Monthly Archives: July 2015

Calling Out ALL The Jurists

By | |
Comments Off on Calling Out ALL The Jurists

… who have failed our legal system.

I don’t usually call out my fellow attorneys. But I can’t keep silent any longer. You must act.

We’ve allowed the bones of racism to run unchecked in the judicial system long enough. It must end. You must act. Inaction is legitimizing a system of discrimination that is steep in the law and allows the bones of racism to remain untouched by time and chaining perceptions. And it’s creating havoc in our country. Either be a part of the solution or you are a part of the problem.

I firmly believe that individual prejudices have diminished over time in most of us. Oh sure, there are wingnuts a-plenty, but the vast swath of American humanity has shed these prejudices as we’ve welcomed people of color into our families, acknowledged LGBTQ peeps in our families, and been accepting of individual differences. What hasn’t changed is the structure of racism we’ve had in our society so long most of us have even forgotten they are there. But they are and we are seeing the effects all around us.

Federal Sentencing Guidelines illustrates the remaining bones of racism quite clearly. Crack cocaine is punished at a bout 3 to 1 times longer than powder cocaine. Same chemical compound when viewed under a microscope, but the penalties for each is vastly different. Looking that the sentences, one might conclude that it is fair and doesn’t discriminate. Except when you start to really look at who uses crack cocaine and who uses powder cocaine. Yes, it is almost brightline delineation by race. By and large, one finds crack cocaine in brown and black neighborhoods. But and large, powered cocaine is found in white and yellow neighborhoods. So, wonder no more why there are so many black and brown people in jail. We punish them 3 times longer than we do for the EXACT SAME SUBSTANCE.

And this is just one example of the bones we’ve allowed to remain and grow in our judicial system. And it leads to institutional discrimination. The disparate impact was planned, at worst, and ignored, at best. We’ve been using these guidelines and having them have this disparate impact on people of color for YEARS. And done nothing. We’ve allowed this to fester and flourish. And we are wrong for having done nothing. And this is just ONE example.

There are so many more examples of the bones of racism that remain and which hold up and add structure to the cloak of our humanity, or lack thereof–if we do nothing. By failing to act, we’ve become complicit is supporting the bones of that discrimination. As our social perceptions have changed, we did nothing to get rid of all the ways smart societies use to hold back discrete groups of persons. And in American, it shouldn’t have been acceptable before. It isn’t acceptable now. And if we do nothing, then we also become complicit in the tinderbox our country will become as push comes to shove.

Being Asian Doesn’t Make Me ….

By | |
Comments Off on Being Asian Doesn’t Make Me ….

More like white women. It does statistically mean I will fall more within their range than any other women of color. Asians are punished less, in schools and by police. It’s part of the cultural stereotype.

But it hides a far more insidious comparison, one that most people don’t even realize. And it revolves around Asian sexuality. Isn’t it funny how Asian men are seen as emasculated or feminine or some other way softer? Even though we have ninja movies, karate movies, we know about Genghis Khan, mobs like the Triad and the like, we don’t see Asian men as testosterone-laden threats. And it shows up in arrest numbers and incarceration numbers. Cops just don’t generally pull over clean cut Asian dudes. Not like the black guys that drive.

At the same time, Asian women are highly sexualized. And not in a good way. We are desired because we look like prepubescent boys for far longer than any other ethnicity. Men go to Asia not just to fuck and marry little girls, they’re are those that just want a woman who looks like little girl. The mount of human trafficking of Asian women is out of this world. It seems the entire world of men are obsessed with women who look like little girls. And my Asian sisters bear the brunt of this desire.

Don’t get me wrong, other ethnicities are sexualized as well. Think of the media’s portrayal of the lush, overblown Latina. Or the strong, loud black woman who will break you with her punanai. But there is an insidious sickness when male eyes turn toward Asian women, you know those of us who look like we’re twelve even when we’re thirty. Subservience isn’t just expected, it’s demanded. And having a child-like or a real  girl child as your sexual partner means you can treat them as children all the while fucking them to death. In many parts of the world, Asian girls are discarded as unwanted only to be swooped up by the predators who know just who to  tap. I’ve heard there are entire travel industries set up for Western men to go a pick up a young Asian girl, whether in fact or in looks.

And when we finally get a voice to stalk about some stuff, are we heard on our own? No, we get lumped in with the white girls. Now, I’m not dissing my light skinned sisters, but seriously? Do you even know what it’s like to not know math in a group of math overachievers? And I say that tongue in cheek. But you have no idea how many stereotypes I have to wade through each day just to get to my preferred endeavor with words.

I get why so many of my feminist brothers and sisters tend to lump us in with the white girls. In many ways, we escape the stigma of having darker colored skin. As we’ve seen recently, being black in America can be a dangerous thing. Asian women  and men generally escape this portion of the discrimination our country seems to want to mete out. But I gotta tell you, as Asian women, we only get the benefit of being lumped together with the white girls… until we don’t.

We’re largely ignored in the larger feminist dialogue. So we’ve become the invisible women wanting to know when it’ll be our time to shine, to have our fears voiced and our concerns addressed.

Kids vs. Adults

By | |
Comments Off on Kids vs. Adults

Rehabilitation vs. Retribution

We’ve failed our kids. We’ve lied to them, too. And we’ve done it with hate in our hearts.

If there is one area where modern day lack of empathy meets the weakest amongst us, children as a group would be high on the list  and smack dab in the area that houses those who must rely on the goodwill of others. The protection of those stronger and more powerful than them. Kids. Little ones. And the not so little ones. The in-betweeners.

We’ve broken our social contract with the young people in our world. We promised to hold them to a lesser standard of behavior in return for limiting their freedoms in certain areas. We did this rationalizing that these kids weren’t mature enough to engage in activities usually reserved for adults. And in return, we promised, explicitly and implicitly, we would treat them as less culpable when they did mess up. Instead, we’ve limited their freedoms and then turned around and held them to adult standards of care. And it’s unconscionable. That means it’s fucking wrong. Not just a little wrong, but FUCKING wrong.

And they can’t even vote to change our rules.

At this point, I’m willing to lift all age-based restrictions across the board. Because we have already lifted age-based criminal and civl penalties.  As in, we don’t care if you’re a kid, we’re going to treat you like you’re an adult with adult minds and adult judgment and adult thought processes. We won’t make allowances for your immature brain, your actual age or any other factor that might determine you aren’t or shouldn’t be held as responsible as a 30 yr old adult.

So our kids get screwed. They can’t engage fully in our democracy and yet they bear the full brunt of the consequences of doing so, just like a regular adult would. Even though that adult had a say in the laws enacted in her community, even though that person participated fully in their democracy.

It’s time to end age based restrictions. Because we’ve become a blood-thritsty society unwilling to honor our social contract with our young ones, and unable to see the hypocrisy every time we ask juveniles to be tried to treated as adults.

Hypocrites, the lot of us.

And con’t get me started on all the ways we ensure our kids who do mess up are never full members of our society. We prevent them from getting into school with these draconian adult based sentences and punishments that follow them FOREVER. Yet, once your’e an adult and have your degrees and your career, you can smoke crack and hire prostitutes and bankrupt corporations and cause banking failures… you get to keep all that and can return once more to do it all over again.

We are eating our young ones. And the cannibalizing  needs to stop. Either put up or shut up. Either our kids are too young and too stupid to fully appreciate what they are doing- can’t drink, can’t smoke, what do you do…, or they aren’t and we need to lift age-based restrictions of all kinds. Because quite frankly, if we’re going to hold them to adult standards when they fuck up, we should be willing to let them enjoy all the good parts of those exact same adult standards.

Stop the hypocrisy.