Like George Bush, I recently took a trip to the border town of El Paso. My brother moved there in July to begin his four year stint at the nearby Holloman Air Force Base. El Paso is a fascinating place. Just across the border from Juarez, the fourth biggest city in Mexico, it is also home to Fort Bliss Military Base – which is receiving over 16,000 new troops this year from the series of military base closings and restructurings. Being in this super militarized border town made even a trip to the corner store steeped in layers and layers of socio-political context. My family refused to accompany me on a photography trip to the Juarez border after Thanksgiving, so I decided to visit the National Border Patrol Museum. I was expecting the skewed discourse about the hordes of illegal Mexican immigrants trying to break into America’s Southern Frontier at any cost, which there was plenty of. Occasionally the literature on the walls of the museum would ask questions like: “Will the trend of illegal immigration continue?” And the answer would be: “Yes. As long as people of the world quest for a better life, the rise of illegal entries will continue.”
But I was surprised that the most disturbing thing I came across in the museum was a photograph of personnel on detail at the Tule Lake Internment Camp. This was in a section discussing the ways in which the Border Patrol’s role changes during wartime. The photograph was placed next to other photographs of German and Italian prisoners of war from World War II. I found myself staring into the picture of the 10-12 white men holding guns trying to decipher the importance of this photograph in this museum. I felt as though this picture being framed on the wall of the National Border Patrol Museum was celebrating the duty of these soldiers whose job was a huge mistake. I guess it was the total lack of context that bothered me the most. I don’t know exactly what I wanted: A sign next to this photograph explaining how Japanese internment was one of the most heinous things that happened in American history? A section of the museum talking about NAFTA and globalization and how the U.S. depends on illegal labor? Perhaps they can remove the entire wall of sharp shooting prizes that covers most of the back wall and make room for some of my ideas.
Posted by neela at 11:37 AM | Comments (1)
Like George Bush, I recently took a trip to the border town of El Paso. My brother moved there in July to begin his four year stint at the nearby Holloman Air Force Base. El Paso is a fascinating place. Just across the border from Juarez, the fourth biggest city in Mexico, it is also home to Fort Bliss Military Base – which is receiving over 16,000 new troops this year from the series of military base closings and restructurings. Being in this super militarized border town made even a trip to the corner store steeped in layers and layers of socio-political context. My family refused to accompany me on a photography trip to the Juarez border after Thanksgiving, so I decided to visit the National Border Patrol Museum. I was expecting the skewed discourse about the hordes of illegal Mexican immigrants trying to break into America’s Southern Frontier at any cost, which there was plenty of. Occasionally the literature on the walls of the museum would ask questions like: “Will the trend of illegal immigration continue?” And the answer would be: “Yes. As long as people of the world quest for a better life, the rise of illegal entries will continue.”
But I was surprised that the most disturbing thing I came across in the museum was a photograph of personnel on detail at the Tule Lake Internment Camp. This was in a section discussing the ways in which the Border Patrol’s role changes during wartime. The photograph was placed next to other photographs of German and Italian prisoners of war from World War II. I found myself staring into the picture of the 10-12 white men holding guns trying to decipher the importance of this photograph in this museum. I felt as though this picture being framed on the wall of the National Border Patrol Museum was celebrating the duty of these soldiers whose job was a huge mistake. I guess it was the total lack of context that bothered me the most. I don’t know exactly what I wanted: A sign next to this photograph explaining how Japanese internment was one of the most heinous things that happened in American history? A section of the museum talking about NAFTA and globalization and how the U.S. depends on illegal labor? Perhaps they can remove the entire wall of sharp shooting prizes that covers most of the back wall and make room for some of my ideas.
Posted by neela at 11:37 AM | Comments (1)
Like George Bush, I recently took a trip to the border town of El Paso. My brother moved there in July to begin his four year stint at the nearby Holloman Air Force Base. El Paso is a fascinating place. Just across the border from Juarez, the fourth biggest city in Mexico, it is also home to Fort Bliss Military Base which is receiving over 16,000 new troops this year from the series of military base closings and restructurings. Being in this super militarized border town made even a trip to the corner store steeped in layers and layers of socio-political context. My family refused to accompany me on a photography trip to the Juarez border after Thanksgiving, so I decided to visit the National Border Patrol Museum. I was expecting the skewed discourse about the hordes of illegal Mexican immigrants trying to break into Americas Southern Frontier at any cost, which there was plenty of. Occasionally the literature on the walls of the museum would ask questions like: Will the trend of illegal immigration continue? And the answer would be: Yes. As long as people of the world quest for a better life, the rise of illegal entries will continue.
But I was surprised that the most disturbing thing I came across in the museum was a photograph of personnel on detail at the Tule Lake Internment Camp. This was in a section discussing the ways in which the Border Patrols role changes during wartime. The photograph was placed next to other photographs of German and Italian prisoners of war from World War II. I found myself staring into the picture of the 10-12 white men holding guns trying to decipher the importance of this photograph in this museum. I felt as though this picture being framed on the wall of the National Border Patrol Museum was celebrating the duty of these soldiers whose job was a huge mistake. I guess it was the total lack of context that bothered me the most. I dont know exactly what I wanted: A sign next to this photograph explaining how Japanese internment was one of the most heinous things that happened in American history? A section of the museum talking about NAFTA and globalization and how the U.S. depends on illegal labor? Perhaps they can remove the entire wall of sharp shooting prizes that covers most of the back wall and make room for some of my ideas.
Posted by neela at 11:37 AM | Comments (1)
Bruce Lee was honored in Bosnia and Hong Kong with statues for what would have been his 65th birthday over the weekend.
However, a few hours after the statue in Bosnia was dedicated, it was vandalized.
A group in Mostar came up with the idea of honoring Lee with a monument as a way to bring people together in the war-torn country.
I recently went to Seattle and one of the things I did there was visit the graves of Bruce and Brandon Lee. I didn't realize Bruce was turning 65 this year. Had I known it might have been more solemn for us than just being tourists and snapping pictures.
Hard to believe he's been gone so long, and so little has changed in Hollywood, where he was a trend setter and spurned.
Posted by harry at 3:07 PM | Comments (0)
Bruce Lee was honored in Bosnia and Hong Kong with statues for what would have been his 65th birthday over the weekend.
However, a few hours after the statue in Bosnia was dedicated, it was vandalized.
A group in Mostar came up with the idea of honoring Lee with a monument as a way to bring people together in the war-torn country.
I recently went to Seattle and one of the things I did there was visit the graves of Bruce and Brandon Lee. I didn't realize Bruce was turning 65 this year. Had I known it might have been more solemn for us than just being tourists and snapping pictures.
Hard to believe he's been gone so long, and so little has changed in Hollywood, where he was a trend setter and spurned.
Posted by harry at 3:07 PM | Comments (0)
Bruce Lee was honored in Bosnia and Hong Kong with statues for what would have been his 65th birthday over the weekend.
However, a few hours after the statue in Bosnia was dedicated, it was vandalized.
A group in Mostar came up with the idea of honoring Lee with a monument as a way to bring people together in the war-torn country.
I recently went to Seattle and one of the things I did there was visit the graves of Bruce and Brandon Lee. I didn't realize Bruce was turning 65 this year. Had I known it might have been more solemn for us than just being tourists and snapping pictures.
Hard to believe he's been gone so long, and so little has changed in Hollywood, where he was a trend setter and spurned.
Posted by harry at 3:07 PM | Comments (0)
The day after Thanksgiving, on what they call Black Friday, I was awoken by a phone call. It was from my sister and mother, who were pawing their way through an outlet mall. They had called to say they wished I was there to help with the shopping. (I suppose it's a tradition in my family, like so many other people's -- this shopping on the busiest shopping day.) They were a few hours ahead of me in Texas, so I forgave them for calling so early, mumbled a few words of encouragement, and fell back asleep. Later in the day, they called again to tell me what spoils they had won. The were at the mall for about 4 hours and had only managed to go to 3 stores. "We didn't even get to look at handbags and shoes!" my mother exclaimed. And I knew she would have stayed another 3 hours to look at handbags and shoes if only other family functions had not gotten in the way.
Anyone who knows me knows that I like my share of shopping and bargain-hunting. (Hey, it was the way I was raised. Some people were raised playing sports and games, in my family we were raised shopping. Kind of embarrassing to admit...) But it takes a lot of energy to brave the crowds for holiday shopping, energy I'm not sure I have (especially after we finish closing out issue 8, any day now). I don't know about you, but I plan on taking care of business online. Even better, I'm going to try to buy local when I can and to buy from independent stores and designers.
In the next issue of Hyphen, coming out in December, we'll have an expanded Take Out section -- that's our products review section where we share some of the fun goods we like, all of them made by independent Asian American artists/makers of things. Lots of good gift ideas there. If I'm feeling up to it, I might put up some links to some past goods that we showcased in Take Out.
For now though, you should check out the following folks. They are advertisers with Hyphen (for that we're very thankful). Just like the products we write about (and just like Hyphen), they are also all independent small businesses. So think about where you spend that dollar this holiday season. Do you really want it to go to a mega-chain-store?
70six.com. T-shirts for men and women with original designs. My fav is the "Soob 360," an outline drawing of subaru's first car.
Rebecca Overmann. Rebecca makes very classy jewelry.
Quennie 4 Ever. T-shirts and other girly goods.
Shy Siren. More handmade jewelry. Fun and flirty. Plus, you get 15% off if you use the code HYPHEN. Yeah, a sale.
And don't forget the gift of Hyphen. We're running a special on subscriptions right now.
Posted by Melissa at 9:35 AM | Comments (0)
The day after Thanksgiving, on what they call Black Friday, I was awoken by a phone call. It was from my sister and mother, who were pawing their way through an outlet mall. They had called to say they wished I was there to help with the shopping. (I suppose it's a tradition in my family, like so many other people's -- this shopping on the busiest shopping day.) They were a few hours ahead of me in Texas, so I forgave them for calling so early, mumbled a few words of encouragement, and fell back asleep. Later in the day, they called again to tell me what spoils they had won. The were at the mall for about 4 hours and had only managed to go to 3 stores. "We didn't even get to look at handbags and shoes!" my mother exclaimed. And I knew she would have stayed another 3 hours to look at handbags and shoes if only other family functions had not gotten in the way.
Anyone who knows me knows that I like my share of shopping and bargain-hunting. (Hey, it was the way I was raised. Some people were raised playing sports and games, in my family we were raised shopping. Kind of embarrassing to admit...) But it takes a lot of energy to brave the crowds for holiday shopping, energy I'm not sure I have (especially after we finish closing out issue 8, any day now). I don't know about you, but I plan on taking care of business online. Even better, I'm going to try to buy local when I can and to buy from independent stores and designers.
In the next issue of Hyphen, coming out in December, we'll have an expanded Take Out section -- that's our products review section where we share some of the fun goods we like, all of them made by independent Asian American artists/makers of things. Lots of good gift ideas there. If I'm feeling up to it, I might put up some links to some past goods that we showcased in Take Out.
For now though, you should check out the following folks. They are advertisers with Hyphen (for that we're very thankful). Just like the products we write about (and just like Hyphen), they are also all independent small businesses. So think about where you spend that dollar this holiday season. Do you really want it to go to a mega-chain-store?
70six.com. T-shirts for men and women with original designs. My fav is the "Soob 360," an outline drawing of subaru's first car.
Rebecca Overmann. Rebecca makes very classy jewelry.
Quennie 4 Ever. T-shirts and other girly goods.
Shy Siren. More handmade jewelry. Fun and flirty. Plus, you get 15% off if you use the code HYPHEN. Yeah, a sale.
And don't forget the gift of Hyphen. We're running a special on subscriptions right now.
Posted by Melissa at 9:35 AM | Comments (0)
The day after Thanksgiving, on what they call Black Friday, I was awoken by a phone call. It was from my sister and mother, who were pawing their way through an outlet mall. They had called to say they wished I was there to help with the shopping. (I suppose it's a tradition in my family, like so many other people's -- this shopping on the busiest shopping day.) They were a few hours ahead of me in Texas, so I forgave them for calling so early, mumbled a few words of encouragement, and fell back asleep. Later in the day, they called again to tell me what spoils they had won. The were at the mall for about 4 hours and had only managed to go to 3 stores. "We didn't even get to look at handbags and shoes!" my mother exclaimed. And I knew she would have stayed another 3 hours to look at handbags and shoes if only other family functions had not gotten in the way.
Anyone who knows me knows that I like my share of shopping and bargain-hunting. (Hey, it was the way I was raised. Some people were raised playing sports and games, in my family we were raised shopping. Kind of embarrassing to admit...) But it takes a lot of energy to brave the crowds for holiday shopping, energy I'm not sure I have (especially after we finish closing out issue 8, any day now). I don't know about you, but I plan on taking care of business online. Even better, I'm going to try to buy local when I can and to buy from independent stores and designers.
In the next issue of Hyphen, coming out in December, we'll have an expanded Take Out section -- that's our products review section where we share some of the fun goods we like, all of them made by independent Asian American artists/makers of things. Lots of good gift ideas there. If I'm feeling up to it, I might put up some links to some past goods that we showcased in Take Out.
For now though, you should check out the following folks. They are advertisers with Hyphen (for that we're very thankful). Just like the products we write about (and just like Hyphen), they are also all independent small businesses. So think about where you spend that dollar this holiday season. Do you really want it to go to a mega-chain-store?
70six.com. T-shirts for men and women with original designs. My fav is the "Soob 360," an outline drawing of subaru's first car.
Rebecca Overmann. Rebecca makes very classy jewelry.
Quennie 4 Ever. T-shirts and other girly goods.
Shy Siren. More handmade jewelry. Fun and flirty. Plus, you get 15% off if you use the code HYPHEN. Yeah, a sale.
And don't forget the gift of Hyphen. We're running a special on subscriptions right now.
Posted by Melissa at 9:35 AM | Comments (0)
There's a story in today's SF Chronicle about Asian American entertainers becoming stars overseas. The first couple paragraphs sums it up nicely: audition for bit parts in Hollywood playing stereotypes, or take a gamble in Asia where you have a better chance of interesting work, even if you can't speak an Asian language.
Included in the story are some California natives who are making it big in movies and TV in Singapore and Hong Kong. The reporter also interviewed some South Asian American musicians who are finding more success in the UK than in America. Even though they live right here, their music is somehow more appealing when it is released in the UK, and then find its way back to America, rather than being released initially here in the States. This begs the question, do Asian Americans fits in more in Asia (and to some degree the UK) than America? And if so, is it simply based on the fact that we look more like more people over there? It is a numbers game?
Posted by Melissa at 6:56 PM | Comments (8)
There's a story in today's SF Chronicle about Asian American entertainers becoming stars overseas. The first couple paragraphs sums it up nicely: audition for bit parts in Hollywood playing stereotypes, or take a gamble in Asia where you have a better chance of interesting work, even if you can't speak an Asian language.
Included in the story are some California natives who are making it big in movies and TV in Singapore and Hong Kong. The reporter also interviewed some South Asian American musicians who are finding more success in the UK than in America. Even though they live right here, their music is somehow more appealing when it is released in the UK, and then find its way back to America, rather than being released initially here in the States. This begs the question, do Asian Americans fits in more in Asia (and to some degree the UK) than America? And if so, is it simply based on the fact that we look more like more people over there? It is a numbers game?
Posted by Melissa at 6:56 PM | Comments (8)
There's a story in today's SF Chronicle about Asian American entertainers becoming stars overseas. The first couple paragraphs sums it up nicely: audition for bit parts in Hollywood playing stereotypes, or take a gamble in Asia where you have a better chance of interesting work, even if you can't speak an Asian language.
Included in the story are some California natives who are making it big in movies and TV in Singapore and Hong Kong. The reporter also interviewed some South Asian American musicians who are finding more success in the UK than in America. Even though they live right here, their music is somehow more appealing when it is released in the UK, and then find its way back to America, rather than being released initially here in the States. This begs the question, do Asian Americans fits in more in Asia (and to some degree the UK) than America? And if so, is it simply based on the fact that we look more like more people over there? It is a numbers game?
Posted by Melissa at 6:56 PM | Comments (8)
R.I.P. Pat Morita, forever immortalized as Mr. Miyagi on The Karate Kid and formerly of Happy Days fame. A pioneering Asian American actor, comedian, and internment camp survivor, Morita was the first Asian American actor I ever saw in a lead role on the big screen.
Pat Morita, Mr. Miyagi of 'The Karate Kid,' dies at 73
- By TIM MOLLOY, Associated Press Writer
Friday, November 25, 2005
(11-25) 06:23 PST Los Angeles (AP) --
Actor Pat Morita, who was nominated for an Academy Award for his portrayal of the wise and dry-witted Mr. Miyagi in "The Karate Kid," has died. He was 73.
Morita died Thursday at his home in Las Vegas of natural causes, said his wife of 12 years, Evelyn. She said in a statement that her husband, who first rose to fame with a role on "Happy Days," had "dedicated his entire life to acting and comedy."
In 1984, he appeared in the role that would define his career and spawn countless affectionate imitations. As Kesuke Miyagi, the mentor to Ralph Macchio's "Daniel-san," he taught karate while trying to catch flies with chopsticks and offering such advice as "wax on, wax off" to guide Daniel through chores to improve his skills.
Morita said in a 1986 interview with The Associated Press he was billed as Noriyuki (Pat) Morita in the film because producer Jerry Weintraub wanted him to sound more ethnic. He said he used the billing because it was "the only name my parents gave me."
He lost the 1984 best supporting actor award to Haing S. Ngor, who appeared in "The Killing Fields."
For years, Morita played small and sometimes demeaning roles in such films as "Thoroughly Modern Millie" and TV series such as "The Odd Couple" and "Green Acres." His first breakthrough came with "Happy Days," and he followed with his own brief series, "Mr. T and Tina."
"The Karate Kid," led to three sequels, the last of which, 1994's "The Next Karate Kid," paired him with a young Hilary Swank.
Morita was prolific outside of the "Karate Kid" series as well, appearing in "Honeymoon in Vegas,""Spy Hard,""Even Cowgirls Get the Blues" and "The Center of the World." He also provided the voice for a character in the Disney movie "Mulan" in 1998.
Born in northern California on June 28, 1932, the son of migrant fruit pickers, Morita spent most of his early years in the hospital with spinal tuberculosis. He later recovered only to be sent to a Japanese-American internment camp in Arizona during World War II.
"One day I was an invalid," he recalled in a 1989 AP interview. "The next day I was public enemy No. 1 being escorted to an internment camp by an FBI agent wearing a piece."
After the war, Morita's family tried to repair their finances by operating a Sacramento restaurant. It was there that Morita first tried his comedy on patrons.
Because prospects for a Japanese-American standup comic seemed poor, Morita found steady work in computers at Aerojet General. But at age 30 he entered show business full time.
"Only in America could you get away with the kind of comedy I did," he commented. "If I tried it in Japan before the war, it would have been considered blasphemy, and I would have ended in leg irons. "
Morita was to be buried at Palm Green Valley Mortuary and Cemetery.
He is survived by his wife and three daughters from a previous marriage.
Posted by Lisa at 11:25 AM | Comments (1)
R.I.P. Pat Morita, forever immortalized as Mr. Miyagi on The Karate Kid and formerly of Happy Days fame. A pioneering Asian American actor, comedian, and internment camp survivor, Morita was the first Asian American actor I ever saw in a lead role on the big screen.
Pat Morita, Mr. Miyagi of 'The Karate Kid,' dies at 73
- By TIM MOLLOY, Associated Press Writer
Friday, November 25, 2005
(11-25) 06:23 PST Los Angeles (AP) --
Actor Pat Morita, who was nominated for an Academy Award for his portrayal of the wise and dry-witted Mr. Miyagi in "The Karate Kid," has died. He was 73.
Morita died Thursday at his home in Las Vegas of natural causes, said his wife of 12 years, Evelyn. She said in a statement that her husband, who first rose to fame with a role on "Happy Days," had "dedicated his entire life to acting and comedy."
In 1984, he appeared in the role that would define his career and spawn countless affectionate imitations. As Kesuke Miyagi, the mentor to Ralph Macchio's "Daniel-san," he taught karate while trying to catch flies with chopsticks and offering such advice as "wax on, wax off" to guide Daniel through chores to improve his skills.
Morita said in a 1986 interview with The Associated Press he was billed as Noriyuki (Pat) Morita in the film because producer Jerry Weintraub wanted him to sound more ethnic. He said he used the billing because it was "the only name my parents gave me."
He lost the 1984 best supporting actor award to Haing S. Ngor, who appeared in "The Killing Fields."
For years, Morita played small and sometimes demeaning roles in such films as "Thoroughly Modern Millie" and TV series such as "The Odd Couple" and "Green Acres." His first breakthrough came with "Happy Days," and he followed with his own brief series, "Mr. T and Tina."
"The Karate Kid," led to three sequels, the last of which, 1994's "The Next Karate Kid," paired him with a young Hilary Swank.
Morita was prolific outside of the "Karate Kid" series as well, appearing in "Honeymoon in Vegas,""Spy Hard,""Even Cowgirls Get the Blues" and "The Center of the World." He also provided the voice for a character in the Disney movie "Mulan" in 1998.
Born in northern California on June 28, 1932, the son of migrant fruit pickers, Morita spent most of his early years in the hospital with spinal tuberculosis. He later recovered only to be sent to a Japanese-American internment camp in Arizona during World War II.
"One day I was an invalid," he recalled in a 1989 AP interview. "The next day I was public enemy No. 1 being escorted to an internment camp by an FBI agent wearing a piece."
After the war, Morita's family tried to repair their finances by operating a Sacramento restaurant. It was there that Morita first tried his comedy on patrons.
Because prospects for a Japanese-American standup comic seemed poor, Morita found steady work in computers at Aerojet General. But at age 30 he entered show business full time.
"Only in America could you get away with the kind of comedy I did," he commented. "If I tried it in Japan before the war, it would have been considered blasphemy, and I would have ended in leg irons. "
Morita was to be buried at Palm Green Valley Mortuary and Cemetery.
He is survived by his wife and three daughters from a previous marriage.
Posted by Lisa at 11:25 AM | Comments (1)
R.I.P. Pat Morita, forever immortalized as Mr. Miyagi on The Karate Kid and formerly of Happy Days fame. A pioneering Asian American actor, comedian, and internment camp survivor, Morita was the first Asian American actor I ever saw in a lead role on the big screen.
Pat Morita, Mr. Miyagi of 'The Karate Kid,' dies at 73
- By TIM MOLLOY, Associated Press Writer
Friday, November 25, 2005
(11-25) 06:23 PST Los Angeles (AP) --
Actor Pat Morita, who was nominated for an Academy Award for his portrayal of the wise and dry-witted Mr. Miyagi in "The Karate Kid," has died. He was 73.
Morita died Thursday at his home in Las Vegas of natural causes, said his wife of 12 years, Evelyn. She said in a statement that her husband, who first rose to fame with a role on "Happy Days," had "dedicated his entire life to acting and comedy."
In 1984, he appeared in the role that would define his career and spawn countless affectionate imitations. As Kesuke Miyagi, the mentor to Ralph Macchio's "Daniel-san," he taught karate while trying to catch flies with chopsticks and offering such advice as "wax on, wax off" to guide Daniel through chores to improve his skills.
Morita said in a 1986 interview with The Associated Press he was billed as Noriyuki (Pat) Morita in the film because producer Jerry Weintraub wanted him to sound more ethnic. He said he used the billing because it was "the only name my parents gave me."
He lost the 1984 best supporting actor award to Haing S. Ngor, who appeared in "The Killing Fields."
For years, Morita played small and sometimes demeaning roles in such films as "Thoroughly Modern Millie" and TV series such as "The Odd Couple" and "Green Acres." His first breakthrough came with "Happy Days," and he followed with his own brief series, "Mr. T and Tina."
"The Karate Kid," led to three sequels, the last of which, 1994's "The Next Karate Kid," paired him with a young Hilary Swank.
Morita was prolific outside of the "Karate Kid" series as well, appearing in "Honeymoon in Vegas,""Spy Hard,""Even Cowgirls Get the Blues" and "The Center of the World." He also provided the voice for a character in the Disney movie "Mulan" in 1998.
Born in northern California on June 28, 1932, the son of migrant fruit pickers, Morita spent most of his early years in the hospital with spinal tuberculosis. He later recovered only to be sent to a Japanese-American internment camp in Arizona during World War II.
"One day I was an invalid," he recalled in a 1989 AP interview. "The next day I was public enemy No. 1 being escorted to an internment camp by an FBI agent wearing a piece."
After the war, Morita's family tried to repair their finances by operating a Sacramento restaurant. It was there that Morita first tried his comedy on patrons.
Because prospects for a Japanese-American standup comic seemed poor, Morita found steady work in computers at Aerojet General. But at age 30 he entered show business full time.
"Only in America could you get away with the kind of comedy I did," he commented. "If I tried it in Japan before the war, it would have been considered blasphemy, and I would have ended in leg irons. "
Morita was to be buried at Palm Green Valley Mortuary and Cemetery.
He is survived by his wife and three daughters from a previous marriage.
Posted by Lisa at 11:25 AM | Comments (1)
Hopefully, none of you will spend Thanksgiving like I did last year -- in bed with food poisoning from the night before, unable to eat anything but dry toast.
May you have a good day with loved ones.
Posted by Melissa at 11:19 AM | Comments (0)
Hopefully, none of you will spend Thanksgiving like I did last year -- in bed with food poisoning from the night before, unable to eat anything but dry toast.
May you have a good day with loved ones.
Posted by Melissa at 11:19 AM | Comments (0)
Hopefully, none of you will spend Thanksgiving like I did last year -- in bed with food poisoning from the night before, unable to eat anything but dry toast.
May you have a good day with loved ones.
Posted by Melissa at 11:19 AM | Comments (0)
There's been a lot in the news lately about overachieving Asian American students. You've probably already heard about the book above. The Korean American sisters who wrote it were recently profiled in the New York Times, extolling the virtues of strict Asian parenting. (Neither of them are educators or parents for that matter.) Their message seemed to be, "Hey, we're not really all that smart and neither are other Asians. We just work really hard and our parents made us do it!" Now, lucky you, they’ve written this book so that you non-Asians can learn these mysterious Asian secrets and succeed too!
Now don’t get me wrong, we all know an overachieving Asian American or two or three (hell, my sister is one). Stereotypes are rooted somewhere, but wow, what a disservice to go around pushing the same old stereotype. If the point is that parents need to get involved and that education starts at home, not at school, well that’s not really culture specific. It doesn’t have anything to do with being Asian. That’s just common sense. What a marketing gimmick.
The book seems to be getting good reviews from customers on Amazon, but feedback from some folks in the Asian American community have not been as kind. It’s been kind of angry, actually. A mental health expert wrote in to the Times saying that the book ignored the dangers of putting too much pressure on your kids to succeed academically. And how he saw many patients coming into therapy, Asian Americans, who were trying to shake what their parents wanted to figure out what they wanted for themselves. (You hear that parents? Stop being so overbearing or your lawyer and doctor sons and daughters will be spending their hard-earned cash on years of therapy.) The sisters point out in the book that Asian Americans only make up 4 percent of the population, but 20 percent of the students at Ivy League colleges. How about this stat? Young Asian American women have the highest suicide rate.
That last point was made by reporter Monica Eng in this story that ran in the Chicago Tribune. She was not impressed by the book.
(And a minor quibble: what's with the book cover and the super short jeans? Are Asian kids also tremendously fashion-impaired because they are studying so much?)
And then, over the weekend, this story ran in Wall Street Journal about white parents who are moving their kids out of Asian-dominated schools, citing oppressive competitiveness and lack of "roundedness." A different kind of white flight.
You might need to be a subcriber to get to the story, so here is the text below:
*************************************
The New White Flight
In Silicon Valley, two high schools with outstanding academic reputations are losing white students as Asian students move in. Why?
By SUEIN HWANG
November 19, 2005; Page A1
CUPERTINO, Calif. -- By most measures, Monta Vista High here and Lynbrook High, in nearby San Jose, are among the nation's top public high schools. Both boast stellar test scores, an array of advanced-placement classes and a track record of sending graduates from the affluent suburbs of Silicon Valley to prestigious colleges.
But locally, they're also known for something else: white flight. Over the past 10 years, the proportion of white students at Lynbrook has fallen by nearly half, to 25% of the student body. At Monta Vista, white students make up less than one-third of the population, down from 45% -- this in a town that's half white. Some white Cupertino parents are instead sending their children to private schools or moving them to other, whiter public schools. More commonly, young white families in Silicon Valley say they are avoiding Cupertino altogether.
Whites aren't quitting the schools because the schools are failing academically. Quite the contrary: Many white parents say they're leaving because the schools are too academically driven and too narrowly invested in subjects such as math and science at the expense of liberal arts and extracurriculars like sports and other personal interests.
The two schools, put another way that parents rarely articulate so bluntly, are too Asian.
Cathy Gatley, co-president of Monta Vista High School's parent-teacher association, recently dissuaded a family with a young child from moving to Cupertino because there are so few young white kids left in the public schools. "This may not sound good," she confides, "but their child may be the only Caucasian kid in the class." All of Ms. Gatley's four children have attended or are currently attending Monta Vista. One son, Andrew, 17 years old, took the high-school exit exam last summer and left the school to avoid the academic pressure. He is currently working in a pet-supply store. Ms. Gatley, who is white, says she probably wouldn't have moved to Cupertino if she had anticipated how much it would change.
In the 1960s, the term "white flight" emerged to describe the rapid exodus of whites from big cities into the suburbs, a process that often resulted in the economic degradation of the remaining community. Back then, the phenomenon was mostly believed to be sparked by the growth in the population of African-Americans, and to a lesser degree Hispanics, in some major cities.
But this modern incarnation is different. Across the country, Asian-Americans have by and large been successful and accepted into middle- and upper-class communities. Silicon Valley has kept Cupertino's economy stable, and the town is almost indistinguishable from many of the suburbs around it. The shrinking number of white students hasn't hurt the academic standards of Cupertino's schools -- in fact the opposite is true.
This time the effect is more subtle: Some Asians believe that the resulting lack of diversity creates an atmosphere that is too sheltering for their children, leaving then unprepared for life in a country that is only 4% Asian overall. Moreover, many Asians share some of their white counterpart's concerns. Both groups finger newer Asian immigrants for the schools' intense competitiveness.
Some whites fear that by avoiding schools with large Asian populations parents are short-changing their own children, giving them the idea that they can't compete with Asian kids. "My parents never let me think that because I'm Caucasian, I'm not going to succeed," says Jessie Hogin, a white Monta Vista graduate.
The white exodus clearly involves race-based presumptions, not all of which are positive. One example: Asian parents are too competitive. That sounds like racism to many of Cupertino's Asian residents, who resent the fact that their growing numbers and success are causing many white families to boycott the town altogether.
"It's a stereotype of Asian parents," says Pei-Pei Yow, a Hewlett-Packard Co. manager and Chinese-American community leader who sent two kids to Monta Vista. It's like other familiar biases, she says: "You can't say everybody from the South is a redneck."
Jane Doherty, a retirement-community administrator, chose to send her two boys elsewhere. When her family moved to Cupertino from Indiana over a decade ago, Ms. Doherty says her top priority was moving into a good public-school district. She paid no heed to a real-estate agent who told her of the town's burgeoning Asian population.
She says she began to reconsider after her elder son, Matthew, entered Kennedy, the middle school that feeds Monta Vista. As he played soccer, Ms. Doherty watched a line of cars across the street deposit Asian kids for after-school study. She also attended a Monta Vista parents' night and came away worrying about the school's focus on test scores and the big-name colleges its graduates attend.
"My sense is that at Monta Vista you're competing against the child beside you," she says. Ms. Doherty says she believes the issue stems more from recent immigrants than Asians as a whole. "Obviously, the concentration of Asian students is really high, and it does flavor the school," she says.
When Matthew, now a student at Notre Dame, finished middle school eight years ago, Ms. Doherty decided to send him to Bellarmine College Preparatory, a Jesuit school that she says has a culture that "values the whole child." It's also 55% white and 24% Asian. Her younger son, Kevin, followed suit.
Kevin Doherty, 17, says he's happy his mother made the switch. Many of his old friends at Kennedy aren't happy at Monta Vista, he says. "Kids at Bellarmine have a lot of pressure to do well, too, but they want to learn and do something they want to do."
While California has seen the most pronounced cases of suburban segregation, some of the developments in Cupertino are also starting to surface in other parts of the U.S. At Thomas S. Wootton High School in Rockville, Md., known flippantly to some locals as "Won Ton," roughly 35% of students are of Asian descent. People who don't know the school tend to make assumptions about its academics, says Principal Michael Doran.
"Certain stereotypes come to mind -- 'those people are good at math,' " he says.
In Tenafly, N.J., a well-to-do bedroom community near New York, the local high school says it expects Asian students to make up about 36% of its total in the next five years, compared with 27% today. The district still attracts families of all backgrounds, but Asians are particularly intent that their kids work hard and excel, says Anat Eisenberg, a local Coldwell Banker real-estate agent. "Everybody is caught into this process of driving their kids." Lawrence Mayer, Tenafly High's vice principal, says he's never heard such concerns.
Perched on the western end of the Santa Clara valley, Cupertino was for many years a primarily rural area known for its many fruit orchards. The beginnings of the tech industry brought suburbanization, and Cupertino then became a very white, quintessentially middle-class town of mostly modest ranch homes, populated by engineers and their families. Apple Computer Inc. planted its headquarters there.
As the high-tech industry prospered, so did Cupertino. Today, the orchards are a memory, replaced by numerous shopping malls and subdivisions that are home to Silicon Valley's prosperous upper-middle class. While the architecture in Cupertino is largely the same as in neighboring communities, the town of about 50,000 people now boasts Indian restaurants, tutoring centers and Asian grocers. Parents say Cupertino's top schools have become more academically intense over the past 10 years.
Asian immigrants have surged into the town, granting it a reputation -- particularly among recent Chinese and South Asian immigrants -- as a Bay Area locale of choice. Cupertino is now 41% Asian, up from 24% in 1998.
Some students struggle in Cupertino's high schools who might not elsewhere. Monta Vista's Academic Performance Index, which compares the academic performance of California's schools, reached an all-time high of 924 out of 1,000 this year, making it one of the highest-scoring high schools in Northern California. Grades are so high that a 'B' average puts a student in the bottom third of a class.
"We have great students, which has a lot of upsides," says April Scott, Monta Vista's principal. "The downside is what the kids with a 3.0 GPA think of themselves."
Ms. Scott and her counterpart at Lynbrook know what's said about their schools being too competitive and dominated by Asians. "It's easy to buy into those kinds of comments because they're loaded and powerful," says Ms. Scott, who adds that they paint an inaccurate picture of Monta Vista. Ms. Scott says many athletic programs are thriving and points to the school's many extracurricular activities. She also points out that white students represented 20% of the school's 29 National Merit Semifinalists this year.
Judy Hogin, Jessie's mother and a Cupertino real-estate agent, believes the school was good for her daughter, who is now a freshman at the University of California at San Diego. "I know it's frustrating to some people who have moved away," says Ms. Hogin, who is white. Jessie, she says, "rose to the challenge."
On a recent autumn day at Lynbrook, crowds of students spilled out of classrooms for midmorning break. Against a sea of Asian faces, the few white students were easy to pick out. One boy sat on a wall, his lighter hair and skin making him stand out from dozens of others around him. In another corner, four white male students lounged at a picnic table.
At Cupertino's top schools, administrators, parents and students say white students end up in the stereotyped role often applied to other minority groups: the underachievers. In one 9th-grade algebra class, Lynbrook's lowest-level math class, the students are an eclectic mix of whites, Asians and other racial and ethnic groups.
"Take a good look," whispered Steve Rowley, superintendent of the Fremont Union High School District, which covers the city of Cupertino as well as portions of other neighboring cities. "This doesn't look like the other classes we're going to."
On the second floor, in advanced-placement chemistry, only a couple of the 32 students are white and the rest are Asian. Some white parents, and even some students, say they suspect teachers don't take white kids as seriously as Asians.
"Many of my Asian friends were convinced that if you were Asian, you had to confirm you were smart. If you were white, you had to prove it," says Arar Han, a Monta Vista graduate who recently co-edited "Asian American," a book of coming-of-age essays by young Asian-Americans.
Ms. Gatley, the Monta Vista PTA president, is more blunt: "White kids are thought of as the dumb kids," she says.
Cupertino's administrators and faculty, the majority of whom are white, adamantly say there's no discrimination against whites. The administrators ay students of all races get along well. In fact, there's little evidence o any overt racial tension between students or between their parents.
Mr. Rowley, the school superintendent, however, concedes that a perception exists that's sometimes called "the white-boy syndrome." He describes it s: "Kids who are white feel themselves a distinct minority against a mjority culture."
Mr. Rowley, who is white, enrolled his only son, Eddie, at Lynbrook. When Eddie started freshman geometry, the boy was frustrated to learn that many of the Asian students in his class had already taken the course in summer school, Mr. Rowley recalls. That gave them a big leg up.
To many of Cupertino's Asians, some of the assumptions made by white parents -- that Asians are excessively competitive and single-minded -- play into stereotypes. Top schools in nearby, whiter Palo Alto, which also have very high test scores, also feature heavy course loads, long hours of homework and overly stressed students, says Denise Pope, director of Stressed Out Students, a Stanford University program that has worked with schools in both Palo Alto and Cupertino. But whites don't seem to be avoiding those institutions, or making the same negative generalizations, Asian families note, suggesting that it's not academic competition that makes white parents uncomfortable but academic competition with Asian-Americans.
Some of Cupertino's Asian residents say they don't blame white families for leaving. After all, many of the town's Asians are fretting about the same issues. While acknowledging that the term Asian embraces a wide diversity of countries, cultures and languages, they say there's some truth to the criticisms levied against new immigrant parents, particularly those from countries such as China and India, who often put a lot of academic pressure on their children.
Some parents and students say these various forces are creating an unhealthy cultural isolation in the schools. Monta Vista graduate Mark Seto says he wouldn't send his kids to his alma mater. "It was a sheltered little world that didn't bear a whole lot of resemblance to what the rest of the country is like," says Mr. Seto, a Chinese-American who recently graduated from Yale University. As a result, he says, "college wasn't an academic adjustment. It was a cultural adjustment."
Hung Wei, a Chinese-American living in Cupertino, has become an active campaigner in the community, encouraging Asian parents to be more aware of their children's emotional development. Ms. Wei, who is co-president of Monta Vista's PTA with Ms. Gatley, says her activism stems from the suicide of her daughter, Diana. Ms. Wei says life in Cupertino and at Monta Vista didn't prepare the young woman for life at New York University. Diana moved there in 2004 and jumped to her death from a Manhattan building two months later.
"We emphasize academics so much and protect our kids, I feel there's something lacking in our education," Ms. Wei says.
Cupertino schools are trying to address some of these issues. Monta Vista recently completed a series of seminars focused on such issues as helping parents communicate better with their kids, and Lynbrook last year revised its homework guidelines with the goal of eliminating excessive and unproductive assignments.
The moves haven't stemmed the flow of whites out of the schools. Four years ago, Lynn Rosener, a software consultant, transferred her elder son from Monta Vista to Homestead High, a Cupertino school with slightly lower test scores. At the new school, the white student body is declining at a slower rate than at Monta Vista and currently stands at 52% of the total. Friday-night football is a tradition, with big half-time shows and usually 1,000 people packing the stands. The school offers boys' volleyball, a sport at which Ms. Rosener's son was particularly talented. Monta Vista doesn't.
"It does help to have a lower Asian population," says Homestead PTA President Mary Anne Norling. "I don't think our parents are as uptight as if my kids went to Monta Vista."
Posted by Melissa at 11:21 AM | Comments (11)
There's been a lot in the news lately about overachieving Asian American students. You've probably already heard about the book above. The Korean American sisters who wrote it were recently profiled in the New York Times, extolling the virtues of strict Asian parenting. (Neither of them are educators or parents for that matter.) Their message seemed to be, "Hey, we're not really all that smart and neither are other Asians. We just work really hard and our parents made us do it!" Now, lucky you, they’ve written this book so that you non-Asians can learn these mysterious Asian secrets and succeed too!
Now don’t get me wrong, we all know an overachieving Asian American or two or three (hell, my sister is one). Stereotypes are rooted somewhere, but wow, what a disservice to go around pushing the same old stereotype. If the point is that parents need to get involved and that education starts at home, not at school, well that’s not really culture specific. It doesn’t have anything to do with being Asian. That’s just common sense. What a marketing gimmick.
The book seems to be getting good reviews from customers on Amazon, but feedback from some folks in the Asian American community have not been as kind. It’s been kind of angry, actually. A mental health expert wrote in to the Times saying that the book ignored the dangers of putting too much pressure on your kids to succeed academically. And how he saw many patients coming into therapy, Asian Americans, who were trying to shake what their parents wanted to figure out what they wanted for themselves. (You hear that parents? Stop being so overbearing or your lawyer and doctor sons and daughters will be spending their hard-earned cash on years of therapy.) The sisters point out in the book that Asian Americans only make up 4 percent of the population, but 20 percent of the students at Ivy League colleges. How about this stat? Young Asian American women have the highest suicide rate.
That last point was made by reporter Monica Eng in this story that ran in the Chicago Tribune. She was not impressed by the book.
(And a minor quibble: what's with the book cover and the super short jeans? Are Asian kids also tremendously fashion-impaired because they are studying so much?)
And then, over the weekend, this story ran in Wall Street Journal about white parents who are moving their kids out of Asian-dominated schools, citing oppressive competitiveness and lack of "roundedness." A different kind of white flight.
You might need to be a subcriber to get to the story, so here is the text below:
*************************************
The New White Flight
In Silicon Valley, two high schools with outstanding academic reputations are losing white students as Asian students move in. Why?
By SUEIN HWANG
November 19, 2005; Page A1
CUPERTINO, Calif. -- By most measures, Monta Vista High here and Lynbrook High, in nearby San Jose, are among the nation's top public high schools. Both boast stellar test scores, an array of advanced-placement classes and a track record of sending graduates from the affluent suburbs of Silicon Valley to prestigious colleges.
But locally, they're also known for something else: white flight. Over the past 10 years, the proportion of white students at Lynbrook has fallen by nearly half, to 25% of the student body. At Monta Vista, white students make up less than one-third of the population, down from 45% -- this in a town that's half white. Some white Cupertino parents are instead sending their children to private schools or moving them to other, whiter public schools. More commonly, young white families in Silicon Valley say they are avoiding Cupertino altogether.
Whites aren't quitting the schools because the schools are failing academically. Quite the contrary: Many white parents say they're leaving because the schools are too academically driven and too narrowly invested in subjects such as math and science at the expense of liberal arts and extracurriculars like sports and other personal interests.
The two schools, put another way that parents rarely articulate so bluntly, are too Asian.
Cathy Gatley, co-president of Monta Vista High School's parent-teacher association, recently dissuaded a family with a young child from moving to Cupertino because there are so few young white kids left in the public schools. "This may not sound good," she confides, "but their child may be the only Caucasian kid in the class." All of Ms. Gatley's four children have attended or are currently attending Monta Vista. One son, Andrew, 17 years old, took the high-school exit exam last summer and left the school to avoid the academic pressure. He is currently working in a pet-supply store. Ms. Gatley, who is white, says she probably wouldn't have moved to Cupertino if she had anticipated how much it would change.
In the 1960s, the term "white flight" emerged to describe the rapid exodus of whites from big cities into the suburbs, a process that often resulted in the economic degradation of the remaining community. Back then, the phenomenon was mostly believed to be sparked by the growth in the population of African-Americans, and to a lesser degree Hispanics, in some major cities.
But this modern incarnation is different. Across the country, Asian-Americans have by and large been successful and accepted into middle- and upper-class communities. Silicon Valley has kept Cupertino's economy stable, and the town is almost indistinguishable from many of the suburbs around it. The shrinking number of white students hasn't hurt the academic standards of Cupertino's schools -- in fact the opposite is true.
This time the effect is more subtle: Some Asians believe that the resulting lack of diversity creates an atmosphere that is too sheltering for their children, leaving then unprepared for life in a country that is only 4% Asian overall. Moreover, many Asians share some of their white counterpart's concerns. Both groups finger newer Asian immigrants for the schools' intense competitiveness.
Some whites fear that by avoiding schools with large Asian populations parents are short-changing their own children, giving them the idea that they can't compete with Asian kids. "My parents never let me think that because I'm Caucasian, I'm not going to succeed," says Jessie Hogin, a white Monta Vista graduate.
The white exodus clearly involves race-based presumptions, not all of which are positive. One example: Asian parents are too competitive. That sounds like racism to many of Cupertino's Asian residents, who resent the fact that their growing numbers and success are causing many white families to boycott the town altogether.
"It's a stereotype of Asian parents," says Pei-Pei Yow, a Hewlett-Packard Co. manager and Chinese-American community leader who sent two kids to Monta Vista. It's like other familiar biases, she says: "You can't say everybody from the South is a redneck."
Jane Doherty, a retirement-community administrator, chose to send her two boys elsewhere. When her family moved to Cupertino from Indiana over a decade ago, Ms. Doherty says her top priority was moving into a good public-school district. She paid no heed to a real-estate agent who told her of the town's burgeoning Asian population.
She says she began to reconsider after her elder son, Matthew, entered Kennedy, the middle school that feeds Monta Vista. As he played soccer, Ms. Doherty watched a line of cars across the street deposit Asian kids for after-school study. She also attended a Monta Vista parents' night and came away worrying about the school's focus on test scores and the big-name colleges its graduates attend.
"My sense is that at Monta Vista you're competing against the child beside you," she says. Ms. Doherty says she believes the issue stems more from recent immigrants than Asians as a whole. "Obviously, the concentration of Asian students is really high, and it does flavor the school," she says.
When Matthew, now a student at Notre Dame, finished middle school eight years ago, Ms. Doherty decided to send him to Bellarmine College Preparatory, a Jesuit school that she says has a culture that "values the whole child." It's also 55% white and 24% Asian. Her younger son, Kevin, followed suit.
Kevin Doherty, 17, says he's happy his mother made the switch. Many of his old friends at Kennedy aren't happy at Monta Vista, he says. "Kids at Bellarmine have a lot of pressure to do well, too, but they want to learn and do something they want to do."
While California has seen the most pronounced cases of suburban segregation, some of the developments in Cupertino are also starting to surface in other parts of the U.S. At Thomas S. Wootton High School in Rockville, Md., known flippantly to some locals as "Won Ton," roughly 35% of students are of Asian descent. People who don't know the school tend to make assumptions about its academics, says Principal Michael Doran.
"Certain stereotypes come to mind -- 'those people are good at math,' " he says.
In Tenafly, N.J., a well-to-do bedroom community near New York, the local high school says it expects Asian students to make up about 36% of its total in the next five years, compared with 27% today. The district still attracts families of all backgrounds, but Asians are particularly intent that their kids work hard and excel, says Anat Eisenberg, a local Coldwell Banker real-estate agent. "Everybody is caught into this process of driving their kids." Lawrence Mayer, Tenafly High's vice principal, says he's never heard such concerns.
Perched on the western end of the Santa Clara valley, Cupertino was for many years a primarily rural area known for its many fruit orchards. The beginnings of the tech industry brought suburbanization, and Cupertino then became a very white, quintessentially middle-class town of mostly modest ranch homes, populated by engineers and their families. Apple Computer Inc. planted its headquarters there.
As the high-tech industry prospered, so did Cupertino. Today, the orchards are a memory, replaced by numerous shopping malls and subdivisions that are home to Silicon Valley's prosperous upper-middle class. While the architecture in Cupertino is largely the same as in neighboring communities, the town of about 50,000 people now boasts Indian restaurants, tutoring centers and Asian grocers. Parents say Cupertino's top schools have become more academically intense over the past 10 years.
Asian immigrants have surged into the town, granting it a reputation -- particularly among recent Chinese and South Asian immigrants -- as a Bay Area locale of choice. Cupertino is now 41% Asian, up from 24% in 1998.
Some students struggle in Cupertino's high schools who might not elsewhere. Monta Vista's Academic Performance Index, which compares the academic performance of California's schools, reached an all-time high of 924 out of 1,000 this year, making it one of the highest-scoring high schools in Northern California. Grades are so high that a 'B' average puts a student in the bottom third of a class.
"We have great students, which has a lot of upsides," says April Scott, Monta Vista's principal. "The downside is what the kids with a 3.0 GPA think of themselves."
Ms. Scott and her counterpart at Lynbrook know what's said about their schools being too competitive and dominated by Asians. "It's easy to buy into those kinds of comments because they're loaded and powerful," says Ms. Scott, who adds that they paint an inaccurate picture of Monta Vista. Ms. Scott says many athletic programs are thriving and points to the school's many extracurricular activities. She also points out that white students represented 20% of the school's 29 National Merit Semifinalists this year.
Judy Hogin, Jessie's mother and a Cupertino real-estate agent, believes the school was good for her daughter, who is now a freshman at the University of California at San Diego. "I know it's frustrating to some people who have moved away," says Ms. Hogin, who is white. Jessie, she says, "rose to the challenge."
On a recent autumn day at Lynbrook, crowds of students spilled out of classrooms for midmorning break. Against a sea of Asian faces, the few white students were easy to pick out. One boy sat on a wall, his lighter hair and skin making him stand out from dozens of others around him. In another corner, four white male students lounged at a picnic table.
At Cupertino's top schools, administrators, parents and students say white students end up in the stereotyped role often applied to other minority groups: the underachievers. In one 9th-grade algebra class, Lynbrook's lowest-level math class, the students are an eclectic mix of whites, Asians and other racial and ethnic groups.
"Take a good look," whispered Steve Rowley, superintendent of the Fremont Union High School District, which covers the city of Cupertino as well as portions of other neighboring cities. "This doesn't look like the other classes we're going to."
On the second floor, in advanced-placement chemistry, only a couple of the 32 students are white and the rest are Asian. Some white parents, and even some students, say they suspect teachers don't take white kids as seriously as Asians.
"Many of my Asian friends were convinced that if you were Asian, you had to confirm you were smart. If you were white, you had to prove it," says Arar Han, a Monta Vista graduate who recently co-edited "Asian American," a book of coming-of-age essays by young Asian-Americans.
Ms. Gatley, the Monta Vista PTA president, is more blunt: "White kids are thought of as the dumb kids," she says.
Cupertino's administrators and faculty, the majority of whom are white, adamantly say there's no discrimination against whites. The administrators ay students of all races get along well. In fact, there's little evidence o any overt racial tension between students or between their parents.
Mr. Rowley, the school superintendent, however, concedes that a perception exists that's sometimes called "the white-boy syndrome." He describes it s: "Kids who are white feel themselves a distinct minority against a mjority culture."
Mr. Rowley, who is white, enrolled his only son, Eddie, at Lynbrook. When Eddie started freshman geometry, the boy was frustrated to learn that many of the Asian students in his class had already taken the course in summer school, Mr. Rowley recalls. That gave them a big leg up.
To many of Cupertino's Asians, some of the assumptions made by white parents -- that Asians are excessively competitive and single-minded -- play into stereotypes. Top schools in nearby, whiter Palo Alto, which also have very high test scores, also feature heavy course loads, long hours of homework and overly stressed students, says Denise Pope, director of Stressed Out Students, a Stanford University program that has worked with schools in both Palo Alto and Cupertino. But whites don't seem to be avoiding those institutions, or making the same negative generalizations, Asian families note, suggesting that it's not academic competition that makes white parents uncomfortable but academic competition with Asian-Americans.
Some of Cupertino's Asian residents say they don't blame white families for leaving. After all, many of the town's Asians are fretting about the same issues. While acknowledging that the term Asian embraces a wide diversity of countries, cultures and languages, they say there's some truth to the criticisms levied against new immigrant parents, particularly those from countries such as China and India, who often put a lot of academic pressure on their children.
Some parents and students say these various forces are creating an unhealthy cultural isolation in the schools. Monta Vista graduate Mark Seto says he wouldn't send his kids to his alma mater. "It was a sheltered little world that didn't bear a whole lot of resemblance to what the rest of the country is like," says Mr. Seto, a Chinese-American who recently graduated from Yale University. As a result, he says, "college wasn't an academic adjustment. It was a cultural adjustment."
Hung Wei, a Chinese-American living in Cupertino, has become an active campaigner in the community, encouraging Asian parents to be more aware of their children's emotional development. Ms. Wei, who is co-president of Monta Vista's PTA with Ms. Gatley, says her activism stems from the suicide of her daughter, Diana. Ms. Wei says life in Cupertino and at Monta Vista didn't prepare the young woman for life at New York University. Diana moved there in 2004 and jumped to her death from a Manhattan building two months later.
"We emphasize academics so much and protect our kids, I feel there's something lacking in our education," Ms. Wei says.
Cupertino schools are trying to address some of these issues. Monta Vista recently completed a series of seminars focused on such issues as helping parents communicate better with their kids, and Lynbrook last year revised its homework guidelines with the goal of eliminating excessive and unproductive assignments.
The moves haven't stemmed the flow of whites out of the schools. Four years ago, Lynn Rosener, a software consultant, transferred her elder son from Monta Vista to Homestead High, a Cupertino school with slightly lower test scores. At the new school, the white student body is declining at a slower rate than at Monta Vista and currently stands at 52% of the total. Friday-night football is a tradition, with big half-time shows and usually 1,000 people packing the stands. The school offers boys' volleyball, a sport at which Ms. Rosener's son was particularly talented. Monta Vista doesn't.
"It does help to have a lower Asian population," says Homestead PTA President Mary Anne Norling. "I don't think our parents are as uptight as if my kids went to Monta Vista."
Posted by Melissa at 11:21 AM | Comments (11)
There's been a lot in the news lately about overachieving Asian American students. You've probably already heard about the book above. The Korean American sisters who wrote it were recently profiled in the New York Times, extolling the virtues of strict Asian parenting. (Neither of them are educators or parents for that matter.) Their message seemed to be, "Hey, we're not really all that smart and neither are other Asians. We just work really hard and our parents made us do it!" Now, lucky you, theyve written this book so that you non-Asians can learn these mysterious Asian secrets and succeed too!
Now dont get me wrong, we all know an overachieving Asian American or two or three (hell, my sister is one). Stereotypes are rooted somewhere, but wow, what a disservice to go around pushing the same old stereotype. If the point is that parents need to get involved and that education starts at home, not at school, well thats not really culture specific. It doesnt have anything to do with being Asian. Thats just common sense. What a marketing gimmick.
The book seems to be getting good reviews from customers on Amazon, but feedback from some folks in the Asian American community have not been as kind. Its been kind of angry, actually. A mental health expert wrote in to the Times saying that the book ignored the dangers of putting too much pressure on your kids to succeed academically. And how he saw many patients coming into therapy, Asian Americans, who were trying to shake what their parents wanted to figure out what they wanted for themselves. (You hear that parents? Stop being so overbearing or your lawyer and doctor sons and daughters will be spending their hard-earned cash on years of therapy.) The sisters point out in the book that Asian Americans only make up 4 percent of the population, but 20 percent of the students at Ivy League colleges. How about this stat? Young Asian American women have the highest suicide rate.
That last point was made by reporter Monica Eng in this story that ran in the Chicago Tribune. She was not impressed by the book.
(And a minor quibble: what's with the book cover and the super short jeans? Are Asian kids also tremendously fashion-impaired because they are studying so much?)
And then, over the weekend, this story ran in Wall Street Journal about white parents who are moving their kids out of Asian-dominated schools, citing oppressive competitiveness and lack of "roundedness." A different kind of white flight.
You might need to be a subcriber to get to the story, so here is the text below:
*************************************
The New White Flight
In Silicon Valley, two high schools with outstanding academic reputations are losing white students as Asian students move in. Why?
By SUEIN HWANG
November 19, 2005; Page A1
CUPERTINO, Calif. -- By most measures, Monta Vista High here and Lynbrook High, in nearby San Jose, are among the nation's top public high schools. Both boast stellar test scores, an array of advanced-placement classes and a track record of sending graduates from the affluent suburbs of Silicon Valley to prestigious colleges.
But locally, they're also known for something else: white flight. Over the past 10 years, the proportion of white students at Lynbrook has fallen by nearly half, to 25% of the student body. At Monta Vista, white students make up less than one-third of the population, down from 45% -- this in a town that's half white. Some white Cupertino parents are instead sending their children to private schools or moving them to other, whiter public schools. More commonly, young white families in Silicon Valley say they are avoiding Cupertino altogether.
Whites aren't quitting the schools because the schools are failing academically. Quite the contrary: Many white parents say they're leaving because the schools are too academically driven and too narrowly invested in subjects such as math and science at the expense of liberal arts and extracurriculars like sports and other personal interests.
The two schools, put another way that parents rarely articulate so bluntly, are too Asian.
Cathy Gatley, co-president of Monta Vista High School's parent-teacher association, recently dissuaded a family with a young child from moving to Cupertino because there are so few young white kids left in the public schools. "This may not sound good," she confides, "but their child may be the only Caucasian kid in the class." All of Ms. Gatley's four children have attended or are currently attending Monta Vista. One son, Andrew, 17 years old, took the high-school exit exam last summer and left the school to avoid the academic pressure. He is currently working in a pet-supply store. Ms. Gatley, who is white, says she probably wouldn't have moved to Cupertino if she had anticipated how much it would change.
In the 1960s, the term "white flight" emerged to describe the rapid exodus of whites from big cities into the suburbs, a process that often resulted in the economic degradation of the remaining community. Back then, the phenomenon was mostly believed to be sparked by the growth in the population of African-Americans, and to a lesser degree Hispanics, in some major cities.
But this modern incarnation is different. Across the country, Asian-Americans have by and large been successful and accepted into middle- and upper-class communities. Silicon Valley has kept Cupertino's economy stable, and the town is almost indistinguishable from many of the suburbs around it. The shrinking number of white students hasn't hurt the academic standards of Cupertino's schools -- in fact the opposite is true.
This time the effect is more subtle: Some Asians believe that the resulting lack of diversity creates an atmosphere that is too sheltering for their children, leaving then unprepared for life in a country that is only 4% Asian overall. Moreover, many Asians share some of their white counterpart's concerns. Both groups finger newer Asian immigrants for the schools' intense competitiveness.
Some whites fear that by avoiding schools with large Asian populations parents are short-changing their own children, giving them the idea that they can't compete with Asian kids. "My parents never let me think that because I'm Caucasian, I'm not going to succeed," says Jessie Hogin, a white Monta Vista graduate.
The white exodus clearly involves race-based presumptions, not all of which are positive. One example: Asian parents are too competitive. That sounds like racism to many of Cupertino's Asian residents, who resent the fact that their growing numbers and success are causing many white families to boycott the town altogether.
"It's a stereotype of Asian parents," says Pei-Pei Yow, a Hewlett-Packard Co. manager and Chinese-American community leader who sent two kids to Monta Vista. It's like other familiar biases, she says: "You can't say everybody from the South is a redneck."
Jane Doherty, a retirement-community administrator, chose to send her two boys elsewhere. When her family moved to Cupertino from Indiana over a decade ago, Ms. Doherty says her top priority was moving into a good public-school district. She paid no heed to a real-estate agent who told her of the town's burgeoning Asian population.
She says she began to reconsider after her elder son, Matthew, entered Kennedy, the middle school that feeds Monta Vista. As he played soccer, Ms. Doherty watched a line of cars across the street deposit Asian kids for after-school study. She also attended a Monta Vista parents' night and came away worrying about the school's focus on test scores and the big-name colleges its graduates attend.
"My sense is that at Monta Vista you're competing against the child beside you," she says. Ms. Doherty says she believes the issue stems more from recent immigrants than Asians as a whole. "Obviously, the concentration of Asian students is really high, and it does flavor the school," she says.
When Matthew, now a student at Notre Dame, finished middle school eight years ago, Ms. Doherty decided to send him to Bellarmine College Preparatory, a Jesuit school that she says has a culture that "values the whole child." It's also 55% white and 24% Asian. Her younger son, Kevin, followed suit.
Kevin Doherty, 17, says he's happy his mother made the switch. Many of his old friends at Kennedy aren't happy at Monta Vista, he says. "Kids at Bellarmine have a lot of pressure to do well, too, but they want to learn and do something they want to do."
While California has seen the most pronounced cases of suburban segregation, some of the developments in Cupertino are also starting to surface in other parts of the U.S. At Thomas S. Wootton High School in Rockville, Md., known flippantly to some locals as "Won Ton," roughly 35% of students are of Asian descent. People who don't know the school tend to make assumptions about its academics, says Principal Michael Doran.
"Certain stereotypes come to mind -- 'those people are good at math,' " he says.
In Tenafly, N.J., a well-to-do bedroom community near New York, the local high school says it expects Asian students to make up about 36% of its total in the next five years, compared with 27% today. The district still attracts families of all backgrounds, but Asians are particularly intent that their kids work hard and excel, says Anat Eisenberg, a local Coldwell Banker real-estate agent. "Everybody is caught into this process of driving their kids." Lawrence Mayer, Tenafly High's vice principal, says he's never heard such concerns.
Perched on the western end of the Santa Clara valley, Cupertino was for many years a primarily rural area known for its many fruit orchards. The beginnings of the tech industry brought suburbanization, and Cupertino then became a very white, quintessentially middle-class town of mostly modest ranch homes, populated by engineers and their families. Apple Computer Inc. planted its headquarters there.
As the high-tech industry prospered, so did Cupertino. Today, the orchards are a memory, replaced by numerous shopping malls and subdivisions that are home to Silicon Valley's prosperous upper-middle class. While the architecture in Cupertino is largely the same as in neighboring communities, the town of about 50,000 people now boasts Indian restaurants, tutoring centers and Asian grocers. Parents say Cupertino's top schools have become more academically intense over the past 10 years.
Asian immigrants have surged into the town, granting it a reputation -- particularly among recent Chinese and South Asian immigrants -- as a Bay Area locale of choice. Cupertino is now 41% Asian, up from 24% in 1998.
Some students struggle in Cupertino's high schools who might not elsewhere. Monta Vista's Academic Performance Index, which compares the academic performance of California's schools, reached an all-time high of 924 out of 1,000 this year, making it one of the highest-scoring high schools in Northern California. Grades are so high that a 'B' average puts a student in the bottom third of a class.
"We have great students, which has a lot of upsides," says April Scott, Monta Vista's principal. "The downside is what the kids with a 3.0 GPA think of themselves."
Ms. Scott and her counterpart at Lynbrook know what's said about their schools being too competitive and dominated by Asians. "It's easy to buy into those kinds of comments because they're loaded and powerful," says Ms. Scott, who adds that they paint an inaccurate picture of Monta Vista. Ms. Scott says many athletic programs are thriving and points to the school's many extracurricular activities. She also points out that white students represented 20% of the school's 29 National Merit Semifinalists this year.
Judy Hogin, Jessie's mother and a Cupertino real-estate agent, believes the school was good for her daughter, who is now a freshman at the University of California at San Diego. "I know it's frustrating to some people who have moved away," says Ms. Hogin, who is white. Jessie, she says, "rose to the challenge."
On a recent autumn day at Lynbrook, crowds of students spilled out of classrooms for midmorning break. Against a sea of Asian faces, the few white students were easy to pick out. One boy sat on a wall, his lighter hair and skin making him stand out from dozens of others around him. In another corner, four white male students lounged at a picnic table.
At Cupertino's top schools, administrators, parents and students say white students end up in the stereotyped role often applied to other minority groups: the underachievers. In one 9th-grade algebra class, Lynbrook's lowest-level math class, the students are an eclectic mix of whites, Asians and other racial and ethnic groups.
"Take a good look," whispered Steve Rowley, superintendent of the Fremont Union High School District, which covers the city of Cupertino as well as portions of other neighboring cities. "This doesn't look like the other classes we're going to."
On the second floor, in advanced-placement chemistry, only a couple of the 32 students are white and the rest are Asian. Some white parents, and even some students, say they suspect teachers don't take white kids as seriously as Asians.
"Many of my Asian friends were convinced that if you were Asian, you had to confirm you were smart. If you were white, you had to prove it," says Arar Han, a Monta Vista graduate who recently co-edited "Asian American," a book of coming-of-age essays by young Asian-Americans.
Ms. Gatley, the Monta Vista PTA president, is more blunt: "White kids are thought of as the dumb kids," she says.
Cupertino's administrators and faculty, the majority of whom are white, adamantly say there's no discrimination against whites. The administrators ay students of all races get along well. In fact, there's little evidence o any overt racial tension between students or between their parents.
Mr. Rowley, the school superintendent, however, concedes that a perception exists that's sometimes called "the white-boy syndrome." He describes it s: "Kids who are white feel themselves a distinct minority against a mjority culture."
Mr. Rowley, who is white, enrolled his only son, Eddie, at Lynbrook. When Eddie started freshman geometry, the boy was frustrated to learn that many of the Asian students in his class had already taken the course in summer school, Mr. Rowley recalls. That gave them a big leg up.
To many of Cupertino's Asians, some of the assumptions made by white parents -- that Asians are excessively competitive and single-minded -- play into stereotypes. Top schools in nearby, whiter Palo Alto, which also have very high test scores, also feature heavy course loads, long hours of homework and overly stressed students, says Denise Pope, director of Stressed Out Students, a Stanford University program that has worked with schools in both Palo Alto and Cupertino. But whites don't seem to be avoiding those institutions, or making the same negative generalizations, Asian families note, suggesting that it's not academic competition that makes white parents uncomfortable but academic competition with Asian-Americans.
Some of Cupertino's Asian residents say they don't blame white families for leaving. After all, many of the town's Asians are fretting about the same issues. While acknowledging that the term Asian embraces a wide diversity of countries, cultures and languages, they say there's some truth to the criticisms levied against new immigrant parents, particularly those from countries su