Happy (first!) Fred Korematsu Day!

First time that a day is named after an Asian American. How awesome is that?

Short bio from Korematsu Institute:

Fred T. Korematsu was a national civil rights hero. In 1942, at the age of 23, he refused to go to the government’s incarceration camps for Japanese Americans. After he was arrested and convicted of defying the government’s order, he appealed his case all the way to the Supreme Court. In 1944, the Supreme Court ruled against him, arguing that the incarceration was justified due to military necessity.

In 1983, Prof. Peter Irons, a legal historian, discovered key documents that government intelligence agencies had hidden from the Supreme Court in 1944. The documents consistently showed that Japanese Americans had committed no acts of treason to justify mass incarceration. With this new evidence, a legal team of mostly Japanese American attorneys re-opened Korematsu’s 40 year-old case on the basis of government misconduct. On November 10, 1983, Korematsu’s conviction was overturned in a federal court in San Francisco. It was a pivotal moment in civil rights history. Korematsu remained an activist throughout his life.

I am so over this woman, but I just had to post this because I lol'd in real life. Let's hope Henry is right when he says her 15 mins. are up, but check out the Tiger Mom Says meme if you want to see more.

What's Your Ethnic Makeup?

A short film interpretation by Karen Lum of Adriel Luis' spoken word poem, "Slip of the Tongue."

Born Asian

I was flipping channels last week and came upon this episode of "Good Times" in which Michael gets suspended because he calls George Washington a racist for having slaves and he goes on about how school doesn't teach him the kind of history he wants to learn. You can watch it here for the main storyline (4:05-8:15).

The most interesting line to me was this:

Michael: Mama, I’m ready to take my punishment. I knew when I was born Black, life wasn’t gonna be easy.
Florida: When you were born, you didn’t know you were Black.

Which was one of those revelation moments to me. When I was born, I didn't know I was Asian. I grew up being taught what it means to be Asian, from my family, from my friends, my community, school, society. I wasn't "born Asian," Asian is merely a category from the government. And I am still constantly learning/shifting what it means to be "Asian" and "American."

Oh another note, this was just my second episode of "Good Times" that I've seen, but if a lot of the episodes deals w/ issues like these, I definitely want to catch the rest of the series, especially to watch the Michael character, who is on his way to be quite the future activist. He goes to the library to learn about all the history stuff that his textbooks don't teach him. If only all high schoolers did this. But, isn't that supposed to be our education's job?