i am a new listener to your podcast and am enjoying it very much.

one thing i feel compelled to write in about is jen’s latest rant on “People’s inability to pronounce “ethnic” names.” i hope this doesn’t come across as nitpicky but i find the title of the rant inaccurate as the rant was more about people’s *unwillingness* to deal with ethnic names.

i have, as i am sure millions of people have, an *inability* to pronounce various names as they are part of languages have never learned. since i never learned mandarin, i don’t have the ability to properly pronounce the names Hsiao-Yun or I-Han. i can attempt to, with my american accent, but i have an inability to pronounce these names with the proper accent and intonations.

those who take it upon themselves to rename someone are simply being lazy and insensitive, and i think the true targets of jen’s rant. but please don’t include those people who cannot properly pronounce names, with proper accents and intonations. everyone would be guilty if that were the case.

“The two Asian characters Choi and Kim Lee are set up for a very cheap reversal. Asians are supposed to be the model minorities — hard-working pursuers of the American Dream. Instead, this husband and wife are revealed to be human traffickers, bad drivers, and bottom-line materialists. (To show just how cheap the reversal is, the human trafficker gets paid with a personal check. What human trafficker gets paid with a personal check?) So the question is: what prejudice about Asians were we supposed to confront here? These are stereotypes on steroids.

The last image of an Asian person is of the newly freed Thai boy, looking like the classic “angel with a dirty face,” only now he is staring into the store glowing with walls of DVDs. This is why they want to come to America, right? Because of the movies.” – JC

But Asians are still marginalized from mainstream debate and if anything, both liberals and neo-Cons default to mainstream AMERICAN Orientalist and anti-Communist negative paranoid “Yellow Peril” notions. Reference recent Democratic tirades against outsourcing to Asia, as well as persistent bipartisan fears of a strengthening “Communist” China (even though China was the VICTIM of aggressive Japanese and European imperialism for the past century and its own aggression has historically been limited to debateable border disputes).

In any case, due to the “forced” alignment with severely limited pre-existing incomplete models – many Asians are now overlooking many modern developments and conflicts because they don’t “fit the mold.”

For example, typical Azn-Am activist blindspots include:

1) Asians being excluded from other minority progress (eg – Crash, undergrad affirmative action)
2) Anti-Asian racism from other minorities (eg – Hot 97 Tsunami song)
3) Racist feminists (eg – Amy Tan, Maxine Hong Kingston, Kim Wong Keltner)
4) Sexist “victim” minorities (eg – misogynistic rappers)

A TRUE Asian activist MUST be CULTURALLY LITERATE in their “own” culture in order to understand and accurately respond to American biases against it. Problem is, most Asian-Americans have never even set foot in Asia, much less lived there or are fluent in their “mother” tongues. But as you 2 grew up in Asia, I think you are not missing this link and thus offer a much needed perspective to Azn-Am activism – that is otherwise sorely deficient here.

So good job and keep it up!