Blood and Media
By Emil Guillermo

When people ask me about my career in journalism, they presume the best work I’ve done was while at National Public Radio. Sound can be powerful.

Or maybe it was something I did on television news. As they say, a picture tells a thousand words.

But I always shake my head, and say quite honestly the most important—and therefore, my best work—has always been in the ethnic media.

Yeah, right here, going amok before your eyes as a columnist for the last five years in AsianWeek.

To me, there’s always been something special about the ethnic media. Maybe because it’s truly a different voice. It’s our voice. The media of blood.

You get it because you’ve got it—in your blood.

Oh, the general media, the so-called mainstream, gets plenty bloody too. But that’s different. That’s your basic sensationalism, the cries of disasters, murders and the like. And yes, that’s a blood that sells news. But it’s not the ethnic media. Not even when the victims are people who look just like you.

The big complaint used to be we’d never show up in the mainstream news, not unless we were part of the disasters or murders, and were showing off our blood tragically.

But we don’t have to do that any more. We don’t need a Tong war to get coverage.

These days there are more Asian Pacific Americans in California than African Americans. We’re the fastest growing group in the nation, and sheer numbers merit inclusion in coverage of stories big and small. Asian Americans pop up in the mainstream when you least expect it, and it’s no big deal.

Of course, an Asian American can be the subject of a story, and there’s no double-take. Not any more. Of course, the winner of the Iwon.com sweepstakes is of Asian descent. Of course, the restaurant owner who owns the Doggie Diner head in San Francisco is also Asian, just as sure as there are Asian American doctors, or lawyers or scientists. We’ve got it all, right down to dope-dealing, gun-running gangsters and high-priced call girls. Of course. To paraphrase my gay counterparts (both Asian and non-Asian,) “We’re here, and we’re yellow.”

But oddly, more Asian sightings in the mainstream don’t take away the need for the ethnic media.

In fact, it only engages the curiosity.

Where have we been all these years?

What do you mean there’s always been a voice?

What has everyone missed?

If you want to find out, you can’t go back through the archives of the Washington Post, or the Los Angeles Times, or the San Francisco Chronicle.

You won’t find the first draft of the community’s history in any of them.

That’s the power of and the need for the ethnic media. You really need something like AsianWeek. Fortunately, it’s been around since August 23, 1979.

FIRST FRONT PAGE

Fittingly, the first front page of AsianWeek depicted our common tale, from homeland to newland. We came. We saw. We’re staying. We’ve been doing that for years.

Only this time, it was 1979, and the dramatic arrival was that of Southeast Asian refugees arriving from camps in Malaysia to their new home at Travis Air Force Base in Northern California. Like the generations of Asians to America before them, they made news but with a difference. The hundreds of so-called “boat people” were linked to America by war. And while other papers could talk about their arrival from the standpoint of America “receiving” the newcomers, AsianWeek had the ethnic spin. Asians had arrived. Four years after the fall of Saigon, a refugee is quoted as saying, “The story is very simple: the life in Vietnam is too hard, so we must leave and look for freedom.”

While the front page heralded one arrival, the editorial page spoke of another. By establishing AsianWeek, a national weekly English-language newspaper covering Asian American issues, founder and editor John Ta Chuan Fang was saying the voice of Asian America had also arrived.

“The time is indeed right for this generation of Asian-Americans to be acknowledged for the highly productive and influential citizens we are,” read the first editorial. “AsianWeek will contribute to this process, not only by bringing essential news to its readership, but also, for the sake of the young, by remembering our Asian-American roots, recognizing the achievements of today’s leaders, and creating a forum for the communication of ideas between all Asian-Americans.”

Since 1979, AsianWeek’s mission has been clear. Fill in the gaps of the mainstream. Cover the gamut from Southeast Asian to Filipino. Asian is not just Chinese. Give voice to all. Present the full picture, and let the common themes emerge in a chronicle of Asian American life.

For the most part, AsianWeek has been up to the task.

On April 2, 1981, an informative front page lets you know how far we’ve come. “U.S. Asian Population Doubles,” reads the headline. Nationally, the Asian American population rose from 1.5 million in 1970 to 3.5 million in 1980. In twenty years, that number has nearly tripled again. No one really grasped the significance of Asian American growth back then. No one had an abacus large enough.

On the same front page, there’s a story of Asian American reaction to the stunning news of the attempted assassination of Ronald Reagan. I mention it only because you wouldn’t have read our reaction in the mainstream press. No one would have asked us. But AsianWeek did. And it did so in the biggest stories impacting Asian Americans.

AFTER ARRIVAL: REJECTION

From a trip into the dusty archives, the common threads of our American presence are clear. After arrival comes rejection. In America, we call them “hate crimes.”

One of the most notorious occurred in 1982 when Ronald Ebans, a disgruntled white auto worker, and Michael Nitz, struck and killed Vincent Chin with a baseball bat. Ebans blamed it all on layoffs in the auto industry, and mistook Chin for being Japanese. The two men were let off with three years probation and a fine of $3,720 each.

In 1984, Ebans was found guilty of violating Chin’s civil rights and was sentenced to 25 years in prison. But then a new trial was ordered and Ebans was ultimately acquitted. On May 8 1987, AsianWeek’s headline read “Killer Goes Free.” For the death of Vincent Chin, Ebans never spent a day in jail.

We see acts of hate reported too often in the news sections of AsianWeek. Two years later, on January 20, 1989, there was the Patrick Purdy shooting in Stockton. The headline read: “Killer Opens Fire on Asian Children; Southeast Asian Refugees Haunted by Fear of Prejudice, Memories of War.” Just last year, Buford Furrow, Jr., the white supremacist who shot at pre-schoolers at a Jewish community center, made a victim of postal worker Joseph Ileto, a Filipino American.

But occasionally there is justice. Especially when the perpetrator is the government. Some would argue the Japanese internment story—in which some 120,000 Japanese were placed in camps in 1942—is the most significant civil rights story in Asian American history. It was another long haul, and AsianWeek covered it. From the class action suit announced by the National Council for Japanese American Redress in March 1983, to the eventual signing into law of the historic legislation granting reparations of $20,000 to each internee in August 1988. “Hopefully [redress] has lifted the burden of weight from Nisei who felt compelled, for whatever reason, perhaps subconsciously, to hold back and keep themselves, quietly immersed in their own community,” then Japanese American Citizens League National President Cressy Nakagawa said.

ASSIMILATION

As we all know, fitting in is never easy. Battling both good and bad stereotypes of Asian Americans, remains another vigilant front that leaps out of back issues of AsianWeek.

The bad stereotypes are those that deny us our humanity and put us in coolie hats and buckteeth. A Detroit TV host did that for his Kung Fu movie show. AsianWeek covered a grassroots effort in February 1985 to oust him. It was just one of many images that have castrated Asian males through the years. In 1985, a protest of Hollywood depictions of woman as victims of machismo in Year of the Dragon drew the ire of Asian American females.

Even the good stereotypes are worth scrutiny. In February 1983 AsianWeek pointed out how the term “model minority” had become our albatross. Newsweek said that Asian Americans’ average family income was the highest of any ethnic minority group and had the highest level of education of any group.

We’re number 1! Great. But the same article says “language difficulties, limited job opportunities and fear of assimilation still keep [Asian Americans] culturally segregated in many areas, without access to health care and social services.” Some model. Let’s face it, the model minority idea is just offensive shorthand for others who don’t want to get to know us either.

Fortunately AsianWeek has made sure we know of the breakthroughs Asian Americans have made. From 1979 on, pioneering firsts have been achieved in every field. From the high and mighty (“Historic First: Asian Chancellor at UC Berkeley,” heralded Chang-Lin Tien Feb. 16, 1990); to the bureaucratic (“Ronald Reagan appoints first Asian to the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, Dr. Joy Cherian,” May 8, 1987).

At all levels, from state (“Gary Locke, Governor Washington State”), to local (“Filipino Rod McLeod to S.F. School Board,” 1987), our empowerment is recorded.

But as time passes, even these turn into new versions of old stereotypes. Does the July 16, 1998 AsianWeek piece on Yahoo’s Jerry Yang smash the model minority myth? Or does it re-invigorate the model minority idea? It will—if we aren’t careful to balance our success with a real concern for community.

To that end, AsianWeek has been the place for all of us to explore what matters to Asian Americans. It’s opened up dialogue, and has broken the silence. We’ve become less private, more willing to be a vibrant, active community.

Life forces us to be actors. Being actors and achievers pushes us into the news. The news gives us a forum. More than any other publication, ethnic or mainstream, AsianWeek has been our place to be Asian in Public. It’s our joys and sorrows—for all to see.

But as our quick look over the past 21 years reveals, we still have a ways to go. Through redesigns, new, younger, hipper looks and perspectives, our stories recycle and repeat. If we only learned from reading our AsianWeek’s the first time around.