ALEXANDRIA, Va. — A federal judge ruled May 21 that a parents’ group can move forward with a lawsuit alleging that new admissions policies at an elite public high school in northern Virginia discriminate against Asian Americans. Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology was rated the best public high school in the country […]
Text ‘enrichens’ knowledge of Asian Americans in the South
July 18, 2019 by Leave a Comment
A Different Shade of Justice: Asian American Civil Rights in the South By Stephanie Hinnershitz (Chapel Hill, N.C.: University of North Carolina Press, 2017, 296 pp., $39.95, hardcover) In “A Different Shade of Justice,” Stephanie Hinnershitz details the struggles for equality by ethnic Asians in the American South. For more than a century, Asian laborers […]
Complaint filed against Samsung for alleged religious discrimination against Muslim man
November 8, 2018 by Leave a Comment
The Council on American-Islamic Relations has filed a complaint against Samsung on behalf of a Muslim man who alleges religious discrimination during a job interview at the company in 2017, CAIR said Oct. 25. The man interviewed at the company in Menlo Park in October of last year and was allegedly asked inappropriate questions regarding […]
Muslim officer who complained about racism, misconduct alleging retaliation
May 10, 2018 by Leave a Comment
A San Francisco police officer said April 10 he is being targeted and retaliated against for filing a complaint last year against other officers in which he claimed racial and religious discrimination. The San Francisco Public Defender’s Office announced that the officer, who’s not being named, initially made the complaint because in addition to being […]
Palo Alto: Data analysis company agrees to $1.6M settlement of bias allegations
May 11, 2017 by Leave a Comment
PALO ALTO, Calif. — A Palo Alto-based data analysis company has agreed to pay more than $1.6 million to settle a U.S. Department of Labor charge that it discriminated against Asian applicants for software engineering jobs. Palantir Technologies Inc. provides software and data analysis services for government agencies and private industry. It received $340 million […]
City sued over voting rights, citing discrimination against Asians
April 13, 2017 by Leave a Comment
A retired social worker filed a lawsuit against the city of Santa Clara March 30, citing that the city’s at-large election system has prevented Asian Americans from being elected to City Council despite a 38 percent Asian minority population in the city. “Something is wrong when such a sizeable Asian American population cannot elect candidates […]
‘Fresh’ history of Hawai‘i’s Nikkei is somewhat lacking
January 1, 2017 by Leave a Comment
FROM RACE TO ETHNICITY: INTERPRETING JAPANESE AMERICAN EXPERIENCES IN HAWAII By Jonathan Y. Okamura (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2014, 272 pp., $42, cloth) It is a somewhat curious fact that many of the people I have met on the mainland, Japanese Americans and others alike, seem rather uninformed about the Nikkei experience in Hawai‘i. (I […]
Labor Dept. files lawsuit accusing Silicon Valley data company of hiring bias
October 13, 2016 by Leave a Comment
The U.S. Department of Labor filed an administrative lawsuit against Palantir Technologies Inc. Sept. 26, accusing the Palo Alto-based data analysis company of discriminating against Asians who wanted to work on the company’s $340 million worth of government contracts. The complaint was filed with the department’s Office of Administrative Law Judges, which functions as a […]
THE GREAT UNKNOWN AND THE UNKNOWN GREAT: The JACL’s historic support for marriage equality
June 23, 2016 by Leave a Comment
Ever since I have been writing my Nichi Bei column “The Great Unknown and the Unknown Great” in 2007, I have devoted an annual column to studying the history of Japanese American sexuality, and in particular in-group attitudes toward homosexuality and the presence of gays and lesbians. I am proud to continue that tradition with […]
When it comes to hatred and prejudice, it’s time to See Something Say Something
We live in anxious times. We probably always will. And I don’t say this lightly. I’ll never shake the memories of the times I sprinted out of my office in the Senate or rushed down the steps of the Capitol in panicked evacuation because planes had come too close and were possible terrorist attacks. Sometimes […]