Kimchi Mamas

Giants vs. Indians, Korean-style

Special opportunity for San Francisco Bay area Kimchi Mamas!  Looks like Shin-Soo Choo is coming to town with the Cleveland Indians, and there will be some special entertainment and giveaways.  Jomama and Mary Choi have already booked their tickets--hope some more of you might join us!

To purchase tickets, click this link.  Between Shin-Soo and the Giants, I'm not sure which team I'll be rooting for! (And yes, the Cleveland Indians cartoon logo of a Native American does make me cringe)

Some of the proceeds will be supporting local Korean groups, like AKASF (which I have recently joined, but not yet had the pleasure of meeting), KAPS, Korean Center, and other community groups serving Korean populations in the Bay Area.   

Go Giants/Indians!

--Jomama

 

Open Thread Thursday

Secret marriage (and divorce) and (possibly racist?) review of Please Look After Mom.

What's on your mind today?

 

- Kimchi mamas

Ethnicity is not important

"Simon says it's best not to invest too much of one's identity in ethnicity."

 

I am an avid listener of NPR and think that they are the best source of news, most of the time but this story was just... just... so... biased and bad.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=129301982

As some of the commenters already pointed out, this story breaks the #1 rule of journalism, that the journalist be objective and have no bias. I guess journalism gets meshed with a bunch of other kinds of writing nowadays and this isn't the biggest problem I have with this article but... ANYWAY.

 

That quote up there. That pressed a button. My first thought, who the hells is HE to tell ME that it's not best to invest too much of my identity in ethnicity. DUDE. Being Korean is one of the most important things for my identity. When asked to draw a picture of "me" in a high school art class, I drew a big picture of the Korean flag as a part of the collage. Being Korean isn't THE most important part of my identity but it's certainly more important than a bunch of other things and I certainly do invest a lot of my identity, time, energy, and money into being Korean.

 

What IS the right way to ask....

You know what question I'm talking about! Some of the wrong ways to ask are:

1. Where are you from?

2. Where are your parents from?

3. Where were you born?

4. Where were your parents born?

5. Where did you grow up?

6. Were you born here?

7. What nationality are you?

8. Are you Chinese?

9. I love sushi! (Wait, that's not a question!)

10. What language do you speak at home?

11. Ni hao ma? (Wo hen hao.)

Musings On Race: How Far We've Come

In light of yesterday’s beer-fest hosted by President Obama to quell racial tensions around the recent arrest of Harvard scholar Henry Louis Gates Jr., I have found my thoughts turning, once again, to race, ethnicity, and identity. This morning I listened to a call-in show on my San Francisco NPR station wherein this topic was addressed. Specifically, listeners were invited to share their thoughts on the Gates arrest and its aftermath, which President Obama says is a "teachable moment" on race in America. One caller on the show observed that her young child seemed to have no concept of race – that she had school friends of all colors, and based her decision on whether or not to befriend someone on their behavior and character, and not on their skin color.

Name Game

Have you heard about the Texas Rep. Betty Brown who suggested that Asian Americans should adopt names that are "easier for Americans can deal with"?

Hm.  Easy for her to say, with a name like "Betty Brown"...

-Mama Nabi

Unsolicited Education on Facebook

Or otherwise known as "Going all ajussi on my Facebook friend's friend".

If you have roamed the streets of Korea, you've seen this.  Ajussis who generally seem laid back, with hands clasped behind their backs, dragging their slippers while taking a long walk around the neighborhood, suddenly barking random criticisms at you.  "Take that cigarette out of your mouth!  How dare you, a woman, smoke openly in public?"  "Look how short the skirt is!  Go back home and put on more appropriate clothes!"  "Why are you so chatty?  You are causing noise pollution!"  "You need a haircut!  Are you a student?  Students don't need distractions like hair."  Etcetra, etcetra.  If you are lucky, he will even hock a loogie in front of you as an exclamation point.

It can be excruciatingly embarrassing, irritating, hilarious, or all three.

Mutt like me

It's no secret that I'm over the moon that Barack Obama is our President-elect, but for those of you who don't know me or read my blog, I've been a supporter since he first announced his candidacy some two years ago. I've written about what it means to me as a biracial American to have someone like me ascend to the presidency. Of course - inserting necessary caveat - I've supported him not because of his race, but because he is the right person to lead our country right now at this moment in our history, fraught with both peril and unfathomable potential.

And I know, I know that he cannot be expected to carry the weight of all that he is to all of us. As the first African American, the first minority, the first biracial president in our history. It is too great, too momentous. I read a beautiful open letter from Alice Walker to Obama written just after he was elected and she said, "But seeing you deliver the torch so many others before you carried, year after year, decade after decade, century after century, only to be struck down before igniting the flame of justice and of law, is almost more than the heart can bear." The word "historical" is being thrown around like "bipartisan" these days, but all that history making, all that symbolism and standard-bearing, it creates some sticky expectations.

So, I admit, I have expectations. And when Obama was talking about his daughters' promised dog during his press conference on Friday, I was troubled by his use of the word "mutt" to refer to himself.

Racism within us

It's so unlike me.  I mulled.  Mulled before reacting.  So please take that into account as you read what may seem to some of you as "overreacting" or "oversensitive".

Let's start from the beginning.

I won't deny that I had witnessed racial or ethnic bigotry before I came to the States, in my international boarding school, where there were kids and teachers from 40+ different countries.  The subtle ways how some of our white teachers seem to be kinder to other white kids.  Or the way the Indian teachers seem to favor the Indian kids, or the winking back and forth that went on as they spoke in Hindi to each other.  I get it.  People do tend to favor those who are more like them, be it skin color, race, culture, or even language.

However, it was not until I came here in 1989 and watched Spike Lee's Do the Right Thing that I even had an inkling about the black vs. Korean issues.  And even then, I had no full understanding.  I do remember feeling more mortified that Spike Lee had chose to "mock" Koreans, dismayed that "my" people were portrayed as "comical caricatures" than being concerned about the possibility of racial tensions between blacks and Koreans.

Kimchi Mamas WTF of the week

Really, Spanish basketball team?  Really? That's how you do?

I just have one thing to say: Fuck all y'all.

Stefania Pomponi Butler doesn't like to mince words.