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
