CVK
I’ve really been digging Jenn’s (not Chau) posts over at Reappropriate. Here are some of my recent favorites:

The Miseducation of Dave Chapelle
“Lola Ogunnaike of the New York Times Arts section paints a picture of Dave Chappelle as being confused, unable to articulate the reason he left in a series of high-profile interviews… Here’s the problem though — Dave Chappelle, while not being the most articulate guy on race politics, has explained why he quit the show… Seeing this inability by mainstream media to represent the implicit understanding by a person of colour of Chappelle’s point of view only underscores how obviously catering to a White perspective mainstream media is. Only for people who don’t already get it would this story’s spin be news-worthy…”

In Search of Malcolm Yellow
“A conservative Asian American once suggested to me that the problem with Asian Americans was that we didn’t have a Martin Luther King, Jr. We didn’t have an Al Sharpton or a Reverend Jesse Jackson to unite our community, be our voice to mainstream media, and regalvanize our politics… And so, I found myself in search of Malcolm Yellow… The problem deepened as I realized that not only was I unable to imagine the perfect candidate for Malcolm Yellow, but I began to wonder whether it was even acceptable to attempt to emulate African American politics in the first place. If Asian Americans are still struggling with defining ourselves and our community, it would best serve our politics to forge our own path, unique from both White and Black narratives…”

The Voting Rights Act
The insistence here is not just that undocumented immigrants refuse to participate in cultural assimilation, but that there is an American culture that comprises entirely of a White American interpretation of America — for example (but not limited to), an insistence that the language English become a requirement for American citizenship… we Asian Americans must take a stand against the White-washing of American culture and demand that immigrant culture not be wiped out by the same xenophobia that would do away with the choice to speak another language. Not only does this affect our right to vote, as established by the 15th Amendment and protected by the VRA of 1965, but our very identities as both American and Asian.

Good Enough to Be a Manservant
“Anyone who might have deluded themselves into thinking such Yellowface has been relegated to the annals of ancient Hollywood history, think again. The TV miniseries ‘Marco Polo’ is currently filming in China. It documents the travels of Marco Polo and the time he spent in Kublai Khan’s court… However, raising eyebrows in the online community is the casting of Brian Dennehy as the historically Asian Kublai Kahn. I guess, according to Hollywood, Asian actors are good enough to play manservants to White protagonists or bumbling sons to Sherlock Holmes in Yellowface, but Heaven forbid we find an Asian actor to play a king…”