Tag: Islamophobia

Anti-Asian hate is not welcome in politics

Posted By Jenn

An uncredited mailer sent to residents of Edison, New Jersey. (Photo credit: NJ.com)

By Guest Contributor:  Christine Chen, Executive Director of APIAVote (@apiavote)

Edison town council member Sapana Shah realized something was wrong the moment she checked social media, learning that she and her neighbors received the same anti-Asian mailer Wednesday which featured a “deport” stamp on the photos of two Asian school board candidates. The postcard also read, “The Chinese and Indians are taking over our town.”

Targeting candidates based on bias and hate toward various ethnic, racial or religious identity is not new. And Shah is no stranger to it as a candidate. She recounted multiple incidents to me over the phone. Shah, a long-time resident in the Edison township of Middlesex County, New Jersey, was told to go back to her country when she ran for local elected office. She once found her campaign signs inscribed with the words “dot head,” an offensive racial slur. As a town council member, Shah endured insults from residents who shouted her down at the end of a public meeting for voting to include Diwali, the Hindu festival of lights, as a school holiday.

When individuals are targets of hate, it not only affects them but also entire communities.

Continue reading “Anti-Asian hate is not welcome in politics”

BREAKING: Gold Star Father Says his Travel Privileges are being “Reviewed”?

Posted By Jenn

Khizr Khan in his powerful 2016 Democratic National Convention appearance. (Photo credit: CNN)

Khizr Khan, the Pakistani American and Muslim father of US Army Captain Humayun Khan who was killed in 2004 while deployed during the Iraq War, says he has been forced to cancel a scheduled speaking engagement in Canada after learning that his “traveling privileges are being reviewed.”

Continue reading “BREAKING: Gold Star Father Says his Travel Privileges are being “Reviewed”?”

Where is America’s Outrage over Hate Crime Killing in Olathe?

Posted By Jenn

Srinivas Kuchibhotla (right) and his wife Sunayana Dumala (left). (Photo credit: AP)

Last week, a man was shot and killed because of the colour of his skin.

It was a warm Wednesday evening in Olathe, Kansas. Rather than to work late into the night as was his custom, 32-year-old Srinivas Kuchibhotla decided to leave work early and have a drink with his friend and co-worker, 32-year-old  Alok Madasani, at their local watering hole, Austin’s Bar & Grill. The two men were both nationals of India who had immigrated to America more than a decade ago to pursue graduate degrees in electrical engineering, and who had stayed in the United States to work as highly-skilled engineers. Madasani and Kuchibhotla had become friends in 2008 when both were employees of Rockwell Collins, an American-owned company based in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. For six months, Kuchibhotla even gave Madasani a ride to-and-from work every day until Madasani could afford to buy a car; he never complained, remembers Madasani. The two remained close friends when both were hired within months of each other to work at Garmin International in Kansas.

Kuchibhotla and Madasani were known as “the Jameson guys” by the employees of Austin’s, where the two would frequently unwind after a day’s work over some whiskey. But, last Wednesday was unseasonably warm, and the two men decided to have a couple of beers, instead. And so, on the evening of February 22, 2017, Kuchibhotla and Madasani found themselves seated on the patio, sipping Miller Lite beers while surrounded by college basketball fans had gathered to cheer on the University of Kansas Jayhawks.

There aren’t many more ostentatiously all-American scenarios than this.

And yet, none of this was enough to protect the two men from racism, xenophobia, nativism and cold-blooded hate. To the man who would destroy this peaceful scene with the pull of his shotgun trigger, Kuchibhotla and Madasani’s Brown-ness had marked the two men as interlopers and Others. To 51-year-old Adam Purinton, Srinivas Kuchibhotla and Alok Madasani’s Brown-ness meant that they did not belong — in Austin’s, in Kansas, or in America — and, for that, Purinton decided they should die.

Continue reading “Where is America’s Outrage over Hate Crime Killing in Olathe?”

900+ Asian American Studies Scholars Issue Collective Statement Decrying Trump’s Proposed Muslim Registry

Posted By Jenn

collective-statement-aas-muslim-registry

Over 900 Asian American Studies scholars from across the United States issued a joint statement today decrying President-Elect Donald Trump’s proposal to create a national registry of Muslims and Muslim Americans.

Trump has repeatedly said that as president he would institute aggressive measures to limit immigration of Muslims into the country and to place Muslims currently within the United States’ borders under close scrutiny. He has promised to halt the entry of Syrian refugees and to also ban immigration from a number of countries — including Pakistan and the Philippines — with large Muslim populations. He is quoted as suggesting the creation of a national database of Muslim and Muslim Americans — a proposal that is likely unconstitutional — and he staffed his White House transition team with Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, the architect of the highly controversial NSEERS registry system which was used to monitor the movement of Muslim immigrants under George W. Bush and the first half of the Obama administration.

Earlier this month, Trump surrogate Carl Higbie went on Fox News to defend Trump’s alarming proposals to register Muslims and Muslims Americans. In an appearance on The Kelly File, Higbie suggested that Trump’s proposal for a national Muslim registry has legal precedent: Japanese American incarceration during World War II (for a note on language, see JACL’s Power of Words handbook).

It should come as no surprise that Asian American Studies scholars have something to say about that dubious line of reasoning.

Continue reading “900+ Asian American Studies Scholars Issue Collective Statement Decrying Trump’s Proposed Muslim Registry”

#EmboldenedRacists After Election of Donald Trump

Posted By Jenn

Graffiti defacing the Muslim prayer room at NYU, found on November 9th. (Photo credit: Twitter / via Instagram and Thank You Donald)
Graffiti defacing the Muslim prayer room at NYU, found on November 9th. (Photo credit: Twitter / via Instagram and Thank You Donald)

Donald Trump launched his presidential campaign by calling Mexicans “rapists” and “killers”. On the campaign trail, he has advocated a national registry for Muslims and has implied that the Black Lives Matter movement is comprised of violent criminals; he has even gone so far to condone violence against those protesters at his rallies. He has deployed racism against East and South Asians and suggested that he would restrict immigration from Pakistan and the Phillippines which he declared to among the world’s “terrorist” nations. He has insulted women, gays, and the disabled. He is the voice of the #Whitelash against globalism and America’s growing diversification.

It should come as no surprise, therefore, that one of only a handful of newspapers to endorse Trump was the official newspaper of the Ku Klux Klan. One of Trump’s most avid supporters is former KKK Imperial Wizard David Duke.

Continue reading “#EmboldenedRacists After Election of Donald Trump”