File this under "Asian Shame":

Indian American fashion designer Anand Jon Alexander was convicted of 20 counts of serial rape this week.

The 35-year-old designer was featured on "America's Next Top Model" and has worked with celebrities like Paris Hilton, Oprah Winfrey and Mary J. Blige. He was born in India and emigrated to the States to study design. His work is described as fusing east and west (argh).

He's convicted of luring several girls and women aged 14 to 21 to his apartment with promises of modeling contracts, then raping them. His family has been campaigning to get the Indian government involved, to no avail. They say he was framed, but the arguments made on his support site seem flimsy at first glance.

Not much comment to make here. Here's his website if you want to see his designs. And see the interview above from about eight years ago for a little -- in hindsight -- creepy discussion of his being raised by women and encouraged to be a brat. It's too bad: he's well-spoken, particularly for someone in the celebrity-ridden fashion world, and his perspective is interesting. In another life he'd be a role model ... in fact, he probably has been. Just that thought, more than anything, makes me shudder.
 

Edited to removed photo. Sorry, folks, I wasn't thinking about copyright!

Okay, this has to be said:

While we're all celebrating President-elect (squee!) Obama and reveling in the enormous turnout of African American and Latino voters that helped seal the deal, let's not forget that the forces of bigotry and discrimination won a huge victory on Tuesday ... and that in great part precisely because of the huge turnout of voters of color.

What does it mean to be a minority? And what does it matter?

With Obama downplaying the race factor, Hillary supporters and critics alike highlighting her almost-cried-but-didn't moment, and Edwards recently -- and oddly -- referred to as a "minority" on the Tyra Banks Show last week, I'm a little confused as to the role race and gender (and sometimes class) are playing in this election on the Dem side.

A press conference in New York City last month addressed an issue that often goes ignored but is already affecting many Asian Americans in the 21st century – Chronic Hepatitis B.

A study released by pharmaceutical giants Idenix and Novartis revealed some alarming figures. A survey of 301 CHB patients (55% of whom were Asian American) indicated that not enough CHB patients or the general population are properly informed about CHB and its causes, although the similarities to the HIV epidemic are obvious.

In the U.S. and estimated 1.25 million people are critically infected with HBV 2 -- Asian Americans make up more than half of this number.

* One in 10 Asian-Americans has CHB, compared with one in 1,000 for the general U.S. population:
* 1 in 10 Chinese Americans
* 1 in 12 Korean Americans
* 1 in 8 Vietnamese Americans

Last week I turned in my last story to Civiane (copy editor) and Cielo (art director) to take forward into the newly glossy realm of print existence in Hyphen. The story -- an investigation/"think-piece" by Wendy Cheng on the new role Vietnamese Americans can play in post-Katrina New Orleans -- is just the kind of story I imagined, even dreamed about, Hyphen producing when we first started the magazine. My dream Hyphen story combined political passion, investigative journalism, theoretical savvy, writing chops, and an ability/willingness to speculate, dream, prescribe, and stick one's neck out. Did this piece hit all of these notes perfectly? No, of course not. But for me, after struggling through eight issues to learn how to be an editor, finally getting to edit such a piece is ... satisfaction indeed.

If I had a dollar for every science fiction perpetrator who used Asian languages as a signpost of the future, BUT NOT ASIAN PEOPLE ... well, I'd have a bunch of dollars.

Take Joss Whedon ... please.

Just a little thought experiment for you blog commentators to sink your teeth into: Australia is currently beset by a controversy over white supremacist "science" (that again!)

Now that Issue Seven (the body issue! yay! coming next week! yay!) is at the printer, we are turning our full attention to Issue Eight. So now's a GREEEEAAAT time for you to empty out those drawers of half-assed creative writing you've been trying to ignore.

If you're as angry about the government's non-response to Katrina as I am, please consider signing this petition from Moveon.org. The petition simply asks for congress to create a Katrina commission--like a 9/11 commission. And this time I think there may well be more will among the people to act upon the information gathered.

Then hire more Asian American Journalists!

Sita found this in the Dallas Morning News. Gives some history on Asian Americans in the region and some info on current AA efforts to help refugees. Also pasted below.

Here are some links to appropriate outrage and pertinent information.

Asian American wimmin rule!

Do you have any idea how excited I am about Issue Seven?

Within a month Hyphen's Body Issue (Issue #7) will be out and you'll be able to read about new research on a variety of diseases affecting Asian Americans, especially those associated with poor diet: cardiovascular disease and diabetes. Although all Asian Americans continue to be neglected by the medical research establishment, this article suggests that South Asian Americans may be disproportionately affected by the physical consequences of assimilation.

Lucy Liu may be slated to play the lead in a revival/update of the Charlie Chan universe.

Should an industry whose sales and marketing strategies feed guns to the black market be liable for shooting deaths?

In case you were wondering, the Real ID Act of 2005 (mentioned in an earlier post on this blog) passed in May. This might become another leading edge in the new war of Centralization vs. States' Rights, one with real potential, unlike the medical marijuana fight, or abortion.

On the fourth of July I sat on my cousin's deck, getting a slow sunburn and eating cold potluck. So far, so American. I also fell into a brief, if inevitable, discussion on the State of the Nation with a couple of friends, one of whom, apparently, had let her affinity group disperse. The inevitable upshot of the discussion was that we all believed that the hundreds of thousands of people who marched against the war in 2003, and the millions who disapproved of it, would rise up in support of some positive action ... but that no one had yet to propose a truly effective action.

Some rumblings from that conversation and from a recent article in the San Francisco Bay Guardian, have turned my attention towards a new initiative, currently limited to San Francisco, but with the potential to become a nationwide effort.

Yay! If you ever worried that life in mainstream America was going to get boring, what with all the ethnic sensitivity and the lack of racism 'n' stuff, don't worry. You'll have plenty of heartburn for years to come.

Wanna see the world at work? Literally?

Hello from Wisconsin, the cheese state! And when I write "cheese", I mean it metaphorically, as well as literally. I wandered to the state capitol building yesterday (I'm in Madison, natch), drawn there by the sight of crowds and the sound of punk rock. There, at the weekly farmers market, I saw a band composed of 10 - 14 year olds, playing a remarkably competent cover of Green Day's "Longview", with a blonded woman not much older than I am -- very obviously one of the bandmembers' mothers -- dancing away furiously as he sang "My mother says to get a job but she don't like the one she's got."