Letters to the Editor: Escaping School Violence, Resenting the Model Minority, Take This Bag And Shove It, and Emil for Sale?
June 11, 2008
Escaping School Violence
The article “Addressing School Violence” (Voices From the Community, May 30) illustrates some reasons why Asian parents and students oppose racial integration of schools.
Most Asian and many white students attend schools to learn and prepare for college and the professional world. They want decent academic standards and a safe environment.
There’s a reason that conscientious Asian parents pay more for homes in high-performing school districts. Mixing in with the wrong crowd would hinder the ambition of these Asian parents.
Please leave the Asian kids alone to do their work, and don’t harass them — the bad impression bullies leave on Asians will come back to haunt them.
In-Chul Sohn, J.D.
Houston, Texas, May 29
Resenting The Model Minority
If everybody in the class got A’s and B’s, we would be able to coexist without much friction (“Why Being ‘Good at Math’ Can be a Bad Thing,” May 30). However, if half the class failed and the other half got no better than C’s, and one individual got an A, that individual is going to be hated, no matter the race or gender.
Likewise, if the economy is humming along, all races will be able to coexist. However, if the economy comes to a standstill, then we are going to have lots of friction. If an ethnic group appears to be doing well, eating steaks and driving BMWs, they will be targets. This is true in any country: If things go bad, people have the tendency to show their ugly side.
Huang Fong
Bradenton, Fla., June 1
You published this a little too late; April Fools’ Day was on April 1.
It may be true that dumb people could resent smart people, but that is not a good reason to avoid education or do poorly in class.
Ron Feiertag
San Francisco, Calif., May 31
Take This Bag And Shove It
So, so tired of ostensibly serious publications like AsianWeek attempting to pass off advertisements as news (“It’s in the Bag: Charmaine Ho’s super-chic purses,” May 30). Consumer fetishism dominates the lives of far too many people in this nation (“I shop, therefore I am”).
We are encouraged to think of ourselves primarily as consumers of whatever goods are being foisted upon us (often very subliminally) by marketers. Meanwhile, the world around us continues to crumble, especially in places like Iraq and Afghanistan, where the American military daily kills innocent civilians in the name of “fighting terrorism.”
Small wonder that most of the world’s peoples think Americans are vacuous materialists at best and homicidal maniacs at worst.
Christian Simonetti
San Francisco, Calif., June 3
Emil for Sale?
While reading the May 23 issue of AsianWeek, I was surprised to see that Emil Guillermo’s column had an advertisement for a free hair restoration consultation by a local doctor. Is this indicative of a new direction for AsianWeek and that their columnists will now be offering ads? Or is Emil losing his hair?
Roberta Wong
San Francisco, Calif., June 3
Mind Over Matters
This is not true; if you intellectualize this happening and spread this meme around the Internet, then it will happen (“Why Being ‘Good at Math’ Can be a Bad Thing,” May 30). Stop complaining about the world, and start creating a world you would like to have.
Never victimize yourself because then you have stepped out of a place of power by your own will. The way to shape the future is to create it in your mind with your imagination and then live it out. How do you think Bruce Lee became the highest paid superstar of his time when Asians were practically non-existent in Hollywood? By focusing on his dream and nothing else.
Jamie Goh
San Francisco, Calif., June 2
Church and APAs: Unholy Marriage
I’m encountering a small but growing number of AA Christians that refuse even to operate within the conservative/liberal binary and feel comfortable within a postmodern epistemology (yes, this could also be translated as being AA Emergents) (“Asian American Christians: Why we tend to be conservative,” Beyond Borders, May 16).
As a Korean American who has been entrenched in KA ministries for a good part of my life, I’m deeply troubled by the “unholy” marriage between KA church and conservative Reformed theology (Piper, Driscoll, Grudem, Westminster, TEDS, etc.).
I’ve talked with some at length as to why AAs adhere to an almost hyper-calvinistic theology blindly. We end up depressed.
Daniel Ra
Atlanta, Ga., May 27
Endorsements
I can’t believe that AsianWeek is opposed to Proposition A, a sensible and necessary measure to raise critical revenue to attract and retain teachers in our hard to staff public schools (Endorsements, May 30). Quality teachers are the most critical resource to improving educational outcomes. To characterize a $198 parcel tax (with an exemption for seniors) as a $4,000 measure is a complete distortion. Your publication provides no analyses for this position. In fact, there’s a piece describing support for Prop A inside the issue.
Nearly 50% of San Francisco’s public school students are Asian American. Our community has as much at stake as any in ensuring that our students have the same opportunities to learn as students from better resourced school districts.
Until we can sum up the political will to repeal Proposition 13, a parcel tax is our best hope for raising critical revenue for our schools. Especially in a year when the Governor is pushing education budget cuts and the Republicans are blocking all paths to raise revenue, we must act locally to invest in our children’s future.
Angelica K. Jongco
San Francisco, Calif., May 30
Comments
8 Responses to “Letters to the Editor: Escaping School Violence, Resenting the Model Minority, Take This Bag And Shove It, and Emil for Sale?”
Got something to say?
In-Chul Sohn, J.D., are you Kenneth Eng writing under a pseudonym? To imply that non-Asian and non-white students are not interested in learning, but primarily in bullying their conscientious Asian-American counterparts, is blatantly racist. I am shocked that you would post this comment, which echoes the sentiments of virulent white supremacists (see, I’m learning, Mr. Eng), on a website concerned with the affairs of people of color. What most saddens me is that your racist views are shared by others in non-whtite communities. During the debacle over neighborhood schools in San Fransciso a few years back, Chinese-American parents rose repeatedly during meetings to express their fears that their obedient, studious children would become drug-addicted hooligans if they were forced to study alongside Black and Latino children. And since you seemingly support segregation, you should remember that would-be Asian immigrants to this nation have long endured policies aimed at maintaining the status quo (i.e., a dominantly white population), exclusion and even murder at the hands of white and non-white racists alike. How can you ally yourself with sentiments produced by those who would drive all non-whites not only from our schools, but also from this country? I urge you to critically reevaluate your views.
Christian,
I’m not sure what race you are, but no one in his right mind would deny that black and Latino students have dismal record when it comes to academic achievement, with about half of the dropping out without completing high school:
http://www.latinamericanstudies.org/latinos/drop-out.htm
It’s also commonly known that non-black students-whites, Asians and even Latinos-are harasssed and bullied by black kids at just about any integrated schools. Ask any white, Asian or Latino kid who went through the hell of attending integrated schools and the horrible experience they had being harassed, assualted, robbed and raped by blacks.
It is also well documented that black kids from wealthy familes do worse academically and more prone to engage in criminal activities than white and Asian kids from poor families. You can find plenty of studies demonstrating these facts. Thus, even Obama’s children, whose parents are Harvard Law grads, are, statistically more likely to fail at school or engage in criminal activities than poor white or Asian kids.
Hillary Clinton has been vilified for using controversial tactics against Obama, but the reality is that she held back some of the most devastating rumors against Obama because she didn’t want to be labeled, guess what, “virulent racist.” Her campaign had information suggesting that Obama was a drug-dealer during his youth, but Hillary didn’t want to “stereotype” the black Obama. Sad, we are vetting nothing less than one to become the most important leader in the world, and Obama gets free pass just because he’s a black.
Dear In-Chul:
Is that “J.D.” the stand-in for doctorate of jurisprudence?
If so, it makes me wonder just how much “intelligence,” forget smarts OR ethics, has to do with such “titles.”
On second thought, scrub the question, after all, we DO have the likes of Antonin and Clarence in the very “highest” “court” of “the land,” SCOTUS.
You make sweeping generalizations, like your compeer, compadre?, awarthur, especially on the subject of grades and scholarship, the model maintained in our “educational” system, and you continue to exploit the “statistics” therein relating to “Asians.”
Obama’s daughters are likely candidates for the penal system? Hogwash. More likely, swill.
And on the subject of violence in our schools, have you heard of what happened in that lily-white high school, Columbine? Or even what happened at Virginia Tech, where, ahem, the sadsack psychopath happened to be a countryman? Asian, for sure.
As for “criminal activities,” Hell!, ALL the inner-city ravages of their own essentially, don’t begin to equate a single shock-and-awe assault.
And what is “criminal”? “Illegal” drugs rather than, say, the “vaccine” for STDs the pharmaceuticals tried to install in Texas, aimed at black and Latinas I presume.
The “law” is a “ass,” for sure, when it is administered by the likes of an Establishment that railroads those too poor to afford a competent attorney, and turns its gaze away from the depredations, on community and Constitution alike, of the entire theoneocon crowd, beginning with Cheney and Bush and Rumsfeld and that nefazrious cell of authentic juvenuile delinquents in the Pentagon.
Christian’s race doesn’t matter here, nor, indeed, does mine. Or yours.
What matters is simple fact and logic, neither of which you evince in my view, AND judgment and ethics, forget “partisan” politics.
As the owner of a “J.D.,” you, very especially, should be cognizant of the merits and deficits of judging and the moral obligations implicit in ethos.
Frank Eng
P.S.: Axide to Christian in re those self-serving, idiots in my view, “Chinese” parents who believe(d) Lowell High or Harvard U were the insurancefor their spoiled young. Forgive them, and almost all parents for that matter. Remember when parents were jockeying for admission to pre=preschool for their tots? Oh, they’re still at it?
Yet more racist drivel from the pen of In-Chul Sohn, who has listens to the likes of Dinesh D’Souza and other reactionary pundits and has completely absorbed their pseudo-scientific, anti-Black and anti-Latino/Chicano poison. Why Asian Week does not yank your white/Asian supremacist ravings from this board is beyond me. When I was a high school student during the late 1970s, I constantly witnessed white students harassing (both verbally and physically) students of color, who were a tiny minority on campus. On several occassions I was compelled to intervene on behalf of my Vietnamese, Iranian and Mexican brothers and sisters. While I don’t deny that some black students are guilty of physically and verbally assaulting their non-black (and black) peers in our schools, to depict all African-Americans as violent predators is nothing but ludicrous, and comes right out of George Dumbya Bush’s playbook. Likewise, depicting all Asian students as paragons of discipline and intellectualism is completely and utterly false. A gang of Chinese-American kids in San Francisco recently beat a homeless man so severely that he required hospitalization. Obviously you couldn’t think for yourself if your life depended on it. Why don’t you join the KKK or the American Nazi Party? Their fascist views are identical to yours. Oh, right…they hate all people of color, including Asians.
Any race has the propensity for violence and unrest when the dissatisfaction level is high. Travel to rural China and see groups of citizens from one city attacking citizens from another city over minor trespasses. Chinese shops burnt down in Cambodia when the economy is bad. Chinese citizens raped in Indonesia during political crisis. Asians are no smarter than any other race on this planet. Most of the asians that does not want to excel are still in Asia. Most asians in America are cream of crop working hard to get ahead. Most Asian Americans are satisfied with their status and does not want to rock the boat. This does not mean that we need to belittle Blacks, Hispanics or other groups who don’t care to join the rat race. Let’s show a little respect for our fellow human beings.
Two little points:
Christian, the very raison-d’etre of this venue is the fact of common,meaning ALL, access, and, as such, In-Chul has as much “right” to post as do we.
Huang, ah, finally, a point of demurral: are you absolutely certain “we” are “the cream”? Of any crop. Maybe the new “waves” of immigrants, but more of a few of us were born, raht-cheer, and had little to say in the matter, which, likely, makes us er, ah, skim milk?
That too. And what does it matter. I just hope those Mainland villagers engaged in no more than shouting and cursing, maybe a shove or two.
Ah, to be civilized.
Frank Eng
P.S.: I think someone should send In-Chul, AND awarthur copies of the Doug Valentine article in today’s blogs. Would it make any diff to them? Not likely.
Christian,
I found an article showing that black children from the wealthiest/most educated families perform more poorly on the SAT than white children from the poorest/least educated families:
http://www.lagriffedulion.f2s.com/testing.htm
Anecdotally, I often hear of black kids from affluent, professional families (parents are doctors and lawyers) failing at school or being incarcerating for crimes. (Q: do you know a lot of black people? Have you known a lot of black people? I have, you obviously haven’t.) In contrast, most Asians kids, even those from poor families, usually worry about which Ivy League college they would get into. These days, almost all Asians kids move onto colleges and professional careers. Very few are in trouble with the law.
Anyway, where in my posts did I ever say ALL blacks are criminals, or ALL Asian kids are hard-working, smart kids? I’m talking about the vast majority, I’m talking about the “typical black person” or “typical Asian kid”, to borrow Obama’s terminology.
Dear In-Chul:
Yes, I, for one, have not only “known,” but have lived with, worked with, shared with “a lot” of “black” people, along with “a lot” of “white” people, and, even “Asian’ peoples.
Huang Fong, above, bless his loving heart, makes a point everyone ignores, to wit:
People who do not choose to be a part of the “rat race,” and I would emphasize the rodent, the aggressive, feral, and me-me-me type.
“Blacks” have a very special status/category here, along with the Native American, albeit the former is singled out for hurdles in said rat race and the latter simply ignored.
We-’uns, all the colors and shades “in-between,” all share, to some degree or another, the identical two-strikes before you come up to the plate to take your single swing at the ball which has been greased.
It is astonishing to me that ‘educated” and presumably “civilized” men like awarthur and you can even be seen in the company of your chosen peers, much less IDENTIFY with them, even as they call you “gook” and/or acknowledge you as window-dressing of the most egregious sort.
You actually pride yourself in the company of Kristol and Gingrich? How about Rove and Cheney? Maybe Simon Legree?
Frank Eng
P.S.: And, for God’s sake if not the sake of every schoolchild in the nation, get off the Stanford/Binet, or whatever the standards/norms are today, binge, and open your eyes if not your senses to the fact that true “intelligence” is multifaceted, just like sensibilities, which you appear not to have.