Asian Pacific Islander News: “Are Race and Socioeconomic Status Related to Outcomes in Thyroid Cancer?”- Article Title
“The California Cancer Registry was probed, and 25,945 patients in whom well-differentiated thyroid cancer was diagnosed between 1999 and 2008 were identified.
The study found significant discordance in several relevant areas. Ethnic minority patients (black, Hispanic, and Asian/Pacific Islander) presented more frequently with metastatic disease than white patients. Hispanic and Asian/Pacific Islander patients were also noted to have a higher chance of presenting with regional disease.Patients who were poor, were uninsured, or had Medicaid insurance had a higher likelihood of presenting with metastatic disease than individuals who had private insurance.
When survival rates were adjusted for relevant variables, overall survival was lower for black patients. In contrast, Asian/Pacific Islanders had enhanced overall survival.”
What do people think of this article? Any thoughts or opinions about this? Do you think it’s true; not true?
Quote and information taken from:
http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/820042
Dave Notes:
Chapter 4: “Model Minorities can Cook”
“If fusion is heralded as the democratic melding of cuisines, it is largely because it is a type of culinary multiculturalism that seems to challenge the rigidity of national boundaries and fixity” p. 72
“Successful East-West cooking finds just the right harmonious way to combine distinct culinary approaches” p. 75. The word harmonious makes me think of assimilation
“To this end, selling Ming Tsai as a model minority is a crucial ingredient in making Tsai successful. Eric Ober, president and general manager of the Food Network, begins his afterword to Tsai’s book by asking, “How many Yale graduates with engineering degrees and professional squash careers go on to win an Emmy award? Then again, how many of them have their own award winning restaurants?” as if to suggest that Tsai is the model minority extraordinaire, or as A. Magazine put it, “The Asian American poster boy of cooking.” p. 77
“In this way, Ming Tsai emerges as the model minority Chef who inhabits a newer stereotype- that of the hyper assimilated, attractive, and yuppified Asian American who seamlessly integrates into American cultural life” p. 78
“Padma’s Passport”- “Like the food she prepares on the show, she herself is commodifiable, consumable, and desirable” p. 80
“Thus while the rampant but private consumption of pornographic images is accepted, public discussions of sexual fantasies are strictly prohibited” p. 82 -about Padma.
“What are the terms on which Asian American subjects such as Padma Lakshmi and Ming Tsai are represented in the popular media? And would either Lakshmi or Tsai enjoy such levels of popularity without their youthful “exotic” good looks?” p. 84
“The language of entertainment pervasive here, the notion that “we” pick and choose what “we” want to eat also blurs the distinctions between fusion, assimilation, and appropriation” p. 84
“They suggest that a knowledge of the range of Asian cuisines seeps through their pores merely by virtue of being Asian” p. 85. Reminds me of how so many people assume someone of “100 % non-mixed heritage” knows their ancestral home’s language, culture, or/and food.
“The impossibility, until very recently, of imagining black-Asian fusion cuisine in the cookbook market suggests that in many cases fusion is only acceptable when it incorporates cultural markets of whiteness” p. 90
Chapter 13: “Alllookthesame?” Mediating Asian American Visual Cultures of Race on the Web”
“Asian Americans use the internet more than any other ethnic group in America, including whites” p. 262
“alllookthesame.com is produced by an Asian designer for an Asian and Asian American audience which debates national and ethnic identities rather than simply affirming them” p. 265
“Most important, the low scores that most users get confirm that seeing is not believing- the “truth” about race is not a visual truth, yet one which is persistently envisioned that way” p. 266
Chapter 17: “Secret Asian Man”
“Currently, dismay over Halloween costumes such as Urban Outfitters “Chinaman” mask, the widely marketed “Kung Fool” costume, and most recently, the Abercrombie and Fitch T-shirt designs have given rise to more expressions of rage and grievance- and their public expression” p. 339- Do many Americans see these commodities as racist? Are they too blind to? Or do they see it as racist but just don’t care that it’s wrong?
racial grief- combination of rage and grief.
Chapter 1: “Trance-Formations”
“Asian icons are often used by white (or other) American youth to signal their “alternative” approach to mainstream popular culture, as with neohippie subcultures that have reinvented the sixties’ fascination with India” p. 13
“Goa trance is the faster, “fiercer” version of trance music (140 bpm and up), first popularized by raver-tourists re-creating the Ibiza paradise on the beaches of Goa, India- historically a sixties’ hippie haven- and later circulating as a “viral, ‘virtual’ presence across the Western world” p. 15
electronic dance music is a largely white, middle-class youth subculture.
“In this subculture there are two ways to gain subcultural capital and advance in the social hierarchy: skill as a dancer or connections to a drug dealer” p. 17
“Tribal techno and trance offer white American youth a way to reimagine themselves through racialized, and even globalized, notions of otherness” p. 19
“Clearly, the responses if youth to Asian iconography very by ethnicity, gender, and class, and are contingent and controversial” p. 20
Chapter 2: “Making Transnational Vietnamese Music”
“Heavily influenced by exile and anticommunism, Viet Kieu music has a special blend of nostalgia that appeals not only to the members of the diasporic communities but also to the residents of Viet Nam” p. 32
“Even fifteen years after the demise of Sai Gon, the music of the pre- and war periods evoked fond memories of their lives back in Viet Nam. Music that evoked nostalgia was seen accompanied by new music about a lost nation, patriotism, and the refugee experience” p. 36
“It seems, then, that the thing that comforts the community in exile is also what keeps it from creating new sounds. The dependence on the old pre- 1975 songs in musical repertoires persists to this day, and few venture to write and sing new songs” p. 37
Chapter 5: “Pappy’s House”
“According to Christian, the recurring figure of the nurturing, caring, black Mammy, is what enabled narrativization of such archetypical white identities as chivalrous southern gentlemen and debutante bells, and their epic romance and tragedy set in the deep south” p. 106
Chapter 15: “Cibo Matto’s Stereotype A Articulating Asian American Hip Pop”
“The audience base for these bands seems to differ little from the critics in their attraction to the “exotic” element of the band’s representation” p. 297
“Through its musical and visual style, hip hop gives these Japanese youth a tool with which to critique the dominant culture and to construct a future wherein they might reclaim subjectivity on their own terms” p. 299
Norma Coates- “Sliding even further down the slope, “authentic becomes “masculine” while “artificial” becomes “feminine.” Rock, therefore, is “masculine,” pop is “feminine,” and the two are set in a binary relation to each other, with the masculine… on top” p. 300
Class Notes:
gentrification- When an urban/lower-income area is taken over by wealthier residents or businesses.
Race- is still related to the body
ethnic tourism…Reminds me of when white American designer Tommy Hilfiger in the 1990s came out with a line of “Hip-Hop” clothing. He said in multiple interviews something along the lines of “I’ve always loved the African American community.” I’m pretty sure it was also the first time he used African American models. If I remember right, I don’t think this specific clothing line did so well….
Hip Hip genre and Chinatown both were developed from poverty and subcultures.
Many Japanese zombies are females
vernacular- refers to local language
