EthnicMajority

(Guardian) An Asian American fraternity has revived allegations of racism at the University of California, Irvine, by making a parody music video in blackface and posting it on YouTube.

Four members of the Lambda Theta Delta fraternity recorded a homemade skit in which one wore black makeup to impersonate Jay-Z, prompting recriminations and apologies. The students said the parody of the Jay-Z and Justin Timberlake song Suit and Tie was intended as harmless fun but student organisations and university authorities condemned it as insensitive and racist.

"We'd like to point out that this blackface video isn't the first, nor is it the last, example of racism that's been shown on this campus," Ainaria Johnson, co-chairwoman of UCI's Black Student Union, told the Daily Pilot. Johnson noted that a second video on the fraternity's YouTube page featured a blackface.

In 2011, a chef at the university caused a spat by serving fried chicken and waffles, an African American culinary stereotype, to mark Martin Luther King day.

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(San Jose Mercury News) If a company has a workforce that is predominantly one demographic, with none on its senior staff, is there a glass ceiling? And what could be done about it? These are questions raised by women like Sheryl Sandberg in her new book LEAN IN. We enthusiastically endorse her "choose to lean in" advice.

But we put these same questions to leaders including CEO Meg Whitman, CEO Tim Cook and COO Sandberg, whose Silicon Valley workforce in HP, Apple and Facebook is largely Asian American but whose leadership teams posted on their web sites are conspicuously lacking in Asian Americans.

While the proportion of Asian American high tech workers in Silicon Valley has grown from 38 percent in 2000 to over 50 percent in 2010, their representation on senior executive teams is only 11 percent. In board rooms, their presence has declined from 8.8 percent to 8.3 percent. And even though Chinese Americans constitute the largest Asian group, their board representation has dropped from 5 percent to 3 percent.

Asian American women appear to face a double-pane glass ceiling. Women are 17 percent of boards and 16 percent of senior executives in Silicon Valley, but Asian American women are less than 1 percent in both.

These are red flags missing in the public conversation about the corporate glass ceiling.

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(Hispanic Business) The U.S. Senate proposal to replace diversity visas with a merit-based program is being met with skepticism by some civil rights groups and black lawmakers. 

The current proposal is to create at least 120,000 merit visas a year by 2015 that would be replace the 55,000 diversity visas that have been doled out annually via lottery. 

Advocates said they haven't seen evidence yet a new merit-based program is an acceptable replacement for the diversity visas. 

Hilary Shelton, director of the NAACP's Washington office, is advocating the diversity program be retained, the Washington publication The Hill reported Friday. 

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(FindLaw) A CVS store is in hot water this week over a racial slur that appeared on a customer's receipt. Customer Hyan Lee was more than dismayed when she found that her CVS receipt for photographs read "Ching Chong Lee."

Lee was furious when she learned that CVS had merely disciplined and counseled the employee responsible for the slur, and has filed a $1 million lawsuit, The Huffington Post reports.

Given the current state of anti-discrimination laws and policies, Lee likely has more than one legal leg to stand on.

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(San Jose Mercury News op-ed) For the first time in history, the influx of Asians moving to the United States has surpassed that of Latinos, and although Asian-Americans and Pacific Islanders make up only 5 percent of the U.S. population, they account for 12 percent or 1.5 million of the 12 million aspiring Americans in the country. This means that more than 10 percent of this community is undocumented.

Last November, 73 percent of Asian-Americans voters voted to re-elect President Barack Obama, a record turnout that reiterated the demand for prioritizing immigration reform. However, Asian-Americans and Pacific Islanders are underrepresented in today's immigration debate.

The community knows too well the suffering that accompanies restrictive and discriminatory immigration laws, such as the Chinese Exclusion Act and the Asian Exclusion Act, that separate families and result in unequal, second class treatment.

Currently there are 4.3 million people waiting in the family immigration backlogs with no other way to reunite with their children, spouses or parents. The majority of Asian and Pacific Islander immigrants come to the U.S. through this system. Four of the five countries with the longest visa backlogs are Asian. Asian-Americans and Pacific Islanders sponsor 39 percent of all family-based immigrants, and nearly half of the family members in visa backlogs are their relatives. An estimated 1.8 million Asian-American and Pacific Islander family members of U.S.

citizens and legal permanent residents are forced to wait an average of 23 years, even though they are eligible to immigrate to the United States.

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(Hispanic Business) Republicans admit they have a problem with Hispanic voters. They have an even bigger problem with Asian Americans — a group that was a majority GOP voting bloc less than 20 years ago. 

Three-quarters of Asian Americans went for President Obama in 2012, more than any other group except black voters. The GOP is pursuing Asian Americans as part of the same $10 million outreach program to talk to Hispanic voters, conceived after the party's 2012 losses and just getting underway. GOP leaders say a return to success with Asian-American voters lies in better engagement. This week, GOP Chairman Reince Priebus announced the first two staffers hired for field operations in the Asian-American community. 

Asian Americans are affluent, educated and family-oriented, surveys show — just the kind of folks GOP leaders say should be natural Republicans. Even better, they don't strongly identify as Democrats, according to exit polls, even if they vote that way. "It sounds like they're persuadable, but it also means they're paying a lot of attention to issues," says Karthick Ramakrishnan, a University of California-Riverside political scientist and director of the National Asian-American Survey. 

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(Marketing Charts) A comprehensive study of multiculturalism in America by Geoscape determines that Asian and Hispanic households will outspend non-Hispanic White households in their lifetimes. The study (executive summary download page here) pegs consumer spending for the remaining lifetime of an average Asian household at roughly $2.4 million, compared to slightly less than $2 million for Hispanics, about $1.6 million for Whites, and $1.3 million for Blacks.

The estimates are largely a result of remaining lifespan being greater for Hispanics (45.7 years) and Asians (41.2 years) than for Blacks (34.2) and Whites (31.1). That’s because while life expectancies range between 80 and 83 years for Hispanics, Asians, and Whites (76.3 for blacks), the median adult age of a Hispanic American (37) is far younger than that of an Asian American (41.1), Black American (42.1) and White American (49.1).

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(NBC Sports) Jeremy Lin didn’t play college basketball on a scholarship — Harvard doesn’t offer athletic scholarships.

Lin was a noted high school player — he led Palo Alto High School to the California state championship and won a number of state awards. But Stanford in his own back yard didn’t offer him a scholarship, nor did UCLA, Oregon or any other Pac-12 school. Lin had the grades, SATs and resume to get into Harvard, so he went East.

We now know Lin as the guy who was good enough at Harvard to get a shot at NBA Summer League, where he turned heads and got some shots in the NBA until the perfect storm came together and “Linsanity” hit New York.

But why was that talent not recognized out of high school. Lin was frank in discussing that with Charlie Rose on 60 minutes that aired Sunday night.

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(UPI) – The owner of a Philadelphia restaurant known as Chink's Steaks since 1949 has officially changed the name to Joe's Steaks.

Joe Groh, 50, who went to work at Chink's when he was 16 and took ownership of the business in 1999, said the first indication that the name would have to be changed came in 2003, when he received a complaint from an Asian American student, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported Tuesday.

The eatery had been named for its founder, Samuel "Chink" Sherman, who was given the nickname in grade school as a result of his almond shaped eyes.

However, Groh said it was time for the name of the restaurant to change with the times.

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(Los Angeles Times) More than 200 participants gathered in Little Tokyo on Saturday to talk – and tweet – candidly about persistent negative images damaging to their ethnic group, especially when it comes to family, education, politics and news coverage.

Participants converged on Little Tokyo for "Beyond the Bad and the Ugly," the first ever summit on Asian American stereotypes. Some sported buttons with labels touting them as thugs, geeks, players and FOBs, or "fresh off the boat."   

"Don't be afraid," a moderator urged at the start, and participants didn't hold back, attacking offensive stereotypes of some members of their ethnic group that ranged from sexless nerds to predatory temptresses. 

To counter such notions, organizers invited some of the most visible Asian American bloggers, activists and academics to share their views. Speakers set a frank tone from the opening session, with poet and author Beau Sia noting, "You think I know martial arts? I don't. You think I'm smart? I'm dumb. We decide how to build or how to react to our environment. We can turn … into gold."

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