Dude, you got it backwards

So Australian news anchor John Mangos said something stupid and racist:

…  Mangos reported on a Chinese lottery winner who wore a mask to remain anonymous while collecting his prize.

After the story, he said: “I don’t know why he bothered. I mean, I can tell you now — he’s Chinese.

“He’s got straight black hair and he’s got squinty eyes and yellow skin.”

And then he “apologized”:

Another adoptee with no citizenship

From the Commercial Appeal.  Note that in the comments, there is somebody who doesn’t fully understand the issue yet erroneously and repeatedly insists that adoptees get automatic citizenship.  Which has been my experience with white adoptive parents.

WAP:  There was some law passed that made all adoptees citizens, automatically!

Me:  Actually, the Child Citizenship Act of 2000 grants citizenship to certain eligible adoptees if all conditions of the Act are met.  And it does not apply to adoptees who were 18 or older as of the effective date, which was February 27, 2001.

WAP:  So adopted kids don’t need Certificates of Citizenship!

On another note, I saw a news article about a citizenship ceremony and the kid from Wo Ai Ni Mommy was one of the recipients.  So I was glad to see her parents took care of that.

Edited for clarification, misplaced modifier and to add:  I just noticed there are news photos  from around the time of her adoption.  So her parents must have invited press coverage then.

‘Veteran of Iraq War now fights his own deportation’

From the New York Times.   Elisha Dawkins thought he was a United States citizen. He had a Florida birth certificate that was issued years after his birth and a U.S. passport.    He served in both the army and the navy and held a security clearance.

But there was a deportation order for him from 1992, when he was eight years old.

He has been charged with lying on his passport application.

Friends don’t let friends tweet

Without engaging the cerebral cortex.

So advice columnist Margo Howard (daughter of the late advice columnist Ann Landers) tweeted her confusion about why Telemundo Chicago was covering and tweeting about the Blagojevich trial:

Not sure why Telemundo cares. Their soap operas off?

To which State Representative Deb Mell (sister-in-law to Rod) replied:

Wow that is so racist

An NBC news producer responded:

@Telemundochgo crews covering #Blagojevich each day

So Howard responded:

I knew that from the 1st trial, which I covered. Wondered why then

But never spent a few seconds to find out. More:

Not racist at all, & not meant to be. Y would People in Mexico care? & they ARE known for their shows.

Well, I’d guess most people don’t mean to be racist. But we still manage on a regular basis even without any intention whatsoever. Or so we say. But I digress.

What’s racist here? Is it what she actually said?

Top 25 Adoption Blogs by Parents

White parents, I would guess.  Are there any other kind?

P.S.  I do not want to hear the fucking starfish story with regard to adoptive children.  Please make a note of it.

FWB?

Fly with your pants falling down? Get arrested*.

Fly in tiny underpants with thigh-high hose?  No problem!  Even if other passengers complain about you.

*Edited to add:  According to the SF Gate, “He was jailed for a day in San Mateo County on suspicion of trespassing, battery and resisting arrest before being released on $11,000 bail Thursday.”  Another news report stated that he spent two nights at the San Mateo jail.

Vincent

On the night of his slaying, Vincent Chin was 27 years old and his future was promising.  He was doing well at work in computer graphics, was well liked, and was looking to buy a new home for his wife and his widowed mother.  In fact, Vincent’s story typified the experiences of many Asian American immigrants:  his father, Chin Wing HIng, came from Guangdong Province to America in search of a new life, which he found in the laundries and restaurants of Detroit.  When World War II began, he enlisted, and after serving honorably in the U.S. Army, became eligible for citizenship.  As a reward of citizenship, Mr. Chin was permitted to bring his wife, Lily, to this country.  There were no children, and a few years later, the couple adopted a five-year-old boy from Guangdong, whom they named Vincent.

Friends and teachers say Vincent was a fun-loving, happy kid.  His mother says he could have studied harder, but that he was a good boy, the kind who would help others.  When he was nine, he began working in local Chinese restaurants, bussing tables.  He had two passions:  fishing and reading.  “Whenever he had a chance, Vince would try to get to a lake and drop a line–it was his way of relaxing,” remembers boyhood friend Gary Koivu, who was with Vincent the night he died.

And Vincent had a sensitive side to his personality–he often wrote poetry to his fiancee, Vikki Wong.  She is trying to renew her life and is reluctant to talk publicly about Vincent, but some memories stand out, such as a Valentine’s Day poem that Vincent placed in a classified section of a local paper:

There is no life without you
There is no joy or laughter
There is no brightness, no warmth
All the mornings after.

So stay with me
And We’ll face the tomorrows
To find if our love
Can overcome the sorrows.

From Chinese American voices: from the gold rush to the present.

June 19, 1982

Vincent Who? is available on youtube for a limited time, courtesy of Asian Pacific Americans for Progress.

They called it “camp”

Talk to elderly Issei or Nisei, and they invariably refer to their experience in “camp.”  Which camp were you in?  Did you go to camp?  Where did you go after camp?

“Camp” wasn’t an idyllic, rustic cabin on a lake somewhere.  It was a concentration camp in some g-d forsaken place.  They lived in tarpaper shacks or horse stalls under armed guard.

“Camp” meant “concentration camp.”  They knew what it was.  The government knew it too.  Even President Roosevelt called them concentration camps.

But now they are “internment centers” or “relocation centers.”  They were for the protection of Americans of Japanese descent.  The “non-aliens.”

They weren’t detention centers and they weren’t prisoners and they weren’t concentrations camps.  They were free to leave at any time.  They were internees and they were being relocated.  For their own protection.

But words matter.

‘Search for truth brings justice’

Photo by Gina Ferazzi

Story here.

Aiko Herzig-Yoshinaga is an iconic figure among students, scholars and Nikkei (Japanese American) activists. Along with 110,000 other Nikkei on the West Coast, Aiko spent World War II in three concentration camps: Manzanar in California, Jerome and Rohwer in Arkansas. She resettled in New York City where she became involved with Asian Americans for Action. Later, she moved to Virginia near the National Archives in Washington, D.C. In 1981 she was hired as the primary researcher for the Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians (CWRIC).

Aiko and her husband, Jack Herzig, played a pivotal role in the redress movement through their research at the National Archives. The documents they found were also instrumental in the coram nobis cases that vacated the wartime convictions of Fred Korematsu and Gordon Hirabayashi. They conducted primary research of official documents for the National Council for Japanese American Redress in the class action lawsuit, William Hohri et.al., vs U.S.A. Aiko also worked for the Department of Justice’s Office of Redress Administration to help identify individuals in the Nikkei community eligible for the presidential apology and redress payment.