On April 24th, the PANA Institute (Institute for Leadership Development & Study of Pacific & North American Religion) will be hosting two events. I strongly recommend these if you are in or around the Berkeley area. For anyone studying Asian American religions/spirituality, you should definitely get in touch with the PANA folks. From my personal experience, they are extremely supportive, knowledgable, and just overall great people. Also, they host an annual conference APARRI Conference which provides prominent faculty members to serve as one-on-one mentors for undergrad/grad students (I was able to discuss all sorts of things with David Yoo!). Community Vigil for VA Tech — PSR Chapel Community Vigil In remembrance of all those affected by the recent tragedy at Virginia Tech (Please bring a flower) Tuesday, April 24th, 2007 1:00-1:30pm Steps of the Chapel at the Pacific School of Religion 1798 Scenic Avenue Berkeley, CA 94709 Sponsored by the Institute for Leadership Development and Study of Pacific Asian North American Religion (PANA Institute) and the Office of Community Life at the Pacific School of Religion. For more information, contact Rev. Deborah Lee at (510)849-8260 or dlee@psr.edu. ______________________________ Workshop: "Interreligious Community: Camp Life and Pilgrimage” Join us for a Community Program on "Interreligious Community: Camp Life and Pilgrimage” the experience of Japanese American internment during WWII and its ongoing message for the present. Date: Tuesday April 24th, 2007 6:30-9:30 pm Location: Gather at the Jodo Shinshu Parking Lot (2140 Durant St., Berkeley, CA 94704) We may be meeting at the Jodo Shinshu Center or at the Berkeley Buddhist Temple. Look for posted signs PLEASE NOTE DATE AND VENUE MAY BE DIFFERENT THAT WHAT WHAT WAS ORIGINALLY PUBLICIZED. WE HAVE HAD A CHANGE IN THE ORIGINAL SCHEDULE. SORRY FOR ANY INCONVENIENCE. Reflections/Presentation: Dr. Joanne Doi, M . M . is a pilgrimage guide and teacher of the course "Manzanar: America's Internment," sponsored by the PANA Institute. Rev. David Matsumoto, Institute of Buddhist Studies and the Berkeley Buddhist Temple, Channing Way Carpool available, leaving Pacific School of Religion at 6:00 pm ( Meet in the PANA driveway, 2357 Le Conte Ave.) This is one of five sessions in preparation for the 38th annual pilgrimage to the former WWII site of Japanese American internment at Manzanar. For more information or to sign up for the pilgrimage, contact Shinya at pana2@psr.edu; 510-849-8226 or go to the PANA website: pana.psr.edu. ______________________________ PANA Film Screening at Major Film Festivals: PANA's film In God's House: Asian American Lesbian and Gay Families in the Church has been accepted to screen at the Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival (Sunday, May 6th, 2007), Frameline International LGBT Film Festival in June and the Aomori International LGBT Film Festival in Japan. In addition, we have screenings scheduled in San Francisco, Tennessee, and Asilomar, CA. See below for schedule. For more information on the screenings, please visit www.ingodshouse.com.
Monday, April 23, 2007
Events at PANA
Friday, April 20, 2007
An Example of Biased Mainstream News Media
I really hate to have to keep bringing up these topics, but I wanted to share an observation. First off, my apologies to the family and friends of the victim at today's NASA Johnson Space Center. However, in reading about this unfortunate event through a couple different news articles online (such as this Yahoo! story), I realized that nowhere is the race/ethnicity of the murdered mentioned. Especially after the news media so clearly stressed that the VT shooter was Asian, I think this is a perfect--albeit sad--example of how easy is is for 1) the media to spread negative images, and 2) how easily overlooked race is when the subject of discussion is white. Also, here are a couple other suggested links to read:
- VT killer's family: "We are living a nightmare"
- Adian Hong (Washington Post): Koreans Aren't to Blame
- Andrew Lam: Let It Be Some Other "Asian"
- Margaret Cho: Our Humanity
Thursday, April 19, 2007
UIUC Asian American Studies Professors Respond to News Inquiry re: Virginia Tech
A couple Asian American Studies professors at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign were approached and asked to comment on the V Tech tragedy. Here is their response:
Nancy Abelmann and I (Sumie Okazaki) have been approached by a reporter from a national news organization asking us to comment on the Virginia Tech tragedy, specifically regarding the relevance of the killer's ethnicity. This is the response we sent back.
Statement:
Thank you for your inquiry. We feel very strongly that any attempt to situate this particular killer in the context of psychological or sociological aspects of the Korean immigration and/or South Korean culture is counter-productive. To entertain questions about the general attitude of Korean Americans toward mental health treatment, violence, or guns – for instance – is to be complicit with the notion that somehow there was something Korean or Korean American about the unspeakably cruel acts of an individual killer. This country has long witnessed the negative impact of the American tendency to explain individual pathology in cultural and racial terms.
However, the reaction to this tragedy of some Korean American individuals and groups warrants scholarly consideration. We limit our comments to the widely reported expressions of fear of retaliation against Korean Americans and to feelings of ethnic responsibility for the heinous acts of a fellow Korean American. Because there is a long history in the United States of retaliatory violence against ethnic groups in the aftermath of incidents, Korean Americans understandably fear retaliation; they have been named before in public discussion of racially motivated violence—for example during the Los Angeles Riots. Expressions of ethnic responsibility, as exemplified by formal apologies from Korean Americans, perhaps speak to both anxieties about Korean American acceptance in the United States and to this community’s continued struggles as immigrants.
It is important to note that many Korean Americans are intimately connected to South Korea through both personal ties and through South Korean news and other media. It is possible that South Korean national anxiety about the potential impact of this incident on U.S.-Korea relations or on the lives of members of the Korean diaspora, is affecting the Korean American response.
Please do not misunderstand our unwillingness to comment on sociological and psychological aspects of contemporary Korean American life. The lives of immigrants of color in the United States present many real challenges, among them psychological ones. There is a growing body of scholarship on the struggles of immigrant small entrepreneurs and their children. This, however, is not the proper time to engage these scholarly discussions.
The Asian American Psychological Association, of which Sumie Okazaki is a member, has released an official statement in response to this tragedy. You can find the statement at: www.aapaonline.org/conventions
Nancy Abelmann
Professor, Anthropology, East Asian Languages & Cultures, and Asian American Studies
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Sumie Okazaki
Associate Professor, Psychology and Asian American Studies
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Wednesday, April 18, 2007
Anti-Asian Backlash on Craigslist
Craiglist's rants and raves is unfortunately where racists often go to spout off. While the goal of this blog is generally to keep the language clean and the discussion scholarly, I think it is important and interesting to bring attention to the types of racist discourse, stereotypes, and historical events that individuals reference when posting racist diatribes. No one ever brings up race when a serial killer or crazed gunman is white. White equals invisible and race becomes an issue only when the situation involves a person of color.
It is also interesting how the author attempts to frame this quite literally as an "us versus them" game whereby Asians are competing against (presumably) white Americans to see who can rack up a higher body count.
crazy asian
shooter now in heaven (financial district)
Reply to: pers-313713083@craigslist.org
Date: 2007-04-17, 1:42PM PDT
you asian fuckers are so chicken shit you never even look a white man in
the eye when you talk to him. your whole manner in front of white people is
totally submissive. only a fucking yellow coward would shoot un-armed people. i
piss on you and all your generations you yellow dog. and we still own the record
for killing you little yellow bastards; over 3 million japs in WWII, 1 million
north korean garlic eaters and 3 million heathen chinese in the korean war, and
nearly 2 million vietnamese slopeheads in vietnam
Tuesday, April 17, 2007
Virginia Tech Shootings
First of all, our prayers and condolences go out to all affected by the recent unfortunate events at Virginia Tech. As the media has reported, the suspected gunman, Cho Seung-Hui was a 23 year old student from South Korea (Yahoo! News link). Although he moved to the United States fourteen years ago in 1992, the mass media has already repeatedly stressed his ethnic background, immediately causing anti-Korean and anti-Asian backlash. Also, the number of apparently hate-based Facebook groups (I found one group called "Deport Cho Seung-hui's Parents and drag his corpse through the streets" and another called "Your Group may hate Cho Seung Hui...but my group calls him a GOOK!") established today is very disturbing. Please spread proper awareness that this will NOT be tolerated.