the context of modern times. The historical record is reduced to half-truths, blatant disregard of facts and inevitably, ritual charges of racism.
An example is a recent article by Avy Mallik, “Korean Americans Protest South Korean Girls’ Deaths” (Aug. 15), which falsely accuses the United States of occupying South Korea. He quotes an APA social activist who says she’s lived in this country “too long,” and who says in a thinly veiled incitement to racial violence that Americans in Korea will soon be the target of attack. This is from a newspaper that ostensibly preaches against hate and bigotry? Sure.
AsianWeek writers tell us of the need for diversity, yet they themselves inhabit a narrow intellectual ghetto populated by their fellow self-absorbed, left-wing Bay Area social activists and bitter APA race merchants. The only diversity among them is whether they read Chomsky, Trotsky or Gramsci. Intellectual diversity is completely absent. Complicated issues are viewed through the simplistic, neo-Marxist prism of class hatred and racial bitterness. All ideas must conform to the agenda of racial grievance against America. With great vanity they call themselves “progressive,” scream for “global justice” and boast of their compassion for “those struggling against oppression.” Those APA voices that would dare oppose the entrenched orthodoxies of leftist multiculturalism, victimhood and moral relativism are simply censored by the editor.
What is most revealing about this newspaper’s contempt for this country, however, has been manifested over the past year in response to Sept. 11. Rather than share in their country’s pain, AsianWeek implies that America deserves it, that flying commercial planes into buildings is an expression of powerlessness by the marginalized or some other such drivel. And then they are indignant that Americans would actually be angry about such slaughter.
The morally confused editor-in-chief Neela Banerjee even went so far as to write in her callous Nov. 8, 2001 editorial, “I can’t figure out who is a hero, a victim or a terrorist.” Get a clue.
Oh, and by the way, Neela, there really are places where grandmothers get arrested for morning prayer: North Korea, the People’s Republic of China, Sudan. They languish and die in concentration camps named Podak and Qinghai. I challenge those who care so much about global justice to write about that.
DEAR EDITOR: As we enter the period of societal reflection connected with Sept. 11 — and for Jews, with the High Holidays — I want to wish you a very joyous, love-filled New Year. I bless you for a year of health, inner growth, loving connection to others and nurturance for your soul.
For the world, I’m sure you join me in praying for a year in which both Israel and Palestine will be blessed with a renewed energy toward peace and reconciliation, in which the world stops resolving problems through war, and in which we as a human race wake up and take real responsibility for stopping the destruction of our environment and pool our energies toward ending poverty, hunger and homelessness.
