Tag: Blogging

The Problematic Political Balkanization of Asian America

A photo at a #BlackLivesMatter rally tweeted by @aauyeda to #APIs4BlackLives.
A photo at a #BlackLivesMatter rally tweeted by @aauyeda to #APIs4BlackLives.

Last December, NYPD Officer Peter Liang fatally shot Akai Gurley, an unarmed Black civilian killed for entering the dark stairwell of the Louis H. Pink housing complex where Liang was conducting an unsanctioned vertical patrol. Earlier this year, Officer Liang was indicted by a grand jury in Akai Gurley’s death; the reaction from the Asian American community was swift.

Concurrent with Liang’s indictment and in the context of the earlier killings of unarmed Black civilians Michael Brown and Eric Garner, nearly 30 Asian American/Pacific Islander civil rights advocacy groups and organizations rapidly declared their solidarity with the Black community and the revived campaign to end excessive police force.

Continue reading “The Problematic Political Balkanization of Asian America”

Underrepresentation of Asian women in a semi-scientific survey of the #AAPI blogosphere

nIMK48m

I’ve been blogging in the Asian American blogosphere for over a decade, and in that time, I’ve fundamentally believed that our Asian American blogging collective is heavily dominated by male voices. As a feminist blogger, I’ve found the underrepresentation of women writers discouraging. Indeed, the #NotYourAsianSidekick Twitter hashtag conversation that blew up the Internet last month was explicitly started by founder Suey Park to address this same problem.

notyourasiansidekick-firsttweet

Yet, as I wrote about #NotYourAsianSidekick last month, it occurred to me that I had no actual evidence on the gender break-down of writers in the APIA blogosphere. Despite abundant assertions that the blogosphere — Asian American or otherwise — is male-dominated, there seemed to be a dearth of hard data on the subject.

Further, I wasn’t sure that anyone had ever actually studied our blogosphere’s demographics at all.

So, being the nerdy scientist that I am, I decided to do it myself.

(Results and a brief discussion of methodology after the jump.)

Continue reading “Underrepresentation of Asian women in a semi-scientific survey of the #AAPI blogosphere”

#NotYourAsianSidekick: Can a social movement start on Twitter?

notyourasiansidekick-firsttweet

We’re going in on Day 5 of #NotYourAsianSidekick, the hash-tag that blew up the Twitterverse with a conversation on Asian American race identity and feminism. And, boy, has it sparked online and offline conversation. Hash-tag founder Suey Park (@suey_park) has joined forces with 18millionrising (@18millionrising) to schedule appearances on several mainstream media outlets talking Asian American feminism — which is remarkable visibility for the Asian American feminist community. Meanwhile, several established Asian American writers have offered their comments in the pages of Time Magazine and the Wall Street Journal. And as of this writing, #NotYourAsianSidekick is still going strong with new tweets being published every few minutes; further, NotYourAsianSidekick.com was launched this week (now with free stickers!).

But, of course, the question on everyone‘s mind is: what’s next?

Continue reading “#NotYourAsianSidekick: Can a social movement start on Twitter?”