Exploitation and oppression is not a matter of race. It is the system, the apparatus of world-wide brigandage called imperialism, which made the Powers behave the way they did. I have no illusions on this score, nor do I believe that any Asian nation or African nation, in the same state of dominance, and with the same system of colonial profit-amassing and plunder, would have behaved otherwise.
But, yeah, as far as Asian Americans go, I hope they know they can look at me and see that they can do music on their own, within a band or just on their own, and not feel like there's any barriers. I've never felt any particular barriers myself, being who I am.
Very few, if any, first-generation black or white or Asian kids will pursue a Ph. D. They'll pursue the professions for economic security. Many will go to law school andor business school.
And lot of Asian audiences and reporters don't like me to act as a bad guy. But I think I want to become an actor, I want to try different way.
Coming out of college into the draft, being Asian-American and being from Harvard, that's not going to be an advantage because of stereotypes.
My music is always called "cerebral. " It is a way of saying I'm Asian, and therefore everything I do is brainy.
I think there was a point in the past when I felt that my options as an artist were either to make race a nonissue and deny its impact on life and just say, "Don't think of me as an Asian cartoonist. Just think of me as a cartoonist. "
My career in the movie business began in Hong Kong, my heart has always been tied to Asia, and it is immensely gratifying to see international recognition for Asian cinema as a whole.
All Asian parents are into your children having a respectable, decent stable job. Acting was unimaginable to my parents.
For me, I'm just trying to be the best at what I do. I'll wave an Asian American flag if I get that opportunity. I'm not hiding or trying to discredit my background or anything, I just haven't had the opportunity.
Asian Pacific American Heritage Month provides us all an opportunity to reflect upon this communitys many contributions and to celebrate its bright future.
I don't want to have people brought in simply because they are black or Asian.
I want to be an Asian Robert De Niro.
I get the worst compliments all the time. 'Oh you're Asian? I love orange chicken. '
These days I'm mostly familiar with two parts of L. A. : one is movie culture, and the other is Asian culture. The Westside is work, and the Eastside is Chinese - which means my friends.
So it may be a language that separates you - again, social networks. But second-generation Asian and Hispanics, second, and third and fourth and so on, they are much more likely to be in integrated churches than are blacks or whites.
To those who say "Sufism is apolitical" or "no politics," I respond: "No politics is politics. " Look at the very old African Sufi tradition, the Asian Sufi tradition, or the North African Sufi tradition. Then you get it and understand what Sufism is all about wisdom, courage and resistance.
The sun began to set behind Bethlehem and the beams were breaking through some white and gray clouds. There was a slight and beautiful chill from the autumn air. I gave thanks for that beautiful day and for the fact that the sun does not know Palestinian from Israeli, Christian from Muslim or Jew, and Asian from American or African, and I asked myself: If the sun shines on all of us as one, how much more does the sun's Creator see and love us all as one?
I'd been taught from an early age that I was in the other category on the standardized tests. You know, I had to go down the checklist - Caucasian, African-American, Latino, Asian-Pacific Islander, and then, you know, at the bottom is other. So, you know, very early on I was taught, in a way, that I was somehow this anomaly.
Hollywood likes to put actors in boxes, and it likes to put Asian actors in really small boxes.