A Korean American man from Orange, Calif., has been arrested and charged with the murder of his roommate, a former Army veteran who was set to graduate from college in a few weeks.

Police charged 54-year-old Kwang Chol “K.C.” Joy with the murder of Maribel Ramos, 36, a student at Cal State Fullerton and a sergeant for the U.S. Army who served in Iraq and South Korea. Ramos was last seen on the evening of May 2 when she dropped off a rent check at her landlord’s office, the Orange County Register reports. When Ramos failed to appear at a softball game the following day, her family alerted authorities.

For weeks, people have tried to locate Ramos’s whereabouts and Thursday her body was finally found near a road in an area heavy with brush. Continue Reading »

Recently compiled data finds the South Korea is a more racially intolerant nation in comparison to its neighboring countries, Japan and China, which runs contrary to the profile of prosperous nations.

According to a report in the Washington Post, two Swedish economists set out to determine whether or not economic freedom correlated with racial prejudice. But in order to somehow quantify such abstract data, the duo sought the help of the World Values Survey, ”which has been measuring global attitudes and opinions for decades.”

A study carried out by World Values asked participants from 80 different countries to identify from a list various types of people they would not want as neighbors. Some respondents selected “people of a different race,” and the more frequently citizens of a country responded as such, the country was viewed as less racially tolerant. Continue Reading »

Japanese American activist Yuri Kochiyama speaks at an anti-war demonstration rally, 1968. Kochiyama, who was interned during World War II, was a bridge between African American and Asian Pacific American communities during the Civil Rights Movement. Photo courtesy of the Kochiyama family.

‘I Want the Wide American Earth’

A new exhibition will employ words, art and technology to tell the diverse stories of Asian Pacific Americans.

by CHELSEA HAWKINS

In honor of Asian Pacific American Heritage Month, the Smithsonian National Museum of American History has launched its first-ever pan-Asian exhibit.

The six-week exhibition, “I Want the Wide American Earth,” opened in Washington, D.C., on May 4 and will run until June 28, before heading over to Los Angeles’ Japanese American National Museum in September, the first leg of its three-year, multi-city tour.

The exhibit will look back on the contributions of early immigrant communities from Asian laborers who helped to construct the Transcontinental Railroad to farmworkers who helped build the nation’s agricultural industry. Meanwhile, it will also explore the community’s struggle for civil rights, as APAs fought exclusionary laws that severely limited or denied new immigrants entrance to the U.S., and against such racist policies as the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II.

“[The exhibit is] a sweeping look at the Asian Pacific American story and how Asian Pacific Americans have shaped and been shaped by the course of American history,” said Lawrence-Ming Búi Davis, the exhibit’s curator and the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center Initiative coordinator. Continue Reading »

Amy Chua and her daughters, with Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. Photo via amychua.com

The Tiger Mom has lost her claws.

Results of an eight-year study of Asian American parenting showed that the aggressive, controlling parenting style highlighted by Yale professor and mother Amy Chua, in her controversial 2011 memoir, Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, does not guarantee academic success.

A professor of human development and family sciences at the University of Texas, Su Yeong Kim, followed Asian American parents and their children for a decade, compiling data in order to determine how prevalent and how effective the  notoriously rigorous style of parenting truly is.

But the results may be shocking to some. Kim’s findings show that children of “tiger moms” have “lower academic achievement and attainment — and greater psychological maladjustment — and family alienation, than the kids of parents characterized as ‘supportive’ or ‘easygoing’,” Slate magazine reports.

The subjects of the study were largely first-generation Chinese Americans from Hong Kong or Southern China. The bulk of the parents surveyed had low educational attainment and a median income between $30,001 to $45,000. Continue Reading »

The United States Marine Corps is looking for a few good (Asian) men.

A new ad campaign, “A Warrior’s Education,” is hoping to increase enlistment of Asian Pacific Islanders in the military branch.

Currently, Asian Americans make up just 2.4 percent of Marines while less than 1 percent of recruits are Hawaiian or Pacific Islander, the Los Angeles Times reports.

The new advertisement was launched to coincide with Asian Pacific Heritage Month. Continue Reading »

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