My Ten Minutes of Fame:

http://www.stmatthews.edu/dirnews.html

Key Notes:

(1) I have no idea what I was yapping about.

(2) The tie was borrowed. My tie collection is a lot better.

(3) The 3rd place winner is a Russian near-professional Tennis NINJA who gets straight A’s (100%) like it’s normal. She even look like a ninja.

Even Christian book publishers are NOT immunne to racism against Asian Americans….

I dropped my jaw when I read this article. Even Christian publishers are can be racist against Asian Americans. However, two things worth nothing. First, the publisher, Zondervan, apologized like crazy and did more than they have to to makeup for the insult. Everybody makes mistake but HOW you respond to a mistake is more important and remembered. Zondervan did a good job rectifying the misdeed and they will be respected for it. Second, the article mentioned “systemic” racism, which is really instituional racism. This kind of racism is portraying another culture offensively but the portrayer thinks it is normal because everyone else is doing it or using cultural stereotypes thinking everyone accepts these stereotype. In another words, it is pure ignorance.

(By the way, I know this Rev Soong-Chan Rah, the one campaigning against the Zondervan. He use to be at a church in Boston and he preached for our Vietnamese Alliance Church English Service once. Great man.)

http://www.christianitytoday.com/todayschristian/special/speakingup.html

Speaking Up for Asian Americans

How a Christian book’s racially insensitive content led to a demonstration of true reconciliation. An interview with the Rev. Soong-Chan Rah.

By Alice C. Chen

Rev. Soong-Chan Rah

It began as a search for Chinese food and ended with one of the country’s largest Christian publishers revising a book and issuing a public apology to Asian Americans.

On a recent Friday evening, the Rev. Soong-Chan Rah was searching online to find a Chinese restaurant in his neighborhood. The 39-year-old assistant professor of church growth and evangelism at North Park University in Chicago typed in “Chinese delivery Mee Maw” (the restaurant name). Up popped a link to Zondervan, which publishes everything from Bibles to The Purpose-Driven Life.

“I was a little confused,” Rah said. He followed the link to a sample page from Skits That Teach, where he read the following script.

“Herro, Dis is Wok’s Up Restaurant calling to confirm your order. … I think that, yes, you total is 14 dollar 95 cent.”

“Herro? This is Wok’s Up Restaurant again. We have drive and drive, and we can’t find you house. We don’t find you house soon, you pu pu get cold. Pu pu good when it hot.”

(Hostile) “Okay, we drive for long time looking for you house. I tell you, you go outside and I look for you. I am driving a red Rincon (Lincoln) Continental. You pu pu still getting cold. Bye!”

“Okay, I drive for long time and I still not find you house. So I am eating you pu pu! Ruckiry it still warm. I was hungry, so I eat it. Mmmmm … this pu pu is good. (Smacks lips a few times) You on my bad rist. You don’t call us anymore. Bye!”

Rah found the material offensive and initiated a conversation with Youth Specialties, the arm of Zondervan that created the product, and authors Tommy Woodard and Eddie James, known as the Skit Guys. Eventually, both Mark Oestreicher, president of Youth Specialties, and the Skit Guys issued public apologies. Oestreicher called the character in the skit a “horribly, inexcusably, and unquestionably racist” portrayal of Asian Americans, pointing to an underlying “systemic racism” within the organization for okaying the skit’s publication.

Zondervan also took the extraordinary steps of destroying every copy of Skits That Teach left in stock, revising and republishing the book without the Chinese delivery man skit, and offering to replace purchased copies with the re-released version.

Journalist Alice C. Chen recently sat down with Rah. The professor shared his concerns about the book and the encouragement he found in the authors’ and publishers’ willingness to admit and correct their mistake, regardless of the cost. This, Rah suggests, is what true racial and ethnic reconciliation will require.

What was your first reaction to the skit?

I didn’t believe it was real. I thought it was some kind of mistake. It doesn’t seem like anything that would appear in a Christian book. I had a flashback to several years ago, when I stumbled upon the Rickshaw Rally Vacation Bible School material, published by the Southern Baptist’s publishing company, LifeWay, which was also offensive to the Asian American community. I was kind of stunned.

What was your complaint about this specific skit?

It was a caricature of Asian Americans. The way they spelled the words was clearly mocking the Chinese delivery person. The person was portrayed as very angry, hostile. When you see something like this, you recognize how marginalized Asian Americans are, how we’re often portrayed as outsiders whose language skills are deficient. There are always stereotypes of the Asian American community. You deal with them in society and in secular media. But it’s shameful to see something like this in a Christian book.

What did you do?

I tried to get in touch with the publisher. I e-mailed the Skit Guys, who had created the product. I went to their website and discovered they had an MP3 of the skit. It was clearly a white person mimicking or mocking the voice of an Asian American. I blogged about it.

I started getting e-mails back. Initially, I got an e-mail from the Skit Guys that was not necessarily a positive response. We went back and forth with e-mail and a few phone calls. We went through a whole bunch of discussion. To their credit, both the Skit Guys and the president of Youth Specialties saw it was not just a mistake, but a very significant offense. They eventually made drastic, significant measures to counteract it.

How did Zondervan and the Skit Guys react?

Both groups issued a public apology. They agreed to go to significant lengths to pull the material and dramatically change it. (They’re also offering free replacements for anyone who originally purchased the book.)

Zondervan recognized this problem as soon as they saw it and did the best they could do. Some of my friends in other publishing companies said Zondervan is doing beyond what’s required of them and making a tremendous effort.

Why is this an important issue?

There are two perspectives. One is: What kind of witness can the Christian community be if non-Christians already see Christians as ignorant or backward? If non-Christian Asians see the skit, they would jump to some conclusions about Christians—we’re racist, insensitive, and don’t care about the Asian community.

But there is also a positive view: When Christians see a mistake, they correct it. It shows Christians are concerned about the Asian American community. It reflects sensitivity, Christian character, and a willingness to confess sins and correct them. Zondervan’s Youth Specialties and the Skit Guys have made efforts to mend relations with the Asian American community. Zondervan took on significant financial loss in destroying copies of the book and the Skit Guys are working on a skit that deals with the issue of racism.

Ironically, there was a similar incident with Far-out Far East Rickshaw Rally—Racing to the Son published in 2004 by LifeWay, and you led a campaign to expose it as well. What happened there?

They created a vacation Bible school curriculum with a lot of offensive images, aspects, and caricatures, like the use of Chinese takeout food boxes, an Americanized spoof of Chinese food, as props. They used a symbol of oppression, a rickshaw. They also used outdated, commercial, secular media ways of looking at Asian culture. Their theme song was, “Wax on, wax off, get your rickshaw ready.” It’s clearly from the Karate Kid movie, rather than any significant research.

The way I put it, if you’d asked a sixth-grader to do a report on Japan and he came back with some of that stuff, you would’ve failed the kid. That’s what they put out there as a culturally relevant VBS.

The Skit Guys played it as a joke, but Rickshaw Rally was serious. LifeWay never admitted wrongdoing. Many Asian Americans were deeply offended by their actions. LifeWay said, in effect, we’ll ignore the pleas from within our own denomination and from the hundreds of Asian Americans who signed a petition asking us to stop distributing the curriculum.

Why do you think this type of incident happens in Christian circles?

We’ve simplified issues of race so much in the American church that we fail to see some elements, some larger issues of race. It’s not just individual prejudice, but larger racial injustice. Sometimes, these are issues we don’t talk about in the Christian community. American society is changing; there are more non-whites. Yet in leadership, those writing and reviewing Christian books still tend to come from the white community. It limits the point of view.

We assume if we’re Christians, we are all the same, equal. That’s not the way life operates.

This is your second campaign against a major publisher. What would you say to those who think you’re being oversensitive?

I remember growing up in Maryland, being taunted by kids at school for my ethnicity, for having a different-sounding name. Those are things that impact many people, many immigrants. As adults, we want to protect our children from things that can be harmful.

On the one hand, you expect stupidity in how Asian Americans are portrayed by secular media. The last thing I want to see is my children going to church and experiencing racism and marginalization. We want to create a culture in church that’s open to all ethnicities. Especially given how rapidly society is changing; it’s becoming a more non-white church.

I would hate for Christians to raise ignorant children, children who think Japan and China are the same country, children who think all Asian Americans speak with funny accents. Unless you walk in a person’s shoes, it’s hard to say what is critical and what is oversensitive. This United States is a nation that continues to be divided along racial lines. We as a church should do as much as possible to promote unity versus disunity. When you marginalize a group of people, you create a sense that they are outsiders and that creates significant disunity.

In the same way that God is concerned for His body, the church, we should be concerned when things disrupt and alienate people. I’m thankful for the tremendous wisdom and leadership Zondervan and Youth Specialties showed.

What do you want the public to know about Asian Americans?

We have a wide range of cultural backgrounds and nationalities. In the past, Asians have been fairly quiet and passive. There were very few national Asian American leaders. That’s not necessarily going to be true in the next 10 to 20 years. There are a growing number of churches drawing significant numbers of Asian Americans. This is a segment of the population, especially the Christian population, that needs to be heard.

The word “ORIENTAL” is derogative to Asian-Americans, especially women. Some people on my current campus don’t believe me. I knew it all along. It is sad. Here’s why:

 http://www.eastwestmagazine.com/content/view/164/40/ 

Replacing ‘Oriental’        

By Sonu Munshi

Madeline Ong-Sakata will never forget her father’s words to her as a child: “You are Chinese American, remember that.” Ong-Sakata, now editor and publisher of the Asian SUNews in Arizona, would promptly reply, “Daddy, I am American-Chinese!”

In Ong-Sakata’s hyphenated world, a third term, “Oriental,” generally associated with eastern exotica and people foreign and inscrutable from a western viewpoint, would sometimes creep in.

“Being referred to as one made me feel like I was not American,” she says.

A meeting with members of the Asian/Asian Pacific American Students’ Coalition at Arizona State University, who said the term bothered them, prompted Ong-Sakata to spearhead Senate Bill 1295 in February to replace each reference to “Oriental” in official state literature with “Asian.”

“I figured the time has come to do something now before another generation of our youth has to feel inferior,” she says.

Washington State and California have already passed similar bills.

The Asian American Journalists Association, a national non-profit professional organization, has lent its support to the bill. “Removing this antiquated and derogatory term for Asians will enable Arizona to extend the same respect and honor that is granted to other racial and ethnic groups who express preferences for the terms by which they are regarded,” the association stated.

Philadelphia-based trial attorney Tsiwen M. Law, a leading advocate for the Asian American community who has taught Asian American studies at the University of Pennsylvania and Temple University, hopes for a formal recognition from the Arizona government that “Oriental” is no longer acceptable terminology.  He says the concept of “oriental” was constructed to pass the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882. The act suspended Chinese immigration to the United States, with the term helping to add skepticism about people from China.

Jeri Kishiyama Auther, a member of the local Asian Chamber of Commerce, hopes the measure will get passed in the House and Senate and be on Gov. Janet Napolitano’s desk for signing by April’s end.

She says making a change in the state documents is an important first step. “If you change it within the state statute, people’s perceptions will ultimately change, even if not overnight.”

Perceptions have hurt ASU kinesiology senior Sophia Swangaroon, a licensed massage therapist. She testified before the Senate about how her industry’s reputation can be frustrating. “Because of the ‘O’ word, people tend to associate it with the ‘late night’ business,” says the 25-year-old, of Thai-Vietnamese descent.

Echoes Ong-Sakata: “Oriental rugs and art is OK, but oriental massage? What picture does that put in your mind?”

But not everyone thinks negatively of the term. In fact, Swangaroon says the problem is that many people, including some in the Senate, have no idea it is offensive to Asian Americans.

Arizona resident Jeffrey Lim, 24, could be counted as one. “My experience with this word comes from folks (non-Asians) using the word to describe food, clothes or a market,” Lim says.

Or New York City resident Yiying Lee who thinks of “Orient” as an old-world term rather than something derogatory. “I guess some people think of it as implying submissiveness or prostitution and other situations that the Asian world was known for when the West met the East,” she says.

Lee adds that even if she does hear someone use the term, she just dismisses the person as being a bit backward. “Personally, I think there are a lot more pressing issues to concern myself with.”

That reality can hurt those like Auther, who says not everyone can understand, but still, it’s important to educate people.

“I happen to be an American of Japanese ancestry,” she says. “Just call me Asian American