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(Editor’s note: Youth Outlook and WireTap are kicking off the third Youth Media Blog-a-thon. This month’s topic is money.)

Once in a blue moon my mother will throw out the term ‘money sucker.’ It’s her derogatory label of those people who are all about the benjamins, baby. I don’t hear her rant about the money makers very often these days, but growing up she used to say it all the time. I remember these personalities in her life like zombies chasing dollar after vacuous dollar, bereft of virtue or worthwhile purpose. It instilled in me a distaste and discomfort with money and its zombifying properties, even as my mother’s opinions about money began to change.

caaaassshh… er, braiins??

It’s probably relevant that we were a lot poorer then. By the time I was in middle school she’d bought her first home, and the rants took a significant drop. We settled in a nice city with a good school, and I noticed my mother’s attitude about money had changed from something negative to something positive. Read more

Tags: Commentary, Youth Media Blog-A-Thon.

Sigh… there’s an article in this Sunday’s NYT about “Elite Korean Schools, Forging Ivy League Skills.”

If you couldn’t guess from the headline, the article is about two schools in South Korea that send a lot of their students to Ivy League schools in the US.  The article talks about how students from one of these schools score higher on the SAT than students from Phillips Exeter.  And how American-educated teachers at these schools think that even their “worst students are great.”  And?

The article makes it sound like a disproportionate number of students from these Korean high schools get in to Ivy League schools.  What about legacy students who get in to places like Yale?  What about class issues?  (Both of the schools profiled are private.)

Sounds to me like one big article perpetuating the model minority myth.  It makes these students sound like robots… they just study… and study.

And it’s not like youth in South Korea don’t have other skills that people should hear about… what about those 5 year old djs?  or babies singing the beatles? or the youth in Planet B-Boy?

May! It’s almost May and Asian Pacific American Heritage Month is here. With the summer solstice beckoning, it is time to setup the backyard furniture, fire up the grill, make some lemonade and enjoy more East Meets Words. Boston Progress Arts Collective welcomes Conchita Campos to East Meets Words on May 9, 2008 at 8pm. The event takes place at the East Meets West Bookstore at 934 Massachusetts Ave, Cambridge. Come listen to her sing some soulful tunes. Come early to sign up on the open mic. Bring $3, an open mind, and something to share. Have a pleasant day!

Tags: Boston Progress, Open Mic.

Watch for Shuffled! every Thursday. Check out the Shuffled! archive for past shufflers.

Today’s Shuffler: Danny “Dandiggity” Le

Danny “Dandiggity” Le is a 26-year-old Vietnamese American poet hailing from San Jose, California. He has performed for crowds all over the nation at different colleges and venues for the last seven years. With his unique brand of storytelling and humor he hopes to build a bridge of words from California to Vietnam. A friend once told him he was “a jack of all trades” and he lives up to that title very well.

Dandiggity is an artist, designer, event promoter, community organizer, street culturalist, music reviewer for Onecypher.com, freestyle dancer, and lead singer in the Christian band Before Royalty. When he is not busy juggling a million projects Diggity enjoys hanging out with old friends and making new ones to share in his laughter. He is a Libra and knows life is always going to be beautiful.

If you peep his Myspace, he offers the following words of wisdom: “Envy and hate robs people of their ability to RISE.”

You can find him at www.myspace.com/dandiggity or www.onecypher.com.

Email him at dannythienle@gmail.com if you would like to book or collaborate with him on anything. Even going out for food.

Now on to the shuffle… Read more

Tags: Shuffled!.

I bet you didn’t know that today is Pay Equity Day… or at least the internet tells me so.

I was poking around on some sites to try to learn a little more about pay inequity… and unfortunately, as I searched around for statistics on Asian American income relative to other group averages, I came up with this little footnote:

Individual earnings data for Asian/Pacific Islanders and Native Americans are available, yet they are from a very small sample and thus are not as reliable. NCPE [National Committee on Pay Equity] encourages advocates interested in additional data on Asian/Pacific Islanders and Native Americans to notify their Congressional representatives and encourage support for research in this area.

Hpmh. Ok. So we don’t know.

I think one of the biggest issues about pay equity is that the issue isn’t just about men and women (or Asian Americans and white Americans) getting paid the same in the same job. But it’s also about the value assigned to jobs that are traditionally viewed as women’s work and jobs that are traditionally viewed as men’s work. This makes more sense to me. I worry about why someone providing childcare or teaching a child gets paid so little relative to people who work in finance. Do we really value the work of the person in finance that much more than the person providing care to a young child?  (I have no idea what working in “finance” actually entails.  But I can definitely understand why I would want to pay some one providing care to a child more that $8.75 an hour…)

I remember seeing a graph that charted average incomes for men and women by the degrees that they earned.  And I remember seeing that average incomes for men with high school diplomas were about the same as the average income for women with masters degrees.  Clearly, there’s a lot of work that needs to be done before there will be pay equity.

As a woman of color and a mother, I often wonder if I have made the best career choice to be able to financially support my family.  And while, it is depressing to think about how much people in other industries are making, for me, it’s not just about pay and equity.  It’s also about finding work that supports what you believe in, that supports your values.  And this, in many ways, is worth more than any salary.  (Well, almost.)

[Oh yeah, and happy earth day too!  As my daughter says, today you have to hug the earth!]

Boston is not often recognized as one of those cities where a lot of cultural stuff happens, but you know cultural stuff does happen. Boston, a city with about a population of 590,763 (Greater Boston has a population of 4.4 million), is not exactly a New York City or Los Angeles in terms of “cultural happenings” especially with regards to “Asian” stuff. However, don’t be too quick to dismiss the Bean. Case in point is the 2008 rendition of the Boston Independent Film Festival which runs from April 23 to 29. Check out their blog for tips on what to see.

I took a quick gander at the program and a few films and events caught my eye. I have no idea if any of these movies are any good, but you can’t always trust reviews anyway. What I’m saying is, you ought to go check the movies out for yourself. You might like a movie that someone hates. So, here are the films that caught my eye. Warning: I’m a documentary junkie. Read more

Tags: Commentary, film festival.

All five of you devoted readers of Boston Progress Radio may have noticed a drop off in our article production. Needless to say, the staff here at BPR has gotten mildly busy as the leaves begin the grow and the weather begins to warm up. For substitutes, as you wait eagerly for our next exciting post, you’ve been reading some Angry Asian Man, some 8Asians, or some Hyphen Magazine articles. I hope that they have satisfied your need for news, thoughts, and musings about Asian American indie art and music.

In due time, I will find some energy and time to discuss and play some awesome new music that I’ve received from artists around the country, but this is not the blog post for that activity. Instead, I am here to consider a very frivolous topic not related to art. Read more

Tags: Commentary.

Watch for Shuffled! every Thursday. Check out the Shuffled! archive for past shufflers.

Today’s Shuffler: Goh Nakamura

Goh Nakamura is a San Francisco Bay Area based musician who likes to write ditties about parking tickets, impossible crushes and faraway dreamlands (amongst other things). Accompanying himself with digital samplers and an acoustic guitar, his live solo shows are always unique and often unpredictable.

Goh has a strong Boston connection though. He grew up in Lexington, MA, a suburb of Boston, and attended the Berklee College of Music. Goh Nakamura’s debut album, “Daylight Savings”, was named one of the Top Ten Local Albums of 2004 by the San Jose Metro. He plans to release his second album entitled “Ulysses” in the summer of 2008.

Goh has contributed his guitar and vocal work to the Ridley Scott films “A Good Year” and most recently “American Gangster”. His song “Daylight Savings” was chosen to be included on the soundtrack to the Robert Benton film “Feast of Love” starring Morgan Freeman and Greg Kinnear.

You can find out more about Goh at his website gohnakamura.com or on his myspace: http://www.myspace.com/gohnakamura. Or if you like videos, check out his page on YouTube: www.youtube.com/gohnakamura.

Let us see what he shuffled up… Read more

Tags: Shuffled!.