May 27, 2008
Detroit Free Press
When Michigan voters in 2006 overwhelmingly agreed to ban affirmative action by passing a proposal called the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative, they could not completely slam the door on people who see the value of diversity in higher education and want to do something about it.
One such something is aptly named the Imagine Fund, a new nonprofit that works with donors who want to fund scholarships that are purposely designed to advance minority students at Michigan colleges and universities.
"We're trying to make a pitcher of lemonade out of the lemons of Proposal 2," said Imagine Fund President Nanette Reynolds, a former director of the Michigan Department of Civil Rights under both Republicans and Democrats.
Established through a $175,000 grant from the Kellogg Foundation, the fund's goal is "to keep the doors of opportunity open for those whose race, color, sex, ethnicity, national origin and/or cultural characteristics may otherwise limit their path."
The approach is to link donors interested in establishing scholarships with qualified students and then distribute those gifts. Think of it as a scholarship management fund with major potential to help level the playing field of higher education in Michigan.
The limits that public colleges and university must live with under Proposal 2 fortunately do not extend to private citizens still committed to investing in diversity. The law also does not bar the creation of private, third-party groups designed to distribute scholarships based on race, gender, ethnicity, religion or sexual orientation.
Undoubtedly, arguments will be made that the Imagine Fund is an attempt to undercut the will of the majority of Michigan voters. But this is a wholly private undertaking, allowing concerned citizens to not only imagine, but to invest in a Michigan where access to higher education is seen as a benefit to all.
Learn more about the Imagine Fund on the Web at http://www.theimaginefund.com/.
Tuesday, May 27, 2008
Thursday, May 22, 2008
Sharpton organizes meeting on race issues
But many suburban leaders can't attend because of an event on Mackinac Island.
May 22, 3008
The Detroit News
DETROIT -- The Rev. Al Sharpton plans to tackle thorny racial politics between Detroit and its suburbs during a private conference of government officials and community leaders next week.
Sharpton's group, the National Action Network, has invited city and suburban leaders to the Leadership Meeting on Wednesday at Second Ebenezer Church, 14601 Dequindre, to address many issues affecting Metro Detroit.
But the single issue of race tops the list, said Caree Eason, president of the National Action Network's Wayne and Oakland County chapter.
"We are going to be addressing racial profiling and police brutality going on in the city and the suburbs," Eason said Wednesday. "We're going to ask officials if they know what is going on and let's talk about it.
"What we're saying to them is that, 'We want to build an alliance with you to work on the issues that plague the region.' "
The suburbs, Eason said, aren't used to dealing with social injustice.
"We're so divided here in Michigan," she said. "Divided as a people, divided in leadership. Everyone has their own agenda."
Eason says she has sent out "thousands" of invitations to Metro Detroit officials urging them to attend the conference, but few have responded. Those who have say they have scheduling conflicts with next week's annual Mackinac Leadership Conference.
N. Charles Anderson, the president of the Detroit Urban League, said he, too, will miss the event because he will be at the Mackinac conference. But, said Anderson, some government leaders' reluctance to attend the National Action Network's conference is because Sharpton might not be the type of person that politicians normally interact with.
"But perhaps some of them should," said Anderson. "They have to get out of their comfort zone some time or other."
Anderson said race is an issue that continues to require attention.
"It's something that will continue to be discussed again and again," said Anderson.
A rally will be at 7 p.m. Wednesday at New Providence Baptist Church, 18211 Plymouth Road. It is open to the public.
May 22, 3008
The Detroit News
DETROIT -- The Rev. Al Sharpton plans to tackle thorny racial politics between Detroit and its suburbs during a private conference of government officials and community leaders next week.
Sharpton's group, the National Action Network, has invited city and suburban leaders to the Leadership Meeting on Wednesday at Second Ebenezer Church, 14601 Dequindre, to address many issues affecting Metro Detroit.
But the single issue of race tops the list, said Caree Eason, president of the National Action Network's Wayne and Oakland County chapter.
"We are going to be addressing racial profiling and police brutality going on in the city and the suburbs," Eason said Wednesday. "We're going to ask officials if they know what is going on and let's talk about it.
"What we're saying to them is that, 'We want to build an alliance with you to work on the issues that plague the region.' "
The suburbs, Eason said, aren't used to dealing with social injustice.
"We're so divided here in Michigan," she said. "Divided as a people, divided in leadership. Everyone has their own agenda."
Eason says she has sent out "thousands" of invitations to Metro Detroit officials urging them to attend the conference, but few have responded. Those who have say they have scheduling conflicts with next week's annual Mackinac Leadership Conference.
N. Charles Anderson, the president of the Detroit Urban League, said he, too, will miss the event because he will be at the Mackinac conference. But, said Anderson, some government leaders' reluctance to attend the National Action Network's conference is because Sharpton might not be the type of person that politicians normally interact with.
"But perhaps some of them should," said Anderson. "They have to get out of their comfort zone some time or other."
Anderson said race is an issue that continues to require attention.
"It's something that will continue to be discussed again and again," said Anderson.
A rally will be at 7 p.m. Wednesday at New Providence Baptist Church, 18211 Plymouth Road. It is open to the public.
Tuesday, May 20, 2008
Conference to focus on benefits of diverse workforce
May 19, 2008
Crain's Detroit Business
A diverse workforce can positively impact a company's bottom line, according to a number of local companies.
They'll discuss their diversity efforts and the impact they've had during “Innovation Through Diversity,” the Michigan Roundtable for Diversity and Inclusion's fifth annual conference June 12.
Sponsored by the Michigan Roundtable, the Detroit Regional Chamber and Crain's Detroit Business, the conference will include a local panel with representatives from Lear Corp., Plunkett & Cooney P.C., and Henry Ford Health System.
“Research shows that a diverse workforce gets assigned tasks and projects more efficiently and more creatively than nondiverse teams,” said Thomas Costello, president and CEO of the Michigan Roundtable.
With a diverse workforce, a company has different points of view, different solutions and different frames of reference, he said.
“There are more pieces to the puzzle, and that's how (issues) get solved.”
Costello, who joined the roundtable in March, previously spent 24 years at Compuware Corp.
“The success of that company is driven on that technology, which was created by its diverse workforce,” he said.
Susan Molinari, president and CEO of the bipartisan lobbying firm the Washington Group and a member of Toyota Motor Co.'s diversity advisory board, will present a global corporate perspective on diversity and inclusion as the luncheon keynote speaker.
Also speaking is Amri Johnson, executive vice president of Atlanta, Ga.-based Cook Ross Inc., an organizational development consultancy specializing in diversity.
Johnson will discuss how companies can measure diversity and innovation, build diverse teams and incorporate diversity and inclusion into to their strategic planning.
The event takes place at the MGM Grand Detroit, with registration opening at 7:30 a.m. and a closing networking reception at 4:30 p.m.
The cost is $195 per person. For more information, call (313) 446-6078 or visit www.crainsdetroit.com/events.
Crain's Detroit Business
A diverse workforce can positively impact a company's bottom line, according to a number of local companies.
They'll discuss their diversity efforts and the impact they've had during “Innovation Through Diversity,” the Michigan Roundtable for Diversity and Inclusion's fifth annual conference June 12.
Sponsored by the Michigan Roundtable, the Detroit Regional Chamber and Crain's Detroit Business, the conference will include a local panel with representatives from Lear Corp., Plunkett & Cooney P.C., and Henry Ford Health System.
“Research shows that a diverse workforce gets assigned tasks and projects more efficiently and more creatively than nondiverse teams,” said Thomas Costello, president and CEO of the Michigan Roundtable.
With a diverse workforce, a company has different points of view, different solutions and different frames of reference, he said.
“There are more pieces to the puzzle, and that's how (issues) get solved.”
Costello, who joined the roundtable in March, previously spent 24 years at Compuware Corp.
“The success of that company is driven on that technology, which was created by its diverse workforce,” he said.
Susan Molinari, president and CEO of the bipartisan lobbying firm the Washington Group and a member of Toyota Motor Co.'s diversity advisory board, will present a global corporate perspective on diversity and inclusion as the luncheon keynote speaker.
Also speaking is Amri Johnson, executive vice president of Atlanta, Ga.-based Cook Ross Inc., an organizational development consultancy specializing in diversity.
Johnson will discuss how companies can measure diversity and innovation, build diverse teams and incorporate diversity and inclusion into to their strategic planning.
The event takes place at the MGM Grand Detroit, with registration opening at 7:30 a.m. and a closing networking reception at 4:30 p.m.
The cost is $195 per person. For more information, call (313) 446-6078 or visit www.crainsdetroit.com/events.
Monday, May 12, 2008
Neo-Nazis looking for you
Diversity, economy can aid in recruiting
May 12, 2008
Detroit Free Press
On a dead-end street along Detroit's fringe, the leader of America's largest neo-Nazi group is scheming to exploit the region's economic unease.
Jeff Schoep, commander of the National Socialist Movement, said he's undeterred by the area's large African-American and Jewish populations since moving his group to the area in December. In fact, he said, the diversity and distress of metro Detroit makes it ripe for recruitment.
"Detroit's a big city, and the economy is not real good," he said. "Anywhere the economy is bad, people are looking for answers. And I think we provide some."
Jack Kay, a University of Michigan-Flint professor who has studied racist groups, said, "These people can be incredibly savvy" in spreading their message.
But first, Schoep -- whose group uses a Detroit post office box -- must secure his position as the area's preeminent führer. In another part of metro Detroit, a rival is trashing his group.
"We at the ANP never had anything to do with them, and we never will," Paul Kozak, chief security officer of Westland-based American Nazi Party, wrote in an e-mail.
Kozak's group, which arrived in the late 1990s, dismisses the National Socialist Movement as outside the mainstream of neo-Nazis. Kozak said his group, by contrast, wants "to be like the Republicans, Democrats, Greens, Libertarians, and so on."
The National Socialist Movement, or NSM, is best known in these parts for its 2005 march in a racially mixed neighborhood in Toledo that ended in rioting, and a provocative 2006 rally in Lansing.
With a few hundred members, it's the largest Nazi organization in the United States, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center and the Anti-Defamation League.
Schoep, 33, arrived from the Minneapolis-St. Paul area. He has been monitored by the law center since at least 2004, when the center, which tracks extremists, tabbed him as one of "40 hate-mongers to watch."
But Schoep is far too busy to engage his critics. He lives in a Macomb County home he shares with a girlfriend; he spoke on condition that the town not be mentioned.
He had been preparing for an anti-immigration rally on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. Three arrests, all counterprotesters, made the event held on the weekend of Adolf Hitler's birthday -- he was born April 20, 1889 -- a resounding success for Schoep's group, which thrives on the confrontation that a band of neo-Nazis waving red swastika flags and chanting tends to provoke.
Schoep rejects the label of a hateful agitator reveling in the dogma of a murderous regime, saying, "We're 100% legal. ...We do things by the book."
In Washington, he noted, his group marched with a legal permit, while counterdemonstrators were arrested for fighting with police.
Philosophically, he concedes, "We do like Hitler and the way he ran the government," but it's "a misconception that we are bigoted."
He said he's after "warrior archetypes," like the men of the Alamo and Valley Forge, men he said will fight for white workers and oppose immigration, Communists and Jews.
He said his group "continues to grow all the time."
That remains to be seen.
In the late 1970s, Detroit police had to stand guard around a Nazi-oriented bookstore that opened on West Vernor. The operation was evicted as several hundred protesters chanted to throw the Nazis out.
Rabbi Charles Rosenzveig, of the Holocaust Memorial Center in Farmington Hills, said publicity draws neo-Nazis to metro Detroit: "They think being in Detroit will give them more exposure."
He said skinheads have visited the center, only to have some members chastened and transformed by what they see.
But Mark Potok, of the Southern Poverty Law Center, said that even if the movement is only a couple of hundred people strong, it can't be easily dismissed. "All these groups are relatively tiny, but the reality is that a very few people can cause enormous harm," he said.
T. Jean Overton, whose Toledo neighborhood is still rebuilding from the riots, agreed.
"We fought World War II to defeat the Nazis and their philosophy," said Overton, 79.
"Life is too short to create hatred," she added. "In the end, it will destroy him and others."
Contact JOE SWICKARD at 313-222-8769 or jswickard@freepress.com.
May 12, 2008
Detroit Free Press
On a dead-end street along Detroit's fringe, the leader of America's largest neo-Nazi group is scheming to exploit the region's economic unease.
Jeff Schoep, commander of the National Socialist Movement, said he's undeterred by the area's large African-American and Jewish populations since moving his group to the area in December. In fact, he said, the diversity and distress of metro Detroit makes it ripe for recruitment.
"Detroit's a big city, and the economy is not real good," he said. "Anywhere the economy is bad, people are looking for answers. And I think we provide some."
Jack Kay, a University of Michigan-Flint professor who has studied racist groups, said, "These people can be incredibly savvy" in spreading their message.
But first, Schoep -- whose group uses a Detroit post office box -- must secure his position as the area's preeminent führer. In another part of metro Detroit, a rival is trashing his group.
"We at the ANP never had anything to do with them, and we never will," Paul Kozak, chief security officer of Westland-based American Nazi Party, wrote in an e-mail.
Kozak's group, which arrived in the late 1990s, dismisses the National Socialist Movement as outside the mainstream of neo-Nazis. Kozak said his group, by contrast, wants "to be like the Republicans, Democrats, Greens, Libertarians, and so on."
The National Socialist Movement, or NSM, is best known in these parts for its 2005 march in a racially mixed neighborhood in Toledo that ended in rioting, and a provocative 2006 rally in Lansing.
With a few hundred members, it's the largest Nazi organization in the United States, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center and the Anti-Defamation League.
Schoep, 33, arrived from the Minneapolis-St. Paul area. He has been monitored by the law center since at least 2004, when the center, which tracks extremists, tabbed him as one of "40 hate-mongers to watch."
But Schoep is far too busy to engage his critics. He lives in a Macomb County home he shares with a girlfriend; he spoke on condition that the town not be mentioned.
He had been preparing for an anti-immigration rally on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. Three arrests, all counterprotesters, made the event held on the weekend of Adolf Hitler's birthday -- he was born April 20, 1889 -- a resounding success for Schoep's group, which thrives on the confrontation that a band of neo-Nazis waving red swastika flags and chanting tends to provoke.
Schoep rejects the label of a hateful agitator reveling in the dogma of a murderous regime, saying, "We're 100% legal. ...We do things by the book."
In Washington, he noted, his group marched with a legal permit, while counterdemonstrators were arrested for fighting with police.
Philosophically, he concedes, "We do like Hitler and the way he ran the government," but it's "a misconception that we are bigoted."
He said he's after "warrior archetypes," like the men of the Alamo and Valley Forge, men he said will fight for white workers and oppose immigration, Communists and Jews.
He said his group "continues to grow all the time."
That remains to be seen.
In the late 1970s, Detroit police had to stand guard around a Nazi-oriented bookstore that opened on West Vernor. The operation was evicted as several hundred protesters chanted to throw the Nazis out.
Rabbi Charles Rosenzveig, of the Holocaust Memorial Center in Farmington Hills, said publicity draws neo-Nazis to metro Detroit: "They think being in Detroit will give them more exposure."
He said skinheads have visited the center, only to have some members chastened and transformed by what they see.
But Mark Potok, of the Southern Poverty Law Center, said that even if the movement is only a couple of hundred people strong, it can't be easily dismissed. "All these groups are relatively tiny, but the reality is that a very few people can cause enormous harm," he said.
T. Jean Overton, whose Toledo neighborhood is still rebuilding from the riots, agreed.
"We fought World War II to defeat the Nazis and their philosophy," said Overton, 79.
"Life is too short to create hatred," she added. "In the end, it will destroy him and others."
Contact JOE SWICKARD at 313-222-8769 or jswickard@freepress.com.
Tuesday, May 6, 2008
Group fails to get enough signatures for anti-affirmative action amendment
May 4, 2008 - The Associated Press
JEFFERSON CITY A group seeking to bar many state affirmative action programs has missed a Sunday deadline to submit its initiative petition.
Missouri had been one of five states California businessman Ward Connerly and his supporters had targeted for an effort to strike down affirmative action laws.
The Missouri effort for a constitutional amendment was led by Tim Asher, a former admissions director at North Central Missouri College in Trenton. Asher said it became obvious on Saturday that there were not enough signatures to qualify the proposed constitutional amendment for the ballot, and he pledged to try again in 2010.
Asher estimated supporters gathered 170,000 signatures — which is enough to make the ballot. But he said it wasn’t high enough because many signatures are later disqualified.
It takes between 86,000 and 95,000 signatures for a petition that creates a new law, and from 140,000 to 150,000 for those that change the state constitution.
Connerly predicted Sunday that supporters would have collected enough signatures if they had another two weeks.
“This is a marathon and not a sprint, and it’s far from over,” Connerly said. “There is a lot of support in the state of Missouri.”
Supporters from four groups angling to get their initiative petitions on the November ballot did hit the Sunday deadline. They wheeled in dollies stacked with boxes that were filled with petitions and tens of thousands of signatures.
As many as six groups had been expected to submit petitions, but only four had done so by the deadline.
Arriving within 15 minutes of each other Sunday were groups pushing petitions to change the state constitution to restrict the use of eminent domain and to require the use of more renewable energy.
Earlier in the week, petitions to allow home health-care providers to unionize and to repeal the state’s cap on gambling losses while barring the construction of new casinos were submitted.
The affirmative action petition had been among the most controversial, triggering lawsuits from Asher and critics challenging the fairness of a ballot summary authored by the secretary of state’s office. A state judge later rewrote the passage that would have appeared before voters at the polls.
Asher and Connerly attributed the difficulty in collecting signatures to the court battle. They both called for changes in how initiative petitions are handled in Missouri.
“We effectively lost our right to bring to the voters of Missouri whether they felt race-preference policies were positive to the state or something that needed to be eliminated,” Asher said.
Connerly said cold, rainy weather and “blockers” who trailed signature-gatherers also made it difficult to get enough Missourians to sign.
A spokesman for Secretary of State Robin Carnahan said the office stands behind the ballot summary it wrote. Spokesman Ryan Hobart said Asher had as much opportunity as everyone else to submit his petition by Sunday’s deadline.
WeCAN, a coalition of community, religious, labor, business and education leaders that was created to oppose the affirmative action petition, said not filing any petition was the best outcome.
The Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now’s chief organizer in Missouri, Jeff Ordower, said the inability to get enough signatures also was “a movement for equality” in Missouri.
“We thought it would be close,” Ordower said. “We thought they would submit and not have enough of a margin. We didn’t imagine they wouldn’t submit at all.”
The petition had prompted Connerly, a former University of California regent, to speak several times in Missouri. Connerly had said he wants to end “race-based affirmative action” and replace it with “socio-economic affirmative action.”
California, Washington and Michigan already have approved ballot measures backed by Connerly. Besides Missouri, he is supporting similar efforts in Arizona, Colorado, Oklahoma and Nebraska.
Supporters from the four groups that submitted petitions said they got far more signatures than what they needed. Election officials have until Aug. 5 to certify whether the measures make the cut.
Ron Calzone, a spokesman for the group trying to get two eminent domain petitions on the ballot, said volunteers had been working all week to organize petitions for proposed constitutional amendments that would bar the use of eminent domain by non-government entities and for private use.
Calzone said the importance of private property rights helped fuel weary supporters who had to use less sleep-deprived designated drivers. He said he expects to have to educate voters and combat critics willing to spend a lot of money to fight their petitions.
But first, Calzone said, will come “a break, a nap and then we’ll continue our public education efforts.”
Arriving as Calzone was leaving, P.J. Wilson estimated 170,000 people signed his group’s petition that would require utilities to generate 15 percent of their electricity from sources such as wind and solar power. Wilson said that included at least 10,000 signatures last month on Earth Day.
Alphonso Mayfield, a spokesman for the group that submitted the home health care petition, estimated it submitted about 200,000 signatures Saturday. He attributed the support to Missourians’ concern about health care.
“Health care is an issue that resonates with a lot of people,” Mayfield said. “It allowed us to talk to a lot of people.”
In 2006, six groups submitted signatures, but only three made the ballot. Five initiatives appeared on the 1940 ballot — the most ever — but the only one that passed was a constitutional amendment creating an appointment system for certain state judges.
JEFFERSON CITY A group seeking to bar many state affirmative action programs has missed a Sunday deadline to submit its initiative petition.
Missouri had been one of five states California businessman Ward Connerly and his supporters had targeted for an effort to strike down affirmative action laws.
The Missouri effort for a constitutional amendment was led by Tim Asher, a former admissions director at North Central Missouri College in Trenton. Asher said it became obvious on Saturday that there were not enough signatures to qualify the proposed constitutional amendment for the ballot, and he pledged to try again in 2010.
Asher estimated supporters gathered 170,000 signatures — which is enough to make the ballot. But he said it wasn’t high enough because many signatures are later disqualified.
It takes between 86,000 and 95,000 signatures for a petition that creates a new law, and from 140,000 to 150,000 for those that change the state constitution.
Connerly predicted Sunday that supporters would have collected enough signatures if they had another two weeks.
“This is a marathon and not a sprint, and it’s far from over,” Connerly said. “There is a lot of support in the state of Missouri.”
Supporters from four groups angling to get their initiative petitions on the November ballot did hit the Sunday deadline. They wheeled in dollies stacked with boxes that were filled with petitions and tens of thousands of signatures.
As many as six groups had been expected to submit petitions, but only four had done so by the deadline.
Arriving within 15 minutes of each other Sunday were groups pushing petitions to change the state constitution to restrict the use of eminent domain and to require the use of more renewable energy.
Earlier in the week, petitions to allow home health-care providers to unionize and to repeal the state’s cap on gambling losses while barring the construction of new casinos were submitted.
The affirmative action petition had been among the most controversial, triggering lawsuits from Asher and critics challenging the fairness of a ballot summary authored by the secretary of state’s office. A state judge later rewrote the passage that would have appeared before voters at the polls.
Asher and Connerly attributed the difficulty in collecting signatures to the court battle. They both called for changes in how initiative petitions are handled in Missouri.
“We effectively lost our right to bring to the voters of Missouri whether they felt race-preference policies were positive to the state or something that needed to be eliminated,” Asher said.
Connerly said cold, rainy weather and “blockers” who trailed signature-gatherers also made it difficult to get enough Missourians to sign.
A spokesman for Secretary of State Robin Carnahan said the office stands behind the ballot summary it wrote. Spokesman Ryan Hobart said Asher had as much opportunity as everyone else to submit his petition by Sunday’s deadline.
WeCAN, a coalition of community, religious, labor, business and education leaders that was created to oppose the affirmative action petition, said not filing any petition was the best outcome.
The Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now’s chief organizer in Missouri, Jeff Ordower, said the inability to get enough signatures also was “a movement for equality” in Missouri.
“We thought it would be close,” Ordower said. “We thought they would submit and not have enough of a margin. We didn’t imagine they wouldn’t submit at all.”
The petition had prompted Connerly, a former University of California regent, to speak several times in Missouri. Connerly had said he wants to end “race-based affirmative action” and replace it with “socio-economic affirmative action.”
California, Washington and Michigan already have approved ballot measures backed by Connerly. Besides Missouri, he is supporting similar efforts in Arizona, Colorado, Oklahoma and Nebraska.
Supporters from the four groups that submitted petitions said they got far more signatures than what they needed. Election officials have until Aug. 5 to certify whether the measures make the cut.
Ron Calzone, a spokesman for the group trying to get two eminent domain petitions on the ballot, said volunteers had been working all week to organize petitions for proposed constitutional amendments that would bar the use of eminent domain by non-government entities and for private use.
Calzone said the importance of private property rights helped fuel weary supporters who had to use less sleep-deprived designated drivers. He said he expects to have to educate voters and combat critics willing to spend a lot of money to fight their petitions.
But first, Calzone said, will come “a break, a nap and then we’ll continue our public education efforts.”
Arriving as Calzone was leaving, P.J. Wilson estimated 170,000 people signed his group’s petition that would require utilities to generate 15 percent of their electricity from sources such as wind and solar power. Wilson said that included at least 10,000 signatures last month on Earth Day.
Alphonso Mayfield, a spokesman for the group that submitted the home health care petition, estimated it submitted about 200,000 signatures Saturday. He attributed the support to Missourians’ concern about health care.
“Health care is an issue that resonates with a lot of people,” Mayfield said. “It allowed us to talk to a lot of people.”
In 2006, six groups submitted signatures, but only three made the ballot. Five initiatives appeared on the 1940 ballot — the most ever — but the only one that passed was a constitutional amendment creating an appointment system for certain state judges.
2ns-generation Asian Americans embrace identity, enrich area
May 4, 2008 - The Detroit Free Press
They grew up in a crescent around Detroit, with some scattered inside the city like stars.
They grew up the children of immigrants, traversing two identities fraught with self-imposed barriers and subtle discrimination.
They grew up into a new consciousness, calling themselves what previous generations did not: Asian Americans.
Like no other generation before them, this wave of Asian Americans had access to college classes that examined their histories, courses that arose in the aftermath of a cataclysmic movement that started in Detroit. U.S. census data released last week showed that Asian Americans continue to be the fastest-growing ethnic group in Michigan, topping Latinos, the fastest-growing minority in the nation. And this generation, now in their 20s and 30s, is a huge reason why.
Their upbringing has been complex, veering from a near-shunning of identity toward a full embrace of what it means to be fully American and fully Asian.
Asian Pacific American Heritage month, which is celebrated in May, evolved from a 10-day observance in 1978 to a monthlong celebration in 1992 as members of this generation shaped their Asian-American experience.
"Our generation fought for all different things," said Stephanie Chang, 24, who was raised in Canton Township and lives in Detroit. "We're the first ones to have Asian-American studies in college. We're the first generation with resources to Asian-American organizations, and we're the first who are Pan-Asian. We're not just divided by ethnic groups that, while in Asia, went through centuries of all kinds of conflict."
All this was made possible by that now-iconic Detroit-based movement, one that began when a spurt of prejudice turned violent.
Finding a voice
In 1982, the baseball-bat slaying of Chinese American Vincent Chin on Woodward by two white autoworkers who mistook him for Japanese and their subsequent light sentencing -- neither served jail time -- set off a coalescing of Pan-Asian groups throughout metro Detroit and the nation.
Anger overcame fear, and Asian Americans found a voice.
"It really became a national movement, a civil rights movement, that had Detroit at its epicenter," said community activist Helen Zia, 55, who cofounded the American Citizens for Justice, whose mandate was to address what it saw as the unfairness in Chin's case. Zia, who now lives in California, later included her experience with the Chin case in her book, "Asian American Dreams: The Emergence of an American People."
"It's amazing," Zia said, "but in some ways, because the Detroit community was so small and because it had such a strong civil rights history, it meant that people had to depend on each other. ... The community really stepped up and became a model around the country."
Booming generation
Even as tens of thousands of people leave metro Detroit, the Asian-American population has shot up by 38% in six years, according to U.S. census data reported for 2000 and 2006, to 141,550 people from 102,365.
Why? In large part, it's because the generation of identity-conscious Asian Americans has boomed. A 2002 study by Wayne State University showed that American-born Asians nationwide, particularly among Japanese, Chinese and Filipinos, are starting to outnumber the foreign-born.
The children of the large waves of Asian students and professionals who immigrated after the repeal of the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1943 and the easing of immigration law and national quotas in the 1950s and 1960s, as well as the thousands of southeast Asians who fled after the Vietnam War, have rapidly expanded the area's Asian population.
"The Asian-American population is enriching the metro Detroit area and changing our understanding of race so that it's not just black and white. It's contributing to the area's economic revival," said Frank Wu, the outgoing dean of the Wayne State University Law School. "These are people who are entrepreneurs and professionals."
"You're also finding that these are families that are settling in as part of the mainstream, so they're transforming our understanding of what the mainstream is," added Wu, author of "Yellow: Race in America Beyond Black and White."
Integration, assimilation
At less than 4% of metro Detroit's total population, Asian Americans still make up a small percentage of the area.
Growing up Asian American in metro Detroit is far removed from places like San Francisco, where one out of every three people is Asian, or like New York, where Asians can buy food in burgeoning Indian neighborhoods in Queens. Or even like Chicago, whose thriving old and new Chinatowns serve as an anchor to urban and suburban Asian Americans.
Asian Americans in metro Detroit often were the only Asians in their grade, if not the entire school. The result was a kind of de facto integration for Asian Americans.
"As a kid, you just wanted to fit in," Chang said. "All my friends were white, except on Saturdays."
That was the day Chang's mother made her go to Chinese school.
"It was like these double lives," she said, "and I never wanted them to intersect."
Elizabeth Chin, 35, who was born in Louisiana and grew up in West Bloomfield, found herself so enmeshed with her non-Asian friends that she nearly eschewed her Chinese Baptist church roots.
"Who I wanted to be was Jewish," said Chin, who now lives in Waterford. "I was Jewish. I really thought I was Jewish."
Ami Turner, 29, whose parents emigrated from Gujarat, India, was born in Detroit and grew up in Sterling Heights with mostly white and Arab-American classmates.
"I had fairly fair skin and dark hair, and a lot of people thought I was Arabic," she said. "When I first went to high school, all the Arabics had their own little groups, and they thought I was Arabic, so they hung out with me. And then when they found out I wasn't, I got phased out."
Wu, 40, grew up in Canton Township doing everything he could to forget who he was.
"Every kid has to make a deal, and the deal goes like this: 'If you become like us, we'll accept you as an equal. If you don't, we'll reject you,' " said Wu of Detroit. "So I accepted the idea. I assimilated. "
Sparring stereotypes
Despite attempts to fit in, a pervasive experience for all Asian Americans means coping with derogatory remarks about race.
Chang endured a nickname of "Shanghai" from a mean-spirited classmate, even though she was born in Canton Township and her parents emigrated from Taiwan. She still cringes when the first thing she's asked is, "Where are you from?" with the follow-up of "Where are you really from?" when people are not satisfied when she answers "Detroit."
"People ask over and over," she said. "It's like the answer has to be a certain country. We're the perpetual foreigner."
Al Itchon, 38, of Clinton Township grew up in East Detroit, now known as Eastpointe. His parents emigrated from the Philippines, but "everyone thinks I'm Chinese." Growing up, he said, "there was one other person who was Asian, and everyone always thought we were cousins."
Chin, whose mother immigrated from Hong Kong but whose father and paternal grandmother were born in the United States, still has to deal with people who come up to her and strike fighting stances.
"I don't know Kung Fu!" she said, and referencing another stereotype, adds: "I'm not that stinkin' smart!"
Culture, identify, experience
Somewhere in the lives of these second-generation Asian Americans, usually in their teens and 20s, something formative happens that makes them acculturate -- not into American culture but into Asian-American culture.
Soh Suzuki, 29, was born in California, lived his elementary school years in Japan, and moved to Bloomfield Hills for high school because of his father's job.
His Asian-American awareness grew at Michigan State University, when he began incorporating Asian-American history and culture into his artwork for his major. He took an Asian-American anthropology class, learned about the repercussions of Vincent Chin's murder and started thinking about his own identity.
"I wasn't even sure if I could identify myself as an Asian American," said Suzuki, who now lives in Detroit. "There was a time even in college, when I saw myself as Japanese and as kind of an international student. But as I looked into how identity politics work, at some point, I came to a consensus within myself that American culture and American identity is very flexible. And so is the Asian-American experience."
After college, Suzuki cofounded the Detroit Asian Youth Project, which works with Asian-American kids who live in the city to help them explore their identities through art and oral history.
For Wu, the killing of Vincent Chin propelled him toward a lifelong exploration of Asian-American identity.
"That case made me realize that I had to do something," said Wu, who is working on a book about Chin's murder and aftermath. "It set me on the path to becoming a writer and a lawyer. Everything about my life changed because of that case. It gave me a sense that I wasn't alone. ... I saw that it was racial prejudice. As a kid, when you're taunted, you think, 'Maybe it's me.' You see a case so blatant and so clear that you say, 'Wait a minute, it's not me. It's much bigger than me.' "
Elizabeth Chin remembers feeling fear at the Chin murder, especially because she shares a last name (but no relation). It also was an awakening of her identity.
"It brought to my attention that I was Asian," says Chin, who was 10 at the time. "Before, I had never thought about it. I was just this kid going to school. The color TV was really turned on."
Holding tight to heritage
Chin now sees herself as a bridge, using Cantonese to help first-generation Asians gain access to things like retirement benefits in her job as claims representative with the Social Security Administration. She and Chang, who completed an Asian/Pacific Islander Studies American minor made available a few years before her arrival at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, are working with APIAVote, which helps register Asian Americans in metro Detroit to vote. They envision the rapidly growing Asian community as an increasingly influential voting bloc, especially in a swing state like Michigan.
Turner has hung onto her heritage through 21 years of Indian dancing with the group Nadanta, something her parents encouraged her do to preserve a cultural connection.
"I'm very proud of being Indian," she said "That's what Nadanta taught us: 'Don't hide who you are.' "
It's something she has started passing onto her 23-month-old son, Rohan, and 4-month-old daughter, Isabella, who are their own genre of Asian American: Hapa, a term referring to multiracial Asians. It sometimes serves as an acronym for Half Asian Pacific American.
Turner's husband, Andy, is caucasian and Catholic, but she has preserved her Hindu beliefs, speaks Gujariti and Hindi, and has started passing down a mash of everything to her kids -- Christmas and Diwali, naan and hamburgers -- assembling the accoutrements that will shape them as Asian Americans.
Contact ERIN CHAN DING at 313-222-6696 or echan@freepress.com.
They grew up in a crescent around Detroit, with some scattered inside the city like stars.
They grew up the children of immigrants, traversing two identities fraught with self-imposed barriers and subtle discrimination.
They grew up into a new consciousness, calling themselves what previous generations did not: Asian Americans.
Like no other generation before them, this wave of Asian Americans had access to college classes that examined their histories, courses that arose in the aftermath of a cataclysmic movement that started in Detroit. U.S. census data released last week showed that Asian Americans continue to be the fastest-growing ethnic group in Michigan, topping Latinos, the fastest-growing minority in the nation. And this generation, now in their 20s and 30s, is a huge reason why.
Their upbringing has been complex, veering from a near-shunning of identity toward a full embrace of what it means to be fully American and fully Asian.
Asian Pacific American Heritage month, which is celebrated in May, evolved from a 10-day observance in 1978 to a monthlong celebration in 1992 as members of this generation shaped their Asian-American experience.
"Our generation fought for all different things," said Stephanie Chang, 24, who was raised in Canton Township and lives in Detroit. "We're the first ones to have Asian-American studies in college. We're the first generation with resources to Asian-American organizations, and we're the first who are Pan-Asian. We're not just divided by ethnic groups that, while in Asia, went through centuries of all kinds of conflict."
All this was made possible by that now-iconic Detroit-based movement, one that began when a spurt of prejudice turned violent.
Finding a voice
In 1982, the baseball-bat slaying of Chinese American Vincent Chin on Woodward by two white autoworkers who mistook him for Japanese and their subsequent light sentencing -- neither served jail time -- set off a coalescing of Pan-Asian groups throughout metro Detroit and the nation.
Anger overcame fear, and Asian Americans found a voice.
"It really became a national movement, a civil rights movement, that had Detroit at its epicenter," said community activist Helen Zia, 55, who cofounded the American Citizens for Justice, whose mandate was to address what it saw as the unfairness in Chin's case. Zia, who now lives in California, later included her experience with the Chin case in her book, "Asian American Dreams: The Emergence of an American People."
"It's amazing," Zia said, "but in some ways, because the Detroit community was so small and because it had such a strong civil rights history, it meant that people had to depend on each other. ... The community really stepped up and became a model around the country."
Booming generation
Even as tens of thousands of people leave metro Detroit, the Asian-American population has shot up by 38% in six years, according to U.S. census data reported for 2000 and 2006, to 141,550 people from 102,365.
Why? In large part, it's because the generation of identity-conscious Asian Americans has boomed. A 2002 study by Wayne State University showed that American-born Asians nationwide, particularly among Japanese, Chinese and Filipinos, are starting to outnumber the foreign-born.
The children of the large waves of Asian students and professionals who immigrated after the repeal of the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1943 and the easing of immigration law and national quotas in the 1950s and 1960s, as well as the thousands of southeast Asians who fled after the Vietnam War, have rapidly expanded the area's Asian population.
"The Asian-American population is enriching the metro Detroit area and changing our understanding of race so that it's not just black and white. It's contributing to the area's economic revival," said Frank Wu, the outgoing dean of the Wayne State University Law School. "These are people who are entrepreneurs and professionals."
"You're also finding that these are families that are settling in as part of the mainstream, so they're transforming our understanding of what the mainstream is," added Wu, author of "Yellow: Race in America Beyond Black and White."
Integration, assimilation
At less than 4% of metro Detroit's total population, Asian Americans still make up a small percentage of the area.
Growing up Asian American in metro Detroit is far removed from places like San Francisco, where one out of every three people is Asian, or like New York, where Asians can buy food in burgeoning Indian neighborhoods in Queens. Or even like Chicago, whose thriving old and new Chinatowns serve as an anchor to urban and suburban Asian Americans.
Asian Americans in metro Detroit often were the only Asians in their grade, if not the entire school. The result was a kind of de facto integration for Asian Americans.
"As a kid, you just wanted to fit in," Chang said. "All my friends were white, except on Saturdays."
That was the day Chang's mother made her go to Chinese school.
"It was like these double lives," she said, "and I never wanted them to intersect."
Elizabeth Chin, 35, who was born in Louisiana and grew up in West Bloomfield, found herself so enmeshed with her non-Asian friends that she nearly eschewed her Chinese Baptist church roots.
"Who I wanted to be was Jewish," said Chin, who now lives in Waterford. "I was Jewish. I really thought I was Jewish."
Ami Turner, 29, whose parents emigrated from Gujarat, India, was born in Detroit and grew up in Sterling Heights with mostly white and Arab-American classmates.
"I had fairly fair skin and dark hair, and a lot of people thought I was Arabic," she said. "When I first went to high school, all the Arabics had their own little groups, and they thought I was Arabic, so they hung out with me. And then when they found out I wasn't, I got phased out."
Wu, 40, grew up in Canton Township doing everything he could to forget who he was.
"Every kid has to make a deal, and the deal goes like this: 'If you become like us, we'll accept you as an equal. If you don't, we'll reject you,' " said Wu of Detroit. "So I accepted the idea. I assimilated. "
Sparring stereotypes
Despite attempts to fit in, a pervasive experience for all Asian Americans means coping with derogatory remarks about race.
Chang endured a nickname of "Shanghai" from a mean-spirited classmate, even though she was born in Canton Township and her parents emigrated from Taiwan. She still cringes when the first thing she's asked is, "Where are you from?" with the follow-up of "Where are you really from?" when people are not satisfied when she answers "Detroit."
"People ask over and over," she said. "It's like the answer has to be a certain country. We're the perpetual foreigner."
Al Itchon, 38, of Clinton Township grew up in East Detroit, now known as Eastpointe. His parents emigrated from the Philippines, but "everyone thinks I'm Chinese." Growing up, he said, "there was one other person who was Asian, and everyone always thought we were cousins."
Chin, whose mother immigrated from Hong Kong but whose father and paternal grandmother were born in the United States, still has to deal with people who come up to her and strike fighting stances.
"I don't know Kung Fu!" she said, and referencing another stereotype, adds: "I'm not that stinkin' smart!"
Culture, identify, experience
Somewhere in the lives of these second-generation Asian Americans, usually in their teens and 20s, something formative happens that makes them acculturate -- not into American culture but into Asian-American culture.
Soh Suzuki, 29, was born in California, lived his elementary school years in Japan, and moved to Bloomfield Hills for high school because of his father's job.
His Asian-American awareness grew at Michigan State University, when he began incorporating Asian-American history and culture into his artwork for his major. He took an Asian-American anthropology class, learned about the repercussions of Vincent Chin's murder and started thinking about his own identity.
"I wasn't even sure if I could identify myself as an Asian American," said Suzuki, who now lives in Detroit. "There was a time even in college, when I saw myself as Japanese and as kind of an international student. But as I looked into how identity politics work, at some point, I came to a consensus within myself that American culture and American identity is very flexible. And so is the Asian-American experience."
After college, Suzuki cofounded the Detroit Asian Youth Project, which works with Asian-American kids who live in the city to help them explore their identities through art and oral history.
For Wu, the killing of Vincent Chin propelled him toward a lifelong exploration of Asian-American identity.
"That case made me realize that I had to do something," said Wu, who is working on a book about Chin's murder and aftermath. "It set me on the path to becoming a writer and a lawyer. Everything about my life changed because of that case. It gave me a sense that I wasn't alone. ... I saw that it was racial prejudice. As a kid, when you're taunted, you think, 'Maybe it's me.' You see a case so blatant and so clear that you say, 'Wait a minute, it's not me. It's much bigger than me.' "
Elizabeth Chin remembers feeling fear at the Chin murder, especially because she shares a last name (but no relation). It also was an awakening of her identity.
"It brought to my attention that I was Asian," says Chin, who was 10 at the time. "Before, I had never thought about it. I was just this kid going to school. The color TV was really turned on."
Holding tight to heritage
Chin now sees herself as a bridge, using Cantonese to help first-generation Asians gain access to things like retirement benefits in her job as claims representative with the Social Security Administration. She and Chang, who completed an Asian/Pacific Islander Studies American minor made available a few years before her arrival at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, are working with APIAVote, which helps register Asian Americans in metro Detroit to vote. They envision the rapidly growing Asian community as an increasingly influential voting bloc, especially in a swing state like Michigan.
Turner has hung onto her heritage through 21 years of Indian dancing with the group Nadanta, something her parents encouraged her do to preserve a cultural connection.
"I'm very proud of being Indian," she said "That's what Nadanta taught us: 'Don't hide who you are.' "
It's something she has started passing onto her 23-month-old son, Rohan, and 4-month-old daughter, Isabella, who are their own genre of Asian American: Hapa, a term referring to multiracial Asians. It sometimes serves as an acronym for Half Asian Pacific American.
Turner's husband, Andy, is caucasian and Catholic, but she has preserved her Hindu beliefs, speaks Gujariti and Hindi, and has started passing down a mash of everything to her kids -- Christmas and Diwali, naan and hamburgers -- assembling the accoutrements that will shape them as Asian Americans.
Contact ERIN CHAN DING at 313-222-6696 or echan@freepress.com.
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