Camila Vallejo Dowling

This is (was?) an activist blog, and I saw these two interesting activism articles in the Times this week:

1. Just Don’t Call Her Che: an article about Camila Vallejo Dowling, who is leading hundreds of people for education reform in Chile. According to the article, she beats senators in debates on prime time TV and leads protests with hundreds of thousands of demonstrators. According to the article, she’s the world’s most famous student leader and has the governmment going crazy over how to deal with the issues. Chile, according to the article, is economically successful, and she has still managed to pull people away from their daily lives and get an audience.

I can say honestly that I wish I knew more about how other countries operate. It’s one thing to say, for example, that we like the way Sweden mandates maternity and paternity leave, or how we love Canadian healthcare. It would be better to understand the system from a closer perspective. Is the Chilean educational system really so unfair that people follow Camila Vallejo? Or is this an example of exceptional leadership? I will say that I can’t imagine an American 23 year old going head-to-head with a U.S. Senator in a debate without getting himself/herself whooped, so major props to her!

Too bad I don’t understand the Spanish. Nottyboy, what’s she saying?

2. The Mixtape of the Revolution talks about how hip hop is one of the most potent forces in politics in other countries. The article opens:

DEF JAM will probably never sign them, but Cheikh Oumar Cyrille Touré, from a small town about 100 miles southeast of Dakar, Senegal, and Hamada Ben Amor, a 22-year-old man from a port city 170 miles southeast of Tunis, may be two of the most influential rappers in the history of hip-hop.

Pretty heady stuff.

Someone once asked me: What is activism? I said something along the lines of “creating change that influences a lot of people.” Whether we’re trying to create art outside of The Typical, or whether we’re trying to get people to think differently or whether we’re trying to invest money responsibly, I think that’s the nature of activism.

I do have to say–life looks a lot more dramatic in other places of the world. 200,000 people marching? A hip hop artist whose words are actually getting government to take notice? American students don’t march much these days. And the last time an American politician paid attention to a hip hop artist was when Kanye said that George W. Bush doesn’t care about black people! Whatever happened to this kind of activism in America?

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I heard about Quentin Lee’s Today Has Been Weird from AngryAsianMan. It’s a short film, and it’s good: see the entire short movie above. It is based on a real life incident where a young 19 year Asian American boy named Simon Sek Man Ng blogged about his sister’s ex-boyfriend knocking on his door. The boyfriend ended up killing both Simon and his sister. The police used to information from his blog to find his killer.

Overall, the movie is very well done. The Vancouver Asian Film Festival commissioned it, and Quentin Lee did it on just $500 Canadian dollars (which by now is what? $1,000 U.S.? ). Pretty amazing what he did. He captured very well the loneliness of the boy living alone with his sister, and I thought it was a great portrayal of the alienation that many young Asian kids in Vancouver must feel. Mr. Lee is definitely talented.

That said, I googled the actual story, and it turns out that unlike the movie version where the killer ex is White, in real life, the killer was another Asian dude. I then checked the comment section of the YouTube video where the publisher (maybe Quentin Lee?) writes:

In real life, the killer was Chinese while the two victims were Hong Kong immigrants.

In my fictitious adaptation, I adapted the main character into a more Asian Canadian boy with his parents in Hong Kong. I also felt the sister’s boyfriend/killer should be Caucasian Canadian as 1) I wanted to open the role up to non-Asians and 2) to add a certain interracial tension to the mix. The Caucasian killer also symbolizes the subtle but present anti-Asian sentiment in North America.

As I said above, it’s a good movie. But I would have preferred he kept the Asian ethnicity of the killer. I can understand the desire to open the role to a non-Asian. I think most crimes against Asian American/Canadian women are committed by non-Asian men, such as this, this, this, this, this, this, and this. But in this case, it was an Asian guy who did it. We should own it, not because we should feel personally responsible for this tragedy, but because it’s part of the story of our immigration, the dirty part of where we come from. Good people and bad people exist in all cultures. This particular story, I felt, would have been better without the political overtones.

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"Evil. Not hot and horny."

Akrypti from 8Asians wrote a piece in response to my International Examiner article called The Perfect Villain: Straight Asian Men. In her piece, she talks about her perspective as an Asian American woman. It’s a great piece. She argues that Asian women often don’t see Asian men as invisible, but instead often see us as evil or take us less seriously than other groups.

There were a few points that I really appreciated.

1. Akrypti mentions Frank Chin and Minority Militant, and how people didn’t take their points seriously. She also mentions that the same thing takes place with the IR issues.

2. Asian men aren’t seen as protectors of Asian women. She writes:

Why don’t we take straight APA men seriously? Is it a matter of invisibility? No. We see them. The truth is, we don’t really like them. They’re villains. They represent male dominance. Heterosexual dominance. And before anyone can do a doubletake on the logical fallacies there, we got the waves of APA women feminists who reinforce the villain archetype with narrative after narrative of straight APA men who fail to protect women, because whether or not we realize what it is we’re doing (*cough* traditional gender roles *cough*), at the heart of it that’s what women want: men to be protective. So it isn’t that Asian women believe the crazy villain stereotypes of Asian men; it’s that we don’t necessarily see them as protective over us, and so subliminally it’s easier for us to buy into the overt stereotypes, or worse yet, generate them, and then proceed to ignore and dismiss the rational straight Asian men who challenge those stereotypes.

I thought this was particularly interesting, as we Asian men tend to see the AFCC as not wanting anything from us ever, protection or anything else. And this might be true in many cases. I don’t know. But it’s not true of all Asian women.

3. New media (outside of those doin’ it for the money) tend to focus on Asian guys hooking up rather than protecting women. I agree with this 100%. This is yet another reason why PUA is the most ridiculous form of snake oil that the peddlers are selling. It’s that same “masculine” question–masculinity means being brave, truthful, and good. Lots of these people have their eye on the wrong ball.

4. She writes:

“Straight APA men are not a part of any white-backed movement and as a result, do not have any affiliations, sympathies, or mainstream support. They are the more marginalized and thus if there is any work left for activists to do, it would be to seek a dynamic equilibrium between the APA sexes. After all, isn’t that what feminism is all about?”

That’s it 100%. Kingstonism sold well during the 70′s because Asian American feminists were tied to White feminism (and most Asian American feminists only dated White guys). Gay Asian stuff sells well these days because of the White male connection. Heterosexual Asian American guys deal with the Invisible Chain and are pretty much just doing it ourselves. We’s gots no White male connection and no White female connection.

It was good to hear this perspective from an Asian American woman, and it’s great to find some common ground in this debate. Within Asian America, there are PUA goofballs on one extreme, and there are bat-shit-crazy-man-hating-self-described-”feminists” on the other, but in the middle are normal men and women who can find common ground if they seek it. I have very positive feelings about the future. We just need to keep the dialogue going.

Related posts:

1. Invisible Heterosexual Asian Men
2. Asian American Female Suicide
3. Asian Women and the Invisible Chain

This is my 1,000th bigWOWO post.

Of all the afterthoughts following the death of Steve Jobs and the legacy of Apple, the most interesting one I read was AskAKorean’s Can Korea Be Truly Creative? In the post, he writes about how Steve Jobs inspired Koreans to ask each other if their country could be as creative as Apple.

It’s long for a blog post, but give it a read if you have time. The conclusion “The Korean” reaches is that Korea is already creative. The reason Apple was able to do what it did, the Korean speculates, is due in large part to the fact that Apple is an American company. He writes:

The reason why Apple can remake the world’s consumption habits is not because Apple is creative. Apple can be remake the world’s consumption habits because Apple is American. And American companies can remake the world’s consumption habits because America is a superpower. Writ large, the greatest strength of American economy is not its creativity; the greatest strength of American economy is that America is a superpower.

Because people want to live like Americans, people around the world are willing to adopt American consumption habits, which is one factor that helped Apple’s success. “The Korean” compares Facebook to a Korean company called Cyworld, which was similar but very Korean and “too cute,” which didn’t endear it to the rest of the world. According to the article, Apple succeeded because it was American and people adopted its products based on that association. “The Korean” also talks about how Americans have problems with Koreans eating dog, and that as a result, many Koreans now have a problem with it. This too comes from the fact that America is a superpower, and people therefore want to emulate Americans.

I don’t know enough about Apple to agree or disagree–as of yet I still have never owned an iPod, iPad, or iPhone. But the idea makes a lot of sense. I’ve noticed that non-Americans know a lot more about Americans than vice-versa.

When reading The Korean’s article, I was thinking a lot about literature and stories. I remember back in the day hearing a Japanese American rock band that sang in Japanese. I thought their music was good, but the audience wasn’t having it. They were just too Japanese. I also thought about the whole issue of Asian American media representation, and how even Asian Americans often prefer watching White people onscreen. It’s probably because many Asian Americans define “American” as “White,” and therefore they want to see Americans onscreen.

I’m playing with this idea in my head right now. There’s something great about living in a superpower country, even if it can also be hard to find power when you’re a tiny quiet racial minority within a big, big society.

(pic from here)

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I haven’t seen the movie, although I’ve read the book/novella, which is very good.  I do want to see the movie, however, because I’ve heard Audrey Hepburn is amazing.  I agree with Jeff Yang’s views of the protest–the movie should be viewed and studied in its context.

Now people are going to say: but what about the racism in this movie?  By studying it rather than protesting, aren’t we supporting it?

I speak from my own experience in Asian American activism, which can be summed up as follows: unless you have a compelling reason that people should care, people won’t.  Asians already know what racism is, and more of the same kind of racism isn’t going to make things much worse.  Such stereotypes should be studied, but true change isn’t going to take place until someone makes something better.  When you’re young, it’s good to raise awareness of racism, but when you’ve gotten over it, it’s best to devote more energy into creating something better.  To paraphrase Elijah Muhammed, you don’t have to show that the other way is wrong, you just have to show that what you have is better.

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Last week, I got an interesting e-mail from a young man who was thinking of signing up for a bootcamp with the ABCs of Attraction. The young man had read some of my posts on PUA. He asked my opinion, and I referred him to some of the other posts that I had written. He wrote back, said that he had heard some of my podcasts and read more, and in the end, he decided not to go through with it.

Now usually at this point, I thank people for listening to me and hit the road. But I was feeling a bit sad at sending this young man on his way without an alternative. As some of you know, I recently hired a business/life coach, and speaking from my own experience in the benefits of coaching and positive encouragement, I thought that maybe I could do some phone “coaching” with this young man–if he was up to it. So I e-mailed him and offered to do that. He hasn’t written back, and I don’t blame him–I have no formal training in this kind of thing at all. I’m an over-the-hill boring blogger dude with two kids, and I don’t even have a fancy belt buckle or a pink blazer or a tall hat! But I think that just the idea of possibly doing a phone consultation really opened up some ideas for me. For all of us, really.

On our most recent IR post, I read the comments which seem to echo the gender war, and it occurred to me that many of our issues and misunderstandings come from what we see or do not see. Not so much what is really there, but what we tend to focus on. It’s often a glass-half-empty vs. glass-half-full kind of thing. What we see and interpret often comes from the worldview which we receive from our surroundings and upbringings, the WORDS and IMAGES that other people–our parents, our friends, the media–put into our heads. It’s quite possible that we could start to reverse the IR trend/problem if we adjusted our outlook. The purpose in adjusting our outlook would not be to ignore reality, as some of the ridiculous “hey, the IR rate is about 50-50, so don’t worry about it!” commenters do, but rather to see and concentrate on the positive. There are a LOT of positive things to be happy about. We just need to train ourselves to see them.

I just finished the book What to Say When You Talk To Yourself by Shad Helmstetter, who is in the YouTube video above. Dr. Helmstetter has a program called “Self-Talk,” where he motivates people to achieve by “re-programming” them, by taking out the negative talk and replacing it with positive words. Check out the video above to learn more. Basically, the aim of his program is to adjust one’s thinking. For example, one might replace the programming, “I don’t have time to exercise, and I’ll always be fat and sluggish” with “I love being fit, I love exercise, and nothing stops me from getting my daily workout done because it makes me feel that much better!”

I like the idea. I think it should be possible for us/someone else to gradually work against the Rice Chasers and White Chasers by replacing our negative programming with positive words. It would be awesome to set up a kind of phone network where older people could counsel/motivate younger people, maybe not just in attracting women/men, but also in other areas of life. We could push each other to achieve.

It’s exciting because everyone always asks us if we have an alternative to PUA, and even though we do, they always tell us it isn’t enough. If they had a guy/gal on the phone line motivating them to take proactive steps in life, perhaps this would not only help fix the disparity, but also help people to achieve in other areas of life.

Thoughts? Volunteers (for coaches or playahs…I mean, players)? Really, this is an idea that has potential. Plus, we could bring some ethics and deeper thinking into the whole lifestyle and life empowerment discussion.

No related posts.

Fellow blogger and newspaper columnist Jeff Yang has an interesting article in the SF Chron: Looking for a “Hangover’ Cure. He writes about The Hangover 2, Ken Jeong, Asian stereotypes, and the dismal state of Asian American cinema and how hard it is to make a living making Asian American films. He writes about how we need Asian Americans to support Asian American art.  He links Justin Lin’s YOMYOMF essay on how he’s lost money on Asian American films, as well as Oliver Wang’s Two Percent Project, which Jeff Yang describes as follows:

Here’s how it might work: Get together a group of smart, influential tastemakers — journalists, critics, student leaders, bloggers. Have them select five indie Asian American creators — writers, filmmakers, musicians — from an open call that includes anyone with a brand-new, brashly different and commercially viable product.

Send these creators on a collective national barnstorming tour of the college campuses with the biggest Asian American student representation — reading, performing, speaking, and showing their work and their potential. The costs of the tour would be covered by student organization funds and corporate sponsors.

Here’s the kicker: Although attendance at these events would be free, every attendee would have to purchase one of the five products these artists are promoting on the spot, while enrolling in an online community that gives the artists long-term engagement with their consumers.

The goal? Constructing an independent audience. Reinventing the Asian American brand. And creating recorded proof that Asian American artists are marketable and that a market exists to sustain them.

I think it’s a noble project, and I agree something ought to be done. However, as one top AA filmmaker/director on Facebook mentioned, I wonder how successful this will be. I don’t want to downplay the effort or play the cynic–but I struggle with this.  The issue is the same as watching a Jon Fitch fight–you might make money, but people still might not be clamoring to see it. And without people clamoring to see more–even after they’ve had a taste of it–it’s hard for Asian American aesthetics and ideas to take off.

Ideally Asian Americans should have art that they not only consume and support, but art that they also discuss, share with their friends, and use as a means of better understanding who they are. Great art is pervasive–people think of fictional characters when encountering different experiences in their lives, and they identify with characters based on the emotional connection.  I agree with Jeff and Oliver that something needs to be done, but I wonder whether there also needs to be some kind of…I don’t know.  Really, I don’t.  How do you make art relevant to the people among whom it should be relevant but don’t believe that it is relevant?

Thoughts?

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I don’t know much about the program itself other than what was written in the articles, but my first impression is that this could be a great program.  Korean fathers–and probably Asian fathers–may have some issues with parenting, and this program could build both knowledge and community. The articles probably perpetuate stereotypes of Asian fathers, but these stereotypes may be true in many cases.  And if the stereotypes are true, we should be working to fix the culture so that they’re no longer true.  Outside of churches, Asian America doesn’t have many institutions that focus on building a strong culture, and this Father School could be a step in the right direction.

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Thanks, Nate, for sending the video above from Geekdad. It’s an ad by Google to show how people are using technology in their lives.  The video, “Dear Sophia,” tells the story of an Asian American father named “Daniel Lee,” who sets up an e-mail account for his baby daughter Sophia and sends her pictures, videos, and e-mails. It’s part of a larger campaign to show how people are using internet technology. From the Google Chrome YouTube channel:

More and more, the web is simply just part of your life and helps you get things done. See how people are using the web to do amazing things. The web is what you make of it.

As Nate mentioned to me, just as we were writing letters of protest to Apple over their exclusion of Asian men, maybe we could write letters of praise to Google for our inclusion. They’re doing something right at Google.

Here are some names/offices for a good 44-cent activism campaign:

Mr. Larry Page, CEO
or
Mr. Nikesh Arora, Senior Vice President and Chief Business Officer

Google, Inc.
1600 Amphitheatre Parkway
Mountain View, CA 94043
Phone: +1 650-253-0000
Fax: +1 650-253-0001

As always, I’m making the job easier for you by including a letter template. You can download the letter below as a Word document HERE.  (This letter is to Larry Page, the CEO; you’ll have to change the info to write to Mr. Arora instead.  I would LOVE to have an automated drop down menu that took the name and automatically inserted a person’s title, but I’ve been fooling around with Word’s If/Then function for the last hour, and no beans.  It’s times like this that I wish I were a comp sci major.    )

Dear Mr. Arora,

I am writing to express my appreciation for the video “Dear Sophia” on your Google Chrome YouTube channel. I thought it was an excellent video, and I was especially appreciative of the racial and cultural diversity that your company embodies in both your hiring and marketing practices. Thank you for making Google a great corporate citizen.

Yours Truly,

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The Alpha has a post here about entitlement, and how he would like his daughter to be able to articulate her needs to adults.  Alpha references Malcolm Gladwell’s book Outliers, where he reports that Gladwell says that middle class kids have an advantage over working class kids because they know to speak up.  Alpha quotes Gladwell:

“Even in fourth grade, middle class children appeared to be acting on their own behalf to gain advantage. They made special requests of teachers and doctors to adjust procedures to accommodate their desires.”

By contrast, the working class and poor children were characterized by “an emerging sense of distance, distrust, and constraint.” They didn’t know how to get their way, or how to “customize” whatever environment they were in, for their best purposes.

Alpha tells us how his marriage is a sort of mixed marriage–he’s Southern Chinese and has a “peasant” mindset, while his wife is Northern Chinese and has an aristocratic mindset.  I’m much the same as Alpha–I’m southern Chinese, and on my mother’s side, I’m the grandson of a laundryman.  I’ve got Southern Chinese blue collar values mixed in with fundamentalist conservative Christian values.  The result?  Put it on a plate, and if it tastes somewhat good, I’m in!  Who cares if I’m eating at a hole in the wall.  Practicality rules.  Good children don’t lead, question, or demand; they obey.

It reminds me about an excellent book I read years ago: Limbo: Blue-Collar Roots, White Collar Dreams by Alfred Lubrano.  In the book, Lubrano, the son of a bricklayer, writes about the disadvantages he had transforming from a blue collar kid to a journalism student at Columbia University.  He writes about the sense of displacement he felt and continues to feel as a person who is neither truly white collar nor truly blue collar.  There’s nothing inherently wrong with blue collar values–they teach you to persevere and to follow, which are both useful traits.  But they’re not the only skills necessary to thrive.

I mentioned that I was a bit aghast at Richard Florida’s dismissal of the so-called service and working classes, and I felt that his sense of entitlement was a bad thing.  However, a sense of entitlement can be a good thing.  It’s hard to get ahead unless you demand more.  It’s hard to truly get ahead unless you demand more than the bare necessities of what you need to live.  As our social structure reinvents itself in the new economy, we need to evaluate where we’re going and where we want to be.  This is true not only for individuals, but for groups as well.

(pic from here)

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