Check out my comments on the President’s SOTU address on the Asian American Legal Defense and Education blog:
Category Archives: race
No”yahoo!” for a “Yahoo-less” Yang; He’s free, but the internet may not be
Seems odd that on the day we protest the corporate driven legislation that threatens the web, we find ourselves contemplating the resignation of Chief Yahoo and pioneering web organizer, Jerry Yang.
Read my take Yang’s future on the Asian American Legal Defense and Education blog at www.aaldef.org/blog
Yang resigned yesterday, leaving the company he founded while a student at Stanford in 1995.
It was a very different world and a very different internet back then.
Of course, the business and the corporate world remains the same. Heartless, cold, money-driven.
Given that, how did Yang ever survive his biggest faux pas? After all, his success has nothing to do with cool technology or intricate algorithms. In 2008, it wall about simple math.
That’s when he blew it on the Microsoft deal.
Rejecting the Microsoft take-over bid at more than$30 a share, nearly twice what the company was worth, was a tad naive for our country’s brand of hard-ass capitalism.
Yang didn’t want to take the money and run. He had a dream, after all. But even after that, he stayed. When he was ousted as CEO, he hung around. And now he’s gone from Yahoo for good.
I’ve got some suggestions for Yang 5.0. on my blog at the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund:
http://aaldef.org/blog/bye-bye-yahoo-hello-jerry-yang-50.html
Yang at 43 is a bit of a throwback, a geek’s geek, less corporate money guy. And certainly less political.
If the web’s old values are to be enshrined as “the way,” it’s going to take a lot more political might from web veterans like Yang to protect it.
The fight over SOPA and PIPA is about how old media companies are trying to take back their old monopolies.And they’re using tried and true methods, the kind of special interest lobbying that produces legislation that protects the likes of Big Pharma, Big Auto, Big Oil, etc.
SOPA and PIPA would have the effect of changing the democratizing nature of the web. It’s got nothing to do with privacy. Just money and control. A taming of the world wide web? That’s way different from scouring and searching the web for whatever cool stuff was on it.
That was what a younger Yang was all about when he was a graduate student and Yahoo was his baby.
“The Help,” the new help, and Dr. King: Still a lot of work to be done
I was touched by Octavia Spencer’s acceptance speech at the Golden Globes on Sunday as she mentioned Dr.King and domestic help.
Said Spencer: “…with regard to domestics in this country now and then, I think Dr. King said it best – all labor that uplifts humanity has diginity and importance. And I thank you for recognizing that with our film.”
Yes, all work has value. But why do certain people of certain races end up with the domestic jobs? I suppose that’s the indomitable spirit that we celebrate. Some people just won’t take the jobs we will. That’s the way it’s always been. But as Spencer talked of domestics, past and present, she didn’t really touch on the main difference among the help these days.
Like everything else, the help is a lot more diverse, with fewer American domestics. And a whole lot more immigrants.
In the 1900s, the help tended to be European immigrants and blacks from the South.
But nowadays, immigrants from around the world dominate, especially from Asia (most often the Philippines), Mexico and Latin America. And when it comes to the blacks, they aren’t from urban places or from the rural south. They’ve been replaced predominately by Caribbean immigrants.
The old South is just that, a dated notion of “the help” as nostalgic as “Gone with the Wind.”
The modern version would be a lot different movie. The help? It’s Filipino or Latino definitely. They could have Salma Hayek play the part. The Filipina songstress Lea Salonga could do it on Broadway.
Recently, I went to a party at a college acquaintance’s home in San Francisco. I was the only non-white guest in the crowd. It was strange how I actually had more in common with the help than I did with the guests.
The help was a Filipino family that cooked and cleaned and worked for my college friend. They reminded me of my relatives.
When they saw me, they knew not to fraternize. I said a word or two I knew in Tagalog, but they were total professionals who never broke character. They knew their place. This wasn’t a Filipino family party.
To them, I suppose I might have been a sign of progress. A Filipino American on tonight’s guest list. How often does that happen?
But I looked at them all night hard at work and saw the opposite. Yes, all labor uplifts and all that. Dr. King was right. But we were just an update of another kind of continuum.
The past was present, alive and well, with still much work to be done for us all.
The Diversity Deficit: Why it’s hard to get excited about the GOP even on Caucus night
Will Mitt Romney eek by? Will Ron Paul upset? Santorum?
If you’re a person of color, it’s hard to care who says what in Iowa. Or even the next stop, New Hampshire. The candidates just aren’t talking to the rest of us. At least, not yet.
With Cain out of the running, it really is an all-white horse race in these all-white venues. And by the time they get to a state that looks like America, the race will likely be over.
Did they really want people of color in the Republican party anyway?
Hey, even George Bush had the Patti Labelle and the O’Jays singing “Love Train” at the 2000 convention. Eleven years later, the GOP still hasn’t quite figured out a way to spread the love.
