NEWSBYADRIEL LUIS

Conservatives are getting frugal up in this piece.

Last week the Republican Study Committee pledged to cut $2.5 trillion in spending through the Spending Reduction Act – a bill that would eliminate a slew of government-funded programs.

Among this list of "unnecessary spending" are the National Endowment for the Arts and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting – all vital outlets for the livelihoods of workers in the art and media industries.

Killing the arts isn't new for Republicans. In fact, some measures from the new Republican Study Committee proposal date back to 1995.

Looks like California's celebration of Martin Luther King Day took a turn for the... Arizonian. This month students and faculties from two California campuses are fighting the demolition of their ethnic studies programs: Asian American Studies and Cal State Los Angeles and American Studies at the University of California Santa Cruz.

Late last year Dean James Henderson at CSULA offered students and faculty a grim holiday gift – notification that he had decided to suspend Asian American Studies, indefinitely. To date, the only explanation Henderson has offered is lack of faculty, student, and community support – which he announced at a November 29 meeting to a roomful of concerned faculty, students, and community members. Since then, a grassroots movement in support of retaining the program has been swelling both on and off campus (check out Immigrant Rights blogger Gabriel Garcia's post on it).

CSULA is located in the San Gabriel Valley, which holds one of the largest Chinese populations in the country. Asian American Studies – which was just established in 2005 – failed in the Dean's eyes to meet enrollment numbers. However, the decision of a Dean to dismantle the program without prior discussion with students and faculty is a threat to more than just one department on one campus.

"Cutting AAAS is an attack on the university’s diversity and threatens the already tenuous support of the campus’ Chicano, Latin American, and Pan African Studies programs as well," explains a grassroots website launched in opposition to the suspension. In light of Arizona's recent ethnic studies ban, CSULA's decision is another threat toward the demolition of valuable ethnic studies programs throughout the country – and this isn't just a theory.

Driving along South Carolina's Interstate 26 at this time of year, one is introduced to a number of wondrous scenes: trees slightly tinged with orange; a vast blue sky; generous 70-something degree weather.  Oh yeah, and hate propaganda that could make a Chairman blush.

A billboard donning the words "Islam Rising" in bold red letters – with the tagline "Be Warned" – is a beacon for fearmongerers promoting a documentary of the same name produced by the ultra-conservative Christian Action Network for those who can only swallow information in two-word doses about the 'threats' of Islamic culture.

Well, here's another two-worder for you: That's racist.

The "Islam Rising" headline is accompanied by the angry eyes of someone who looks like a cross between Scorpion from Mortal Combat and the chain belonging to Plies the rapper. The caricature peering at you through a ski mask is, supposedly, an Islamic terrorist.  Silly racists forgot that everyone knows it doesn't snow in Muslim Town.

Making my first roadtrip through the State of Smiling Faces and Beautiful Places, my first reaction to it was of course to immediately u-turn and snap photos (my parents love when I post travel pix). My next was to 'tap the Googles' and see what outrage has erupted around it. But coverage of the display is overwhelmingly in support of the billboard and its message, with only a couple of local networks acknowledging that some people might possibly kinda sorta have a problem with it.

It's true.  Somewhere deep in the darkest pits of the system there exists a heart - and every once in awhile we get a glimpse of it.

This week California Senator Dianne Feinstein introduced a private bill that allowed for the release of Steve Li, a San Francisco college student who had spent the past two months in detainment awaiting deportation to Peru – the country his family migrated from when he was just eleven. Completely unaware that he was residing in the country illegally until the moment his door was busted down in an immigration raid, Li's story caught massive attention and shed a humanizing light on an issue that is often oversimplified.

Li's case was far from the stereotypical circumstance when discussing immigration policy in the political arena. He didn't maliciously sneak over the border to squeeze out an anchor baby, nor did he cargo himself in the back of a van in order to exploit the economy through a thriving career in grape-picking. He simply did as a good young person should: he followed his parents, went to college and pursued a career in nursing. Regardless of one's personal politics, it's hard to deny that sending a kid back to a country where he knows absolutely nobody is pretty messed up (haven't you seen Home Alone 2?).

Upon the announcement that Li was granted freedom, the best that conservative commenters could muster was along the lines of "If there was proper legislation, he would've been deported at 11 instead of 20!" Niiiiiice. Words of wisdom from the type of person who would probably have no qualms with smacking Elian Gonzalez in the face with an oar. When dealing with the immigration issue on a person-by-person basis, it's much more difficult to maintain the political stance 'deport them all.' Plus, someone like Li cannot be accused of "sucking the system dry" when he's sitting in detainment telling reporters that he can't wait to go home so he can study.

The bigger message we should learn from Li's case is that a person's story is seldom ever cut-and-dry, and effective immigration reform requires legislation that considers the diversity in past and present situations that immigrants experience.  Senator Feinstein addressed Li's case largely due to the overwhelming number of petitions for Li, such as the hundreds of signatures collected on Change.org.

The battle is not over. The private bill only delays his deportation process by 75 days, and when asked about her decision to introduce Li's private bill, Feinstein referenced the DREAM Act, which still holds the key to Li's lasting peace of mind. If passed, the DREAM Act could be a saving grace for many young people who find themselves in situations similar to Li's – who simply want to live in the country they were raised to call home.

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GOT A TIP FOR US? Is there a story or campaign in your area that we'd want to know about? E-mail us at humanrightstips@change.org. Please also follow Change.org's Human Rights page on Facebook and Twitter. Photo Credit: 依靈

Right now Shanghai is hosting the World Expo, a ginormous international event that highlights some of the greatest accomplishments and innovations from a diverse array of cultures.  There's just one thing missing in this city — a diverse array of cultures.

Outside the Expo pavilions, one is hard-pressed to find non-Chinese people, save the random lost tourists and the sporadically-placed ex-pat communities.  As a Chinese American, it's ironic that my greatest culture shock here has been the overwhelming amount of my "own" people.  Coming from New York by way of the Bay Area, cultural and racial diversity was a value instilled in my upbringing since elementary school. America proudly boasts itself as the "land of immigrants," and nowadays television shows, films, and even billboard ads go out of their way to demonstrate multiculturalism to some extent. But China – like most of the other countries I've been to – doesn't seem to place diversity in such high regard.  Are these countries wrong for not striving to diversify their populations, or is America just that special?

Last week I arrived in China to spend a month traveling, which I thought would give me a bit of a "break" from thinking about race.  However, as the days went by, I began to wonder to myself, did I really leave the issue of race at the gate when I left America?

Here in Shanghai, where I'm a Chinese person surrounded almost unanimously by other Chinese people, am I no longer a participant in America's racial ecosystem? Is escaping the issue of race as simple as hopping on an airplane?

I've always taken issue with the name of this column, Race in America because it suggests that race can be contained merely by geographic boundaries — like it's some creature that dwells only in a specific physical location, like the Lochness Monster. It gives the impression that race issues in America take place only within its borders, and international race dynamics are merely different breeds of a common species.  But as I trekked through Hong Kong last week and then mainland China this week, my consciousness about race has actually magnified as opposed to subsided.  But having been born and raised in America, this understanding of race is inevitably through the lens of an American.  Are my varying senses of isolation/belonging, confusion/understanding, and self-conflict/realization relevant to this column, or do I need to start Change.org's Race in China section?

At the polls on election day in November 2008, a black woman in front of me turned in her ballot and shouted, "I voted for Obama and against gay marriage, and that's all that matters to me!" Soon after, the results came in.  California voters had helped elect the first black president with the same ballot that they used to pass Prop 8, the ban on gay marriage.

Immediately, the question was framed: Were minority voters who helped usher in President Obama also responsible for helping kill gay marriage? The message was simple yet scathing: People of color are as pro-race rights as they are anti-gay rights.

This, of course, was all balderdash.  And as we celebrate yesterday's court ruling striking down Prop 8, it's important to understand that — contrary to popular belief — this victory comes with the blessing of a substantial proportion of the race rights community.

First, let's get the stats right. Immediately after election day in 2008, the exit numbers came in, proclaiming that a whopping 70% of black voters voted for Prop 8. Such figures helped frame the narrative that blacks were the leading group opposing gay marriage. Actually, in January last year, an in-depth study found that black support for Prop 8 was actually more in the 57-59% range — about the same the proportion of college-educated white voters.

During my freshman year in college, I made a woman in my ethnic studies class cry. Because I referred to her people as "white folks." As she sulked, I sat awkwardly and flipped through my mental collection of labels I've encountered for my fairer-skinned counterparts — there just aren't that many. Sure, I've become accustomed to being asked about the best way to refer to people of my background (Asian vs. Oriental?), and likewise heard plenty about the debates between terms like black and African, Hispanic and Latino and Native and Indian. But how often is the question turned around? What exactly do we call white people? I'd really like this to be settled for me, especially since I myself am not white...I mean Caucasian...I mean, let's just move onto the next paragraph.

I'm sure I wasn't the only one who was confused by my classmate's reaction to the term "white folks," because there were many blond, brown and red eyebrows that were also cocked in confusion. Still, though, we all know racial labels are sensitive. In the same way that many people of color have different preferences for racial labels, so do people of...not-color. So before I delve into this topic that could potentially offend, let me preface the following with a familiar alibi — some of my best friends are white! In fact, I'm sitting next to one right now. And as we sit in this café reflecting on this post, the answer to a singular label seems to elude him as much as I. So where does this leave us? Let's look at our options:

1. White: One of the most common comments I get in response to my posts is in regard to my use of the term "white people." A typical one goes something like, "Snow's white, glue's white, paper's white.  I am not white." And this is true, in the same way that my skin pigment is not the same as that of a puddle of urine. In my recent post about the casting of white characters in the Prince of Persia movie, I was barraged by responses pegging me as ignorant and chastising me for not realizing that many Persians are light-skinned. But as with other color-coded racial labels, the use of the term "white" obviously doesn't refer to #FFFFFF.

2. Caucasian: This is the term many people of color use when they want to "politely" refer to white folks. It just sounds more sophisticated. However, an etymological investigation shows that the word is actually quite archaic, as it descends from the "Caucasoid" term that Johann Friedrich Blumenbach used in the 1700's to link physical human attributes with intelligence....hecka dumb. Furthermore, the term was invalidated by the 1923 Supreme Court decision United States v. Bhagat Singh Thind, where Thind argued for American naturalization on the basis that he was from the Caucasus Mountains, and thereby definitively "Caucasian." The Supreme Court's response was, and I quote, "Ummm....yeah....we meant white."

Last night, everyone in downtown Oakland was ready for the riot. As the crowd swelled, downtown business owners boarded up their windows and locked their doors. Across Webster Street, windows were lined with flyers reading "We Are Oscar Grant" — serving both as a sign of solidarity and as a lamb's-blood plea for rioters to pass over them. The police nearly outnumbered the demonstrators. Within the crowd — angered by the verdict that found the officer who shot Grant guilty of involuntary manslaughter, not murder — tensions rose.

I've been sitting here trying to decipher exactly how a town that traditionally exhibits such a love for its own history and culture can also break out in annual riots. Writing about this phenomenon from a journalistic perspective for the first time, I can see how difficult it is to do justice to the issue's complexity in 500 words or less.

This is especially true when it comes to the question of who locals are blaming as instigators of violence — instigators they describe as "outsiders," possibly from neighboring (white) suburbs. Anarchists, or transient college students.

Is there any truth to these suspicions? While living in Oakland, I was familiar with the organizers who put together the initial protest in response to Grant's death. I saw firsthand how careful organizers were to make sure the crowd stayed peaceful.

Tensions between organizers and such so-called "outsiders" are real. But a statement released by a group of local anarchists in response to criticism complicates matters, declaring, "We live here, we contribute here, we have fun here, we get harassed here, and we fight back here...We are men, women, transgendered, black, white, whatever adjective you can think of." All of which suggests that those who participated in the riots might be more than just snobby college kids looking for trouble.

Can you "inherit" oppression? During heated conversations on race, the question of whether history impacts people who never personally experienced it regularly surfaces. "Slavery ended 200 years ago," you'll often hear.

I wasn't alive in 1882 when the Chinese Exclusion Act was signed. In fact, it was almost a century later when my family immigrated to San Francisco. They didn't have to float in on a beach ball, wait for months in detainment on Angel Island, or go through a strenuous interrogation process. Actually, they flew in on coach and probably got more peanuts and soda than we do nowadays.

Even still, when I first learned about the immigration restrictions, segregation laws and hate crimes throughout American history that affected people of my  background, I couldn't help but feel a personal sense of violation. Similarly, my roommate is the son of immigrants from Eritrea and Trinidad. He's not a direct descendant of African-American slaves, but is he wrong to see his own life in the context of that aspect of the black experience?

Those who argue against the concept of inherited oppression see it as a choice — a decision to be offended in the name of an abstract concept of a victim. And this point is compelling. After all, I don't inherit the pain my dad experienced when he broke his leg as a kid. So why should I feel anything about some anonymous Chinese guy who was lynched in the 1800's?