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AsianWeek Columnist Had a Penchant for Hate Speech

The San Francisco weekly, AsianWeek, which calls itself "The Voice of Asian America," has come under fire for a column last week titled "Why I Hate Blacks."

The column (since deleted from AsianWeek's site but reprinted here) lists, among other things, four reasons why "we should discriminate against Blacks." Yikes.

In response, the newspaper issued this apology:

AsianWeek sincerely regrets and apologizes for publishing New York-based contributor Kenneth Eng's column in the issue of February 23, 2007. AsianWeek rejects Eng's biased views on a critical segment of American society, African Americans. While AsianWeek continues to truly believe in diversity of opinion and freedom of the press, we are also very aware that the promotion of hate speech is not appropriate, nor should it be encouraged.

Given that the genesis of the American civil rights movement was borne primarily by the African American community through blood and perseverance, the failing of our editorial process in allowing this opinion piece to go forward, was an insensitive and callous mistake that should never have been made by our publication. Readers of AsianWeek over the past 27-year history clearly know that we reject any racist agenda. On the contrary, our editorial policy has led the way in interracial and multicultural strength and diversity.

As a publication whose motto is the "voice of the Asian American community," we are humbled and overwhelmed at reader response not only chastising our editorial process, but strongly urging our paper to sever all ties to this contributor. We have heard the call and Mr. Eng has been terminated from writing for the paper.

That's a pretty egregious slip past the editors. And here's the thing: Kenneth Eng, a self described "Asian supramicist" wrote two previous columns for AsianWeek titled, "Why I Hate Asians" last month, and "Proof that Whites Inherently Hate Us" in November.

I'm curious to know why the editors didn't feel impelled to reject his "hate speech" and "racial agenda" back when they published these other columns? If his aim was to get people thinking, enraged, but thinking, and they stood behind that premise before, why not stand behind him now? Instead they fired him, and they look irresponsible on the national stage.

And if publishing this column was indeed a mistake, then so were the others, and they've let a few too many mistakes slip on by.

— Neha Inamdar

Comments

AsianWeek's publication of hate speech has done serious damage to APAs and to our relationship with the Black community. The issue was compounded by AsianWeek's initial insistence that it had done nothing wrong, and it took the additional criticism by the Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus, the mayor, and the board of supervisors (among others) to force AsianWeek's management to change its tune. The paper has still not addressed our key concerns, especially holding the editor(s) accountable.

Posted by: Keith Kamisugi on 02/28/07 at 8:06 PM

It sometimes seems that just about everybody is picking on the Black man during Black History month. Many believe that the too many Japanese are ethnocentric,and xenophobic and look down on the Black man. What is America coming to?

Posted by: Tyrone on 03/01/07 at 7:24 AM

Tyrone - I notice that you use the same email address when posting as Pastor Bob. What an amazing coincidence!!!

Posted by: Deacon on 03/01/07 at 11:59 AM

I am one of Pastor Bob's workers. He is a good street preacher. I use to bang, but now I am on fire for the Lord. Thank you Jesus. Does that offend people?

Posted by: Tyrone on 03/01/07 at 12:06 PM

Fang seems like a real lunatic. In his column about how white people inherantly hate Asians, he says:

"Most Asians know that everywhere we go, white/black/Hispanic people hurl racist remarks at us. I have already received about 10 racist remarks in the past three months and I have only been out of my home a handful of times."

Funny, from reading his stuff you'd never guess that he hardly goes out of his home.

Posted by: William on 03/01/07 at 3:10 PM

I'm going to stick up for the guy. I don't agree with all his points but why is it that for Asian Americans to publicly complain about racially-motivated insults and assaults by blacks is a TABOO??

I despise the self-proclaimed Asian-American community leaders who slavishly follow the mantra "let's build coalitions with other minorities because we're minorities". The "leadership" self-censors its own community to maintain those rainbow coalitions. The truth is that each minority community has different and conflicting interests. We can't and shouldn't compromise our dignity just to maintain these shaky coalitions.

Posted by: John on 03/01/07 at 6:26 PM

You right, John.

Posted by: Kim on 03/01/07 at 7:33 PM

I've been asking (for many years), why can't we be "AMERICANS"? Why do people think they have to be some kind of American? Until we make this transition, we will continue to have problems that will keep us from becoming a great nation.

Posted by: Ranselar VanDerpoel on 03/03/07 at 9:34 AM