This essay was infuriating. It universalizes author’s audio processing and English language fluency, and dismisses everyone else’s needs as “unnecessary”. There are many reasons of accessibility why people might want to have subtitles on for their shows.

theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/… Even if the audio is loud enough. Even if they are English language speakers.

Subtitles are an accessibility tool, and can help a wide range of viewers with a wide range of needs. We need to stop gatekeeping why someone might feel like more access is helpful to them.

The phrase “Asian American” literally comes from Asian students who wanted to organize in solidarity with fellow Black/Brown for civil rights and ethnic studies.

Black-Asian solidarity is at the very core of our politics, identity and history.

https://twitter.com/ourobororoboruo/status/1654512491047559170

We have historically always understood that we collectively want, need, and must fight for an end to racism, racial violence, white supremacy, and exploitation of the poor. Anyone who has studied our communities’ histories would know this.

Seeing this screenshot going around and — folks, please stop using Asian Americans as a model minority wedge to bolster classism, ableism and anti-blackness. Policies that target poor people, unhoused people, mentally ill people, and Black people don’t protect Asian Americans; it hurts us, too. In part because some in our community are also poor, unhoused, struggling with mental illness, or Black.

Catching up on this story now (it’s been a week). The murder of Jordan Neely is horrific, unjustifiable, and wrong.

https://twitter.com/AyannaPressley/status/1653926555763236864

Nobody should be murdered for being in mental health crisis.

Furthermore, even if subway riders believed Neely posed a threat - a belief for which there is no compelling evidence - it takes a conscious effort to kill someone the way Neely was killed.

Beef producers and stars (finally) release statement on resurfaced r*pe self-account by David Choe in 2014 podcast.

variety.com/2023/tv/news/b… In case you missed it, we wrote about Choe’s remarks back in 2014.

reappropriate.co/2014/04/did-ko…

Flying is miserable for everyone, esp for babies who don’t understand why they have to be strapped to a seat for hours in a metal tube while their ears pop. Babies hate flying as much as you do — they just have less emotional regulation and so express what we’re all thinking. Adults who actually have had time to learn to emotionally regulate should exercise those skills, and give babies and their parents grace and space.

Most parents are just doing our fucking best.

This is a big freaking deal. A coalition of AAPI civil rights groups have published a lengthy report on AsAm mis/disinformation online which focuses on several troubling trends including anti-Blackness, anti-feminism, and casteism.

asianamdisinfo.org/wp-content/upl… This is the excellent @NBCAsianAmerica coverage of the report by @kimmythepooh

nbcnews.com/news/amp/rcna4…

I've been processing @constancewu's courageous revelation today about the profound impact that hate from one's own community can have on mental health. I hope this is a moment for the AsAm community to take a good hard look at ourselves.

https://twitter.com/diepthought/status/1547670242050027521

The thing that really jumped out for me was the trauma caused by the types of messages Constance received, that she is a "blight" or embarassment for the AsAm community -- a rhetoric that is sadly all too commonly and cavalierly thrown around in our community.

Alright, I also want to engage a bit more directly on the op-ed that sparked this thread, linked here in NY Times. The central thesis is that use of gender-inclusive language (eg “menstruators”, “birthing people”) decenters women.

nytimes.com/2022/07/03/opi…

https://twitter.com/reappropriate/status/1543682365242740737

Specifically, author argues that this language is reductive, and boils women down to their reproductive parts while avoiding reference to the political class of women; and that women, faced with historic sexism, are being asked to subjugate their own interests. Many issues here.

The way some TERFs twist themselves into knots to cast gender-inclusive politics as misogyny reminds me so much of how back when I first started blogging, talking about race and intersectionality for these same second-wave feminists was seen as exclusionary of white women. Citation for the screenshot is this troubling op-ed in the Times today:

nytimes.com/2022/07/03/opi…

I’m a day late and a dollar short to this (met a big writing deadline today so missed tweeting abt it when it was fresh), but I too am frustrated by Awkwafina’s recent Notes app non-apology addressing long-standing criticisms of her blaccent. It didn’t actually say anything. This thread is written in a spirit of calling in because this was a missed opportunity for Lum to really engage on issues of cultural misappropriation and anti-blackness. This was a missed opportunity to start a necessary conversation. I wish Lum had done better here.

So I actually want to jump in on this as someone who has spent time thinking about parenting and scholarship around parenting. A lot of what we conventionally think about as “good parenting” actually exists to reinforce racist tropes about WHO we imagine are good parents.

https://twitter.com/ourobororoboruo/status/1464604295282798592

If we actually look at the history of parenting scholarship, there’s a striking tendency to categorize parenting styles according to how authoritarian / attentive parents are to their kids - and that the “good” vs “bad” styles are presented as distinctly racialized.

This is an incredibly important point. A lot of AA recent political history is relatively unrecorded, unanalyzed, and unexplored. A great deal of Movement work (and ideological evolution! and schisms!) happened post-1970, but it has yet to be properly remembered or discussed.

https://twitter.com/scottkurashige/status/1456425397491470343

As @scottkurashige points out, there are a lot of reasons for this. The work is sometimes less overtly visible (sometimes by choice), less glamorous, and also just more recent. Also AA history is, in general, poorly explored — most historic scholarship focuses on late 19th cent.

There's been a lot of chatter on Asian American Twitter, and one thing I just want to add the conversation is that I'm noticing a broad dismissal of folks who primarily engage in scholarship as their form of contribution.

I want to contest that point of view. I'm on record in multiple outlets being strongly in favor of Asian American ethnic studies. One major reason is because I believe that sustainable social change requires rethinking our ideas, and reimagining the future. Revolution is about theory as well as practice.

Ah - thank u @scottkurashige I’ve been looking for this cite for over a week.

https://twitter.com/scottkurashige/status/1449473610561822722

Read Scott’s thread for good analysis but what jumps out at me is the finding that roughly 3/4 of AAPI identify with a pan-ethnic racial identity, and that 20% of those surveyed feel more kinship with the term in the COVID era.

One of our most pressing and galvanizing fights is our ongoing struggles in ethnic enclaves around the nation to stop gentrification.

We must protect affordable housing for our communities.

#ChinatownNotForSale

https://twitter.com/caaav/status/1449503369790435332

One of the most vital and reinvigorating memories I’ve created in California is when @seanmiura welcomed me to the state by taking an afternoon to give me a “community organizer’s” tour of Little Tokyo, showing me all the spots where affordable housing is and where it used to be.

A lot of good stuff to digest here, even if I reject one of the basic premises of this writing (and the book it reviews) that the Asian American identity is inherently empty or flawed, stitched out of nothingness. vulture.com/2021/10/jay-ca… One of my concerns with the way the Asian American identity is always argued to be an empty anachronism is that so much work has already been done by us as a community to help define and explore it.

What if most of us actually grew up not hating being AsAm.

What if that’s not actually a central unifying tenet of the AsAm experience.

What if the “self-hating AsAm” narrative is just what sits most comfortably for the non-AsAm mainstream editor and media consumer. Because, I’m gonna be really honest here, I never grew up hating being Asian. I didn’t despise my looks, my skin, my lunches, or my language. I didn’t pine away for blonde locks or blonde boyfriends.

I was - and still am - comfortably Asian.

Ok, so I want to weigh in here bc sadly this attitude is more common than we’d care to admit in science, and factors into larger forms@of intolerance Asian/Asian American scientists face.

https://twitter.com/clementychow/status/1446936430035410945

Western scientific tradition presumes English as a common language (its own issue, btw), which means that most non-English-as-a-first-language scientists must learn at least some English proficiency. The assumption that international scientists don’t try to learn English is wrong

Thinking a lot this week about what it’s like to navigate being an Asian American woman who is passionate and outspoken about racism and sexism, and how racialized and gendered stereotypes mean that this is so often misread as just mean or nasty. It’s like as Asian American women (and other non-men), we are especially pigeon-holed by expectation that we always be nice and kind — even when this is a cartoon, even when it is to our own detriment.

So, I read the kidney thing. I have lots of “everybody sucks here” vibes, but one big concern is how in writing this piece the Times may be elevating and legitimizing what sounds like a stalking / harassment situation of an AsAm woman and writer, for the clicks. It’s complicated. I think Sonya drawing so immediately and identifiably from an acquaintance’s personal experiences is absolutely not great. But I also think Dawn’s response is far disproportionate, shows signs of stalking, and to me crosses the line into vindictive harassment.