Category Archives: diversity

blog, diversity, news, politics, race

White House AAPI Initiative: Trying to give more meaning to Asian Pacific American Heritage month in May

The White House is using APA month in May to launch its Asian American Pacific Island Initiative, which hopes to continue what the Clinton administration had started and what the Bush administration ignored.

Kiran Ahuja, the White House initiative’s executive director,acknowledged that the Clinton administration did a lot of work in the tail end of its tenue by identifiying issue areas like education and health as Asian American community concerns. But the Bush administration, she said scaled back the scope and focused on entrepeneurship in its day before finally letting the  White Hous initiative die.

Now Ahuja said she plans to build on the work of the Clinton administration, essentially making up for lost time and lost momentum.

“We’re ready to hit the ground running,” Ahuja told a telephone news conference. The broader focus will include data collection on education, health care and jobs to help identify where Asian Americans are underserved. “We know across the board there are barriers to the community being engaged.”

Ahuja was not specific but said the May roll out will begin an effort that will include  high level agency heads in the government meeting with community leaders.

Again, a good first step as a show of concern for our community. But it does also show how the community has been ignored in some vital areas during the Bush years.

blog, diversity, news, politics

Not for Sale: Rod McLeod wants to be a San Francisco Superior Court Judge–and it won’t cost you a dime

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Rod McLeod–an accomplished trial lawyer and partner at one of the world’s biggest firms–is running this June for a Superior Court judgeship in the City and County of San Francisco.

But he doesn’t want to be bought and sold like a common politician.

To McLeod, that would be unseemly.

He’s decided to take zero campaign contributions in order to run as a truly objective and impartial individual, beholden to no one, especially those who might expect that donations come with strings attached.

“I don’t want to be the best judge money can buy,” said McLeod, a native San Franciscan and American Filipino, who went to Saint Ignatius High School, and earned his law degree at UC Berkeley’s Boalt School of Law.

Personally, I’ve been good friends with McLeod for nearly 30 years, and I can say he never takes the easy way out.  I’ve known him as a man of uncompromised principle who stands up for what he believes in—even if it could hurt him.

And it has.

At one time, McLeod was considered a rising star in local San Francisco politics after his appointment to a vacant spot on the city’s Board of Education in the ‘80s.  Winning the seat outright in an open election should have been a cinch, except for his unwavering decision to keep his children in Catholic schools.

That glitch was enough to send McLeod back into the private sector to focus on his stellar legal career (he’s currently a partner at Jones and Day).  Not exactly a hard fall. But definitely, it was the public’s loss. McLeod, who was in the Army for over a dozen years as a paratrooper, has always been ready to serve.  But when I last saw him, the plan was for an early retirement with his wife Naomi in her homeland, Israel.

So in a way, McLeod’s last minute decision to run for the position of retired Judge Wallace Douglas was a real surprise.  It’s also a pay cut.

What wasn’t a surprise was McLeod’s campaign approach.

“Judges shouldn’t be for sale,” McLeod said.

San Francisco is different from other counties where races for judge can cost just a few thousand dollars.

McLeod says two of his opponents have already raised more than $100,000 each. What’s that money buy?  A bit more than cardboard signs.

When politicians like Barack Obama fly in to raise cash, donors give mightily because they believe money buys access and influence. Want to get your pet issues on the radar? Write a check, get an advocate.

What’s a donor’s expectation in a judges’ race?  When you go before him, will the new judge quickly bang the gavel and say, “Not guilty”?( It may save in court time, but let’s hope the judge recuses himself before that happens).

Normally in  hotly contested judge races, the victor need only promise to be tough on crime.

But Superior Court judges do civil as well as criminal cases. McLeod’s two main opponents (an assistant public defender, and an assistant D.A.), may not be as broadly experienced  as McLeod, an accomplished civil litigator.  

When you think of it, voting for judges is just a strange way for the public to pick a competent, fair and impartial judge. Campaign money is really a waste.

That McLeod can’t be bought and paid for makes him an appealing and refreshing choice as the best person for San Francisco’s Superior Court—period.

blog, diversity, news, race, sports

Demonizing Tiger: Woods’ villification has racial overtones

People talk about Nike using Earl Woods’ voice out of context in an ad prior to the Masters. But is anyone grousing about the full-page family values ads now appearing in the major dailies featuring Phil Mickelson and his cancer-suffering  wife Amy? 

Talk about exploitation. Even better that Mickelson is white, the better to offset and polarize the whole situation in a way America can understand. i.e., Mickelson good, Tiger bad.

Bad Tiger! This is your punishment from the culture at large for being a selfish, amoral, pleasure seeking human being.

If you had been a bank, you could have received a bailout. But now it’s everyone’s turn to dis and dish.

This is one bandwagon I’m not hopping on.

Now they’re even commenting on how Tiger swears on the golf course (no secret).  Suddently golf and sport has gotten all puritanical and proper.  Does anyone get on baseball players for spitting? Howabout how basketball players handle their mouthguards, then high five each other. How unsanitary. Oh, and about that vigorous ass patting…

All of that is nothing compared to jumping on Tiger, the devil himself.

I hope Tiger recovers soon.

Consider the sexual proclivities of other public figures and how they’ve bounced back. After Monica Lewinsky, Bill Clinton is a revered world crisis solver. After biting women in secret hotel trysts, Marv Albert is back doing the NBA playoffs. (“YES!!”). After dumping his longtime wife in favor of a scandalous affair with a younger woman, newly divorced golf anchor Jim Nantz was there at the Masters with the call. 

Even David Letterman gets a light lashing after his intern trysts. Always good to have an extortionist come in and trump your bad hand. 

So comebacks do happen. But is there extra joy in dumping Tiger because Woods happens to be of mixed race?

He is at once the greatest black and Asian American golfer to ever play. He may be the greatest golfer period.  When he was good he was treated like royalty. But his indiscretions find him being treated with a whole let less compassion. He’s not a pariah yet. His golf game is too good. But the culture seems to be turning against him more so now that Mickelson can be the public face for the new Victorian era of golf.

Never mind Mickelson’s gambling habits. That’s an allowable vice, I guess.

But just ask yourself if Tiger would  be treated differently if he were white? 

   

blog, diversity, news, politics

Jimmy Carter’s race statements are right, but at odds with Obama’s Plutonian race strategy

When Jimmy Carter says it’s about race, I believe him to be as true as his boiled peanut recipe.

But Carter’s bluntness in his comments to NBC that the animosity toward Obama is race-based, is much too direct for Obama’s current style, and could upset the president’s momentum.

Obama is too cool for direct. Apparently, his race politics are way too subtle for the country.

The way Barack Obama has become a winner in politics is by diffusing the race issue and making it seem irrelevant.

In the Obama universe, issues don’t revolve around race. In this political solar system, race isn’t at the center like the Sun.

It’s more like Pluto.

It really is the formula to Obama’s success, and his new politics of bringing the country together. That’s not to mean he’s a Clarence Thomas , or that he forgets the importance of ethnicity and race in public policy.

It’s just that he knows race bogs down everything . It’s polarizing. And it prevents him reaching the kinds of compromise that helps one effectively lead an entire country.

So he sidesteps it.

Obama’s compromise on race is to show up, make it obvious he’s a black president, but not to dwell on it. For Obama, race is more the subtle subtext and not the raging headline. It was his secret to his campaign and his success.

And it throws the GOP off-track. They don’t know how to deal with a 21st Century Race politician.

When the GOP can’t argue the facts, as in health care, or when it can’t stem the support for the president on real issues, then it goes ad hominem and race is the old standby. The whole birth certificate issue and the Islamic middle name issue are nothing more than racist attacks on Obama.

Of course, all the stumbling around on race is based on how most people don’t want to admit racism is happening or even in existence. It plays to the moral conscience of both the white perps and the white liberals, who think they are perfect. Aren’t we all better than that? We’ve gone beyond race, right?

Well, not exactly.

So when Maureen Dowd writes her NY Times column about essentially saying, “Damn, we got racism here;” And when Jimmy Carter, our Southern gentleman, starts talking from the heart about racism at play in the policy debate, well then, by gum, we have racism.
What are we going to do about it?

I’m starting to see the wisdom of the Obama strategy. He’s just figured out a way to deal with race so he can get things done. The answer. Don’t deal with it.

It’s a tad zen-like.

By comparison, those who know the old politics on race are like cold warriors. Maybe we should try to do as Obama and ignore all this and try to press on, hoping that policies and people can change, and that by focusing on the bigger picture we can all be led to a new place together. Does that sound too grandiose or Lincolnesque? So be it. To do otherwise, is to bog down in the past, polarize, and get no where. Didn’t Obama show us that?

Maybe this is another one of those times that race bubbles up in Obama’s path, like the Rev.Wright affair. That means one sure-fire prescription could work now: A little speech therapy to put everything back into order in the Obama political universe, where race is minor.

As I said, race is not the Sun, it’s more like Pluto, making the strategy absolutely Plutonian.