Chronicle Brief on Editor Changes
Excerpt from Chronicle brief in today’s paper:
AsianWeek Editor Samson Wong has been removed as editor in chief of the publication and reassigned as a result of the furor that followed publication in late February of a column titled “Why I Hate Blacks.” Wong has been reassigned to a job of “senior editorial consultant,” AsianWeek president James Fang said Friday night.
“Basically, his job now will be to do work in the community — outreach — and to continue to do his column,” Fang said.
While AsianWeek looks for a successor, Ted Fang, who had been editor at large, will fill the paper’s top editorial position, said his brother, James Fang.
AsianWeek Removes Editor-in-Chief
Leaders of the civil rights organizations that initiated the protest against AsianWeek’s publication of a hate speech column against African Americans today noted the newspaper’s decision to remove Samson Wong as editor-in-chief.
The masthead of the newspaper’s March 30 issue shows that former editor-in-chief Samson Wong’s title is now “Senior Editorial Consultant.”
“We asked AsianWeek to hold the editor responsible for publishing the piece accountable,” said Gen Fujioka, program director at the Asian Law Caucus.
“Though the community still needs to hear directly from AsianWeek, we hope this indicates a step towards healing the hurt caused both to African Americans and also the vast majority of Asian Americans who abhor the racism expressed by the previous article.”
“From the start, this has not been just an issue of hate speech, but an issue of journalistic judgment and responsibility,” said Vincent Pan, executive director of Chinese for Affirmative Action. “All communities must be vigilant against bigots and racists, as well as those who hand them microphones.”
After initially denying any wrongdoing, AsianWeek issued an apology and fired Kenneth Eng, the writer of a column titled “Why I Hate Blacks” that advocated discriminating against African Americans.
Immediately after the column was published, a national coalition of APA and civil rights organizations called on AsianWeek to, among other things, review its editorial policy and process and hold those responsible for the decision to publish the Eng piece accountable.
AsianWeek Masthead Shows Editor Changes
AsianWeek has quietly changed their masthead in the issue that appeared on the stands today.
Samson Wong is no longer editor-in-chief. His new title is “senior editorial consultant.”
Ted Fang is now editor and publisher. He was previously editor-at-large.
Excellent opinion piece by Erin Aubry Kaplan of the LA Times
In the most articulate summary to date of the issues related to the AsianWeek publication of hate speech, Erin Aubry Kaplan writes in today’s LA Times:
The column, published in the San Francisco-based AsianWeek newspaper in the waning days of African American History Month, was so astonishingly hateful that activists of all stripes immediately rushed forward to condemn it. AsianWeek Editor Ted Fang issued a lengthy apology and fired Eng, who is in his early 20s and also writes science fiction novels. The small press that published Eng’s books announced last week that it was taking them off the market. There was a hastily arranged community forum about strengthening black/Asian relations and improving coverage across color lines. More are surely on the way.
This kind of hand-wringing is to a degree appropriate. It’s also inherently limited, a first step that all too often stands as the entire response to ugly racial moments that generally say more about our so-called enlightenment than we like to imagine. Containing the mess, therefore, is critical. From Trent Lott to Michael Richards to Kenneth Eng, our impulse in the wake of black insult is to kick-start big, rhetorical debates about race that tend to divert attention from hard questions about accountability, about who said what and why.
…
Apologies notwithstanding, this is the real accountability problem. AsianWeek is no fringe underground blog but a respected publication owned by a politically connected and media-savvy family in the most liberal of cities, San Francisco. It claims to support civil rights and social justice. How could it possibly slip up like this?
The disturbing answer is that Eng’s sophomoric columns weren’t slip-ups at all but were sanctioned on some level by the people in charge. AsianWeek’s editors may not have agreed with the column’s particulars, but it still passed their smell test. Publishers and editors don’t have to agree with opinion columnists — trust me on this one — but they do have to agree with the soundness of the columnist’s logic, and they certainly have to distinguish mindless ranting from righteous anger.
By this measure, Eng’s diatribe wasn’t even debatable. He was waving a red flag so big and bright, you’d have to have been blind or completely unschooled in race relations not to see it. Presumably, AsianWeek’s editors are neither.
Fang has so far stopped short of blaming anyone other than Eng for what happened, saying instead that AsianWeek is doing some soul-searching and reviewing its editorial policies. That’s like a rogue cop shooting an unarmed bystander in front of 100 witnesses and the police department responding by reviewing its use-of-force rules. Sure, procedure has its place, but it often pales in comparison to the bigger truth. And the truth here is that the most base and unsubstantiated views about black people still found expression in a sophisticated publication for and about Asians.
Was this cognitive dissonance or cognitive harmony? That’s the question we need to be asking.
Asian Pacific Americans for Progress
This is a statement provided to me on March 2. I’m posting it late, but thanks to APAP for the support!
The board of Asian Pacific Americans for Progress, a national network of progressive Asian Pacific Americans, has voted to denounce views expressed in Kenneth Eng’s column in the February 23rd edition Asianweek. In addition, the board also voted to support the work of the Asian American Justice Center, Chinese for Affirmative Action, Asian Law Caucus, Asian Pacific American Legal Center, Coalition of Asian Pacific Americans, Asian American Bar Association of the Greater Bay Area, the Equal Justice Society, Japanese American Citizens League and the Organization of Chinese Americans.
According to board member Nina Ahmad of Philadelphia, “It is so disheartening to have things like this happen. However, it only reaffirms our organization’s commitment to building coalition with other communities.”
Recognizing Asianweek’s longtime commitment and service to the APA community, we are confident they will do the right thing.
Newsweek’s Ellis Cose Commentary
Ellis Cose writes in a web commentary that the hateful column in AsianWeek should never have been printed. But it touched on a subject—tensions between blacks and Asians—that could benefit from some clear, constructive thought.
Former AW editor on the NAM forum
UPDATE 3/15: Neela rescinds her comments about David Lee here.
Neela Bannerjee, a former editor-in-chief of AsianWeek, writes about the Friday forum:
This forum was organized by New America Media (where I work) and also with help from David Lee of the Chinese American Voters Education Committee, who is one of the people who stood up for AsianWeek in this whole thing – he’s kind-of like a San Francisco Chinatown insider. Smart guy, but I’m not sure I trust him – he’s tied a little too closely to the Fangs.
Anyway, the idea was to bring together Asian American media and African American media and have them go beyond pointing fingers at Kenneth Eng’s ridiculous words and talk about responsibility and racism. I think the impulse from David Lee’s side was to stop the crucifixion of AsianWeek, but after some development – the forum turned into a really powerful discussion.
