WASHINGTON — U.S. President Barack Obama called Dec. 15 for a continued fight against discrimination and bigotry, citing the country’s unfair past treatment of some Europeans and Chinese, as well as the wartime incarceration of Japanese Americans. Obama made the remarks at an event in Washington as popular Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump faced mounting […]
Obama urges fight against bigotry, cites wartime Japanese American incarceration
December 17, 2015 by Leave a Comment
Same-sex couples to be recognized under plan by Tokyo’s Shibuya ward
February 19, 2015 by Leave a Comment
TOKYO — Tokyo’s Shibuya Ward plans to issue certificates recognizing same-sex couples as being in “relationships equivalent to marriage,†becoming the first local government in Japan to do so. The plan is set down in a draft statute incorporated in a fiscal 2015 budget unveiled Feb. 12. The draft statute is to be presented to […]
The ‘Bamboo Ceiling’: Hollywood Shuns Asians, while new media embraces them
February 6, 2014 by Leave a Comment
In a recent New Yorker cartoon, a dog is shown lounging by a pool and saying to a pup: “YouTube’s one thing, but cats will never make it on the big screen.†A funny commentary, surely, but in America that statement could just as easily be applied to ethnic minorities, especially Asian Americans. Cats and […]
State Legislature passes resolution apologizing to fired employees
September 5, 2013 by Leave a Comment
On Aug. 19, the California state Assembly approved a resolution to apologize to former Japanese Americans fired by the state in 1942. Following that, the California State Senate passed the resolution Sept. 4. The Assembly Concurrent Resolution 19, authored by Assembly member Richard Pan (D-Sacramento), issues an official public apology to Japanese Americans who were […]
RABBIT RAMBLINGS: A call to protest the ‘gross miscarriages of justice’
July 25, 2013 by Leave a Comment
Today (July 13), soon after the not guilty verdict on the George Zimmerman case was announced, I am feeling ashamed of being an American. This is obviously not the greatest country in the world if a 17-year-old boy can be killed on a sidewalk while walking home from a 7-Eleven store. This young person was […]
THE GREAT UNKNOWN AND THE UNKNOWN GREAT: Remembering the McCarran-Walter Act
July 11, 2013 by Leave a Comment
This week’s column commemorates the 60th birthday of the opening of naturalization to Japanese immigrants, as a result of the 1952 Immigration and Nationality Act (McCarran-Walter Act). Enacted in the summer of 1952, at the height of the McCarthy era, with Congress overriding President Harry Truman’s veto, the act was a product of Cold War […]
Minorities face more subtle housing discrimination, HUD finds
June 27, 2013 by Leave a Comment
WASHINGTON — While the “blatant acts of housing discrimination†that minorities face has continued to decline in the U.S., “more subtle forms of housing denial†continue, states a U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and the Urban Institute in a study that was released June 11. According to “Housing Discrimination Against Racial and Ethnic […]
THE GREAT UNKNOWN AND THE UNKNOWN GREAT: The civil rights politics and complexities of Nikkei ‘coming out’ as LGBT
June 13, 2013 by Leave a Comment
This week’s entry represents the seventh annual column that I have produced for the Nichi Bei on the queer heritage of Japanese Americans. In past entries, I have explored such topics as the varieties of Issei sexuality, the turn to Western-style family models (and homophobia) within Japanese communities, and the community’s turn to support for […]
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An internal conversation on race
Allow me to first introduce myself. I have been educated in the psycho-analytic school of thought and a central feature of my education was to observe my internal psychological processes while I was working with someone receiving psychoanalytic psychotherapy, both as a method of gaining some information about what was going on with my clients […]