OPINION
Page 6 n THE ASIAN REPORTER
September 7, 2015
Volume 25 Number 17
September 7, 2015
ISSN: 1094-9453
The Asian Reporter is published on
the first and third Monday each month.
Please send all correspondence to: The Asian Reporter
922 N Killingsworth Street, Portland, OR 97217
Phone: (503) 283-4440, Fax: (503) 283-4445
News Department e-mail: news@asianreporter.com
Advertising Department e-mail: ads@asianreporter.com
General e-mail: info@asianreporter.com
Website: www.asianreporter.com
Please send reader feedback, Asian-related press releases, and
community interest ideas/stories to the addresses listed above.
Please include a contact phone number.
Advertising information available upon request.
Publisher Jaime Lim
Contributing Editors
Ronault L.S. Catalani (Polo), Jeff Wenger
Correspondents
Ian Blazina, Josephine Bridges, Pamela Ellgen, Maileen Hamto,
Edward J. Han, A.P. Kryza, Marie Lo, Simeon Mamaril,
Julie Stegeman, Toni Tabora-Roberts, Allison Voigts
Illustrator Jonathan Hill
News Service Associated Press/Newsfinder
Copyright 2015. Opinions expressed in this newspaper are
those of the authors and not necessarily those of this publication.
Member
Associated Press/Newsfinder
Asian American Journalists Association
Better Business Bureau
Pacific Northwest Minority Publishers (PNMP)
Philippine American Chamber of Commerce of Oregon
TALKING STORY IN ASIAN AMERICA
n Polo
Correspondence:
The Asian Reporter welcomes reader response and participation.
Please send all correspondence to:
Mail: 922 N Killingsworth Street, Portland, OR 97217-2220
Phone: (503) 283-4440 ** Fax: (503) 283-4445
News Department e-mail: news@asianreporter.com
General e-mail: info@asianreporter.com
New to your neighborhood
A love letter to African America
SUBSCRIPTION RATES (U.S. rates only)
Individual subscription (sent bulk rate):
q Half year: $14
q Full year: $24
q Two years: $40
Individual subscription (sent first class mail):
q Half year: $24
q Full year: $40
q Two years: $72
Office subscription (5 copies to one address):
q Half year: $40
q Full year: $75
q Two years: $145
Institutional subscription (25 copies to one address):
q Half year: $100 q Full year: $180
q Two years: $280
NEW SUBSCRIBER / ADDRESS CORRECTION
INFORMATION FORM:
Subscriber’s name:
Company name:
Address:
City, State, ZIP:
Phone:
Fax:
E-mail:
Mail with payment or Fax with credit card information to:
The Asian Reporter, Attn: Subscription Dept.,
922 N Killingsworth Street, Portland, OR 97217-2220
Phone: (503) 283-4440 * Fax: (503) 283-4445
q q q
For VISA, Mastercard, or American Express payment only:
Name (as it appears on the card):
Type of card (circle):
VISA
Mastercard
Card number:
American Express
Security code:
Expiration date:
Address of card:
The last four issues of The Asian Reporter are available
for pick up free at our office 24 hours a day at
922 N Killingsworth Street, Portland, Oregon.
Back issues of The Asian Reporter
may be ordered by mail at the following rates: First copy: $1.50
Additional copies ordered at the same time: $1.00 each
Send orders to: Asian Reporter Back Issues,
922 N. Killingsworth St., Portland, OR 97217-2220
The Asian Reporter welcomes reader response and
participation. If you have a comment on a story
we have printed, or have an Asian-related personal
or community focus idea, please contact us.
Please include a contact name, address, and
phone number on all correspondence. Thank you.
Salaam suadara saudara hitam manis
(Peace, dear black sisters and brothers):
This is that love letter I’ve long wanted to write
you. A letter long owed. Owed because, here we are,
living next door to each other, sweating the same
workplace floors, determinedly dreaming a kinder
America for our children and our children’s children
— but no one’s introduced you and me, not to each
other. Not the way our grandmas, yours and mine,
always said we’re supposed to.
I am a New American. And I am pleased to meet
you. Thank you African America, for having us in
your neighborhood.
We are what scholars call “international
migrants.” Evening news is full of our desperation.
Lawyers define us as “refugees.” Transnational
tribunals and polished diplomats argue endlessly
about what that word really means. American
politicians abbreviate our families’ sorrow and
devaluate our ambition by calling us “immigrants”
— a word and a population most won’t mention,
unless someone else brings it and us up first.
Usually not in a nice way.
I’m asking your patience with this rambling intro,
because I’m trying to explain why I’ve taken so long
in writing you this letter. This love letter. The thing
is, we arrive here, on the confluence of your region’s
two generous river matriarchs, a bit rattled. Shaken
badly, actually. Social scientists describe our
families as either struggling with profound disloca-
tion, or suffering from traumatic discontinuities. Or
both. Leaving your cozy home, your ancestral
homeland, hurts. Having folks we love disappeared
or killed hurts even more. We know, you know this
well.
And then, getting into America’s robust
mainstream is hard. And of course you know this
too. So please, also now know that we newcomers
are humbled by your pain, by your elders’ and your
ancestors’ pain. From Jamestown to Memphis to
Ferguson. 400 years of pain.
What’s not working well
We found an apartment here, out here in River
City’s far east. While our elders were unpacking our
plastic sacks, while our parents were dashing to
catch their two-hour bus rides to work, while our
bright babies were dressing well for their beloved
America’s educational, financial,
social, and law-enforcement systems
have failed to compassionately
integrate black and white families.
After 150 years of trying.
You and me expecting these
staid institutions to conscientiously
integrate black and our many
brown ethnic streams into a
shared American mainstream,
is only asking for more heartbreak.
teachers — even our youngest noticed the whistling
leak, loud as a punctured rubber boat, in our new-
comer optimism. There’s an enormous emotional
and spiritual cost for access to American wealth.
Mainstreaming is exhausting, individually. It’s
erosive, communally.
I mean no disrespect to settled Americans, to
those Old World émigrés who cultivated this fertile
continent. With great gratitude, our family recalls
how the United States freed us from Imperial
Japan’s occupation army. Our elders still smile
about how respectful Yank soldierboys were to our
sisters and daughters. Everyone still laughs about
the funny nicknames and thick Hershey bars they
gave our kids.
Everywhere, everyone has always loved Anglo-
American creativity and kindness. Here and today,
we newcomers love the jobs, the easy credit, the
interest on savings kept in safe banks. No
corruption.
But because this is a love letter from a brown guy
to black folks, and because a love letter is a sincere
effort to lay an authentic foundation for a nascent
relationship — that is, a baseline of honesty — let
me begin mine by saying that some of our
now-shared nation’s mainstream institutions feel
heartless, to us. Really loveless. I’m talking about
the machinery of our mainstream — not our
neighbors, not our bus drivers or school teachers.
Not in their bones, not in their hearts.
This is bad, dear Black America, because in the
absence of a proper sit-down introduction, in the
absence of a relationship deliberately built around
your and our honest disagreements, one made of
Continued on page 7
Opinions expressed in this newspaper are those of the authors and not necessarily those of this publication.