It looks like Joe Jonas of the pop-rocky boy band, Jonas Brothers, is following in the footsteps of another Disney star, Miley Cyrus. A photo of the 19-year-old middle brother doing the dreaded chink-eye recently surfaced on the internet. Disney is just great at picking the winners, huh? Not that they have a great track record...

But wait, there's more! Joe's younger brother, Nick, is Miley's ex-boyfriend. How cute: racism runs in the family! Guess the Jonas Brothers' wholesome, "family-friendly" image isn't all it's made out to be...

Seriously, though, this is not okay. Why do these young stars insist on using such blatantly racist behaviors? Yeah, but it's not like they're out to get the Asians, so why should we care? Right? WRONG. These are the people that every prepubescent girl idolizes. It doesn't matter if it's just a "goofy face." In the name of changing the racist landscape for future generations, such behavior is inacceptable!

A great man once said, "With great power comes great responsibility. Mr. Jonas and Miss Cyrus need to take a little more responsibility for their actions. Regardless of their "harmless" intentions, they are sending out a message of racism to young and impressionable tweens, millions of them to be exact.

So please, take your squeaky-clean, bubblegum-punk anthems elsewhere, Mr. Jonas. Because you sure aren't welcome here.

Yay! Congrats, Corinne Manabat!

... Since December. How behind are we?

Anyway, woot! This is long overdue.

Christopher Wong is a California-based filmmaker who established himself by working on projects that range from independents, to shorts, to commercials. But it wasn't until Whatever It Takes that he hit it big.

Whatever It Takes follows Principal Edward Tom, who abandoned the steel and concrete of Fifth Avenue to instead monitor the hallways of the Bronx Center for Science and Mathematics. The school, which boasts only 107 students, is a place that Tom considers to be "a safe haven, amidst the violence and poverty of the south Bronx, where children can focus on a rigorous and meaningful education."

The film is co-produced by Renee Tajima-Pena (of Who Killed Vincent Chin? directing fame), and has received major funding from the Center for Asian American Media as well as the Sundance Institute. This is serious business for an Asian American film, centered around an Asian American man and the tumultuous environment in which he lives. Justin Lin's Better Luck Tomorrow, in comparison, didn't make big waves. I spoke to Chris just after the San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival, and he said that the reception was amazing.

During the Women Who Work It! panel, Fay Ann Lee said that the biggest problem with "Asian American" films is that it doesn't garner an audience (not in the way that Tyler Perry garners an African American audience, anyway). This makes me critique the way that I've been categorizing Chris's film since I first heard about it. Unlike Falling For Grace or Better Luck Tomorrow, Whatever It Takes is not just a chick flick, or a teenage angst film, that happens to feature Asian American players. It is a documentary that details something which looks to us like a more believable slice of reality, one which lays out issues of race, class and education, and asks the audience to piece something out of it. The film presents race as a mere node in a web of problems that have led to society's twisted failings.

Anyway, I haven't even seen the film yet, and this leaves out a lot of other AsAm documentaries that have a lot to offer to the so-called Asian American genre. I'll wait for it to hit the East Coast for Asian Cinevision's Asian American International Film Festival; until then, someone who has actually seen it (and therefore has a cohesive idea), please enlighten.

For more on Whatever It Takes, visit the film website.

They did all the crazy formatting so that we didn't have to:

Columbia's AAA was recently contacted by an organization also called "Asian American Alliance." We checked out their website, and they seem pretty legit. Click on the link above to check it out for yourself!

The site provides some helpful information and links about various APA issues. Take a look, in particular, at the articles in the column to the left. Although articles contain a lot of fluff, they include some hard facts too.

Their mission statement is: "Asian American Alliance is an organization dedicated to informing and advising Asian Americans on their way to American Dream. We provide news and helpful information on business issues, politics, government immigration laws, social security laws, real estate, education and scholarship information. We inform Asian Americans about the community issues, health insurances and organizations that assist in resolving them."

So, in short, give it a look-see!

It's that time of the year again: APAAM!


For more information, visit the Facebook event.

Claire Light from Hyphen Blog wrote an excellent piece on Yuri Kochiyama and her problematic legacy of being the woman whose arms Malcolm X died in:

She is the activists' activist; she is the Asian American North Star, she is our godmother, our justification, our revered elder and sacred crone, she's the one everyone points to when we think of Asian American women role models. She is our Malcolm X: beyond doubt, or corruption, or naysaying. And, whereas Malcolm was placed beyond doubt, corruption or naysaying by death, Yuri is there by the grace of her association with the sainted Malcolm.

This constant association, though it honors her, causes me discomfort; because the first thing anyone mentions about Yuri, and the top priority, is her relationship with Malcolm. It's true that this relationship was very important to her, but ... Malcom X died in Yuri Kochiyama's arms, they always say, and in just that tone of hushed reverence. It makes a Mary of her, the woman who washed Jesus' dead body, or the one who first saw Jesus alive when he came out of his tomb; her significance is that of witness to the transcendent sacrifice of a man. (Or two men: in this Democracy Now! interview, they have her tell at length of her father's death and then Malcolm's, but nothing about her own life.)

Read more at Hyphen Blog.

In December of 2007 we wrote about Richard Aoki - radical activist and Black Panther Field Marshal. This weekend, he passed away at 70 due to complications from medical conditions.