"Why I Hate Blacks" Writer Out

Paper Says Piece Should Not Have Been Published

The AsianWeek newspaper announced Wednesday that it has "terminated" the author of "Why I Hate Blacks," freelance contributor Kenneth Eng, and called publication of his opinion piece "an insensitive and callous mistake that should never have been made by our publication."

Kenneth Eng

"As a publication whose motto is the 'voice of the Asian American community' we are humbled and overwhelmed at reader response not only chastising our editorial process, but strongly urging our paper to sever all ties to this contributor. We have heard the call," said the statement, posted at 9:39 a.m. Pacific time on the publication's Web site.

The statement did not say whether any editors would be punished for "this serious lapse in editorial judgment," but said that, "In the future we will take extra steps to ensure that while diversity of opinion remains a constant pillar in AsianWeek editorial policy, promotion of hate speech of any kind will not and should not ever be tolerated." It at first said Eng would be "suspended," then changed the statement to say "terminated."

Starting at midday, phones at the publication were being answered with a voice-message system.

San Francisco Chronicle columnist Jon Carroll wrote Wednesday of AsianWeek's editor-in-chief, "If Samson Wong knew how ignorant the column was and published it anyway, that's one kind of bad. If he didn't, what's he doing editing a newspaper?"

Eng is a 23-year-old New York-based science fiction writer. He had been a regular contributor since November, writing roughly every two weeks, according to Leslie Fulbright writing in Wednesday editions of the Chronicle.

In Eng's piece, he listed "reasons" to discriminate against African Americans.

"Prominent Asian Americans immediately condemned the column and began circulating a petition calling for the paper to apologize, terminate its relationship with Eng, print an editorial refuting the column and review its editorial policy," the Chronicle story continued.

"The outcry has grown louder as more people learn of the column.

"San Francisco's Board of Supervisors adopted a resolution Tuesday condemning the column, saying it lowered "the level of public discourse on issues of race."

"Mayor Gavin Newsom also condemned the column."

On Wednesday, so did the area's congressional representative, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif. "The hateful views expressed in Kenneth Eng’s column must not be tolerated and AsianWeek’s decision to print them was irresponsible. Eng’s words were not only offensive to African Americans, but to all Americans," she said.

The San Francisco Bay Area publication, which claims a circulation of 48,505, is run by the Fang family, which owned the San Francisco Examiner for three years after buying it from the Hearst Corp. in 2001.

Ted Fang, editor-at-large of AsianWeek, apologized at a news conference held by the Rev. Amos C. Brown, head of the San Francisco branch of the NAACP and pastor of Third Baptist Church of San Francisco. Fang said there that Eng would be fired, Brown told Journal-isms.

Brown said he surprised reporters when he said, "AsianWeek is not the problem. We have a societal problem." Fang "did something that the U.S. government has failed to do," comparing Fang's apology with the government's failure to apologize for slavery.

Brown told reporters that San Francisco had lost 50,000 blacks since 1970 and that the black percentage of the population had shrunk to 7.1 percent from 17 or 18 percent but that Asian Americans and Hispanics had increased. "That says that something is rotten," he said. The real issues are redlining, lack of black students on the San Francisco board of education, and the decline of African Americans in the city, he said.

"They weren't expecting that," Brown said of the reporters who attended the news conference. "They were thinking we would just have an open session beating up on the Fang family." But he said the Fangs had given journalism scholarships to African Americans in journalism and had supported black causes.

He has to forgive the publication, Brown said. "I'm a spiritual leader." Ted Fang "said it wouldn't happen again. The young man is gone. That's all you can expect of them," Brown said.

In Thursday's editions, the Chronicle said Asian American activists were still looking for journalistic accountability on the part of AsianWeek and noted that Wong, the editor-in-chief, did not attend the news conference.

"Another conversation on the column is planned Friday, when New America Media, a national coalition of ethnic media outlets based in San Francisco, has invited community leaders to discuss the media's role in fostering greater understanding between Asian Americans and African Americans," Thursday's story said.

Following is the "Why I Hate Blacks" column. AsianWeek pulled the piece from its Web site, but it remains in its print edition.

• CONTROVERSY: AsianWeek column on "Why I Hate Blacks" (South Asian Journalists Association Forum)
  
  
• More coverage, petition (dontspeakfor.us)
  
  

Poll: Obama Backed by Majority of Black Voters

In his Senate race, Obama got 80 to 90 percent of the African American vote

A CNN report Wednesday by Candy Crowley and Sasha Johnson said that, "Blacks, in part, may be slow to warm to the candidacy of Obama because, a CNN/Opinion Research Corporation poll suggests, they are less likely than whites to believe that America is ready for a black president.

"The poll, conducted December 5-7, 2006, found that 65 percent of whites thought America was ready, compared with 54 percent of blacks. The poll's margin of error was plus-or-minus 5 percentage points."

Meanwhile, Obama was asked by Steve Inskeep on National Public Radio's "Morning Edition" whether he would govern differently as an African American and whether he felt the need to prove himself to black leaders.

"There are certain instincts that I have that may be stronger because of my experience as an African American," Obama said to the governing question. "I don't think they're exclusive to African Americans but I think I maybe feel them more acutely. I think I would be very interested in having a Civil Rights Division that is serious about enforcing civil rights laws. I think that when it comes to an issue like education, for example, I feel great pain knowing that there are children in a lot of schools in America who are not getting anything close to the kind of education that will allow them to compete. And I think a lot of candidates — Republican and Democrat — feel concern about that. But when I know that a lot of those kids look just like my daughters, maybe it's harder for me to separate myself from their reality. Every time I see those kids, they feel like a part of me."

On proving himself to black leaders, Obama told Inskeep:

"I think it's instructive to look at how I ran my U.S. Senate campaign. When I first started that race, I was not only registering poorly in the polls because nobody knew who I was, but it was really not that much different in the African American community. And in the end, I ended up getting 80 or 90 percent of the African American vote, but I also won the vote. So I think that the African American community is more sophisticated than I think the pundits sometimes give them credit for. The notion that right now I'm not dominating the black vote in the polls makes perfect sense because I have only been on the national scene for a certain number of years, and people don't yet know what my track record is."

• Associated Press: Clinton Campaign Accused of Snub to Ethnic Media Reporters
  
  

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Stephen A. Smith a Full-Time Columnist Again

Stephen A. Smith

The newspaper accommodated Smith's participation on the show by reducing his column load to once or twice a week, Gordon said. "Quite Frankly's" last show was Jan. 12, and "we're very excited" that Smith will be back writing three to five columns weekly, she said. Smith has been an Inquirer sportswriter since 1994.

As the Inquirer's Gail Shister reported when his show was canceled, Smith will still be on television.

"He'll be featured more regularly on "SportsCenter," NBA studio programming, and on ESPNEWS, as well as host four TV interview specials surrounding big events," she wrote.

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Magazine Writer Defends Journal-Constitution

As reported last week, Jaspin writes in his upcoming book, "Buried in the Bitter Waters: The Hidden History of Racial Cleansing in America," that the Atlanta paper tried to undermine his series and had soft-pedaled accounts of racism in Forsyth County, Ga., which is in the Journal-Constitution circulation area.

Atlanta magazine's Doug Monroe wrote, "I haven't read the book yet, but in looking at some of the comments about it, one angle that intrigues me is the possibility that Jaspin is a raging prima donna who doesn't like to be edited.

". . . As somebody who worked at the AJC for 13 years, I find Jaspin's accusations extremely difficult to believe. If anything, the paper has been obsessed with race."

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2 Differ on Significance of Sharpton Revelation

"What makes the story that broke over the weekend so compelling is that we know the charismatic activist Sharpton and we knew the onetime segregationist Thurmond," Eugene Robinson wrote on Tuesday.

"The ancestors of such public figures can't be dismissed as mere historical abstractions. They were real, flesh-and-blood men and women who played their roles, voluntarily or not, in the horrific institution that so indelibly stained this nation."

But Courtland Milloy wrote on Wednesday, "Big deal. How about whether Sharpton is descended from Mandinka royalty in Mali or sheep herders in Gambia? Better yet, trace Al to Lucy, the graceful Australopithecus anamensis, 'First Humanlike Woman of the World,' who lived in Ethiopia about 3.2 million years ago. Now we're talking genealogy.

"Otherwise, we're just splitting hairs on a gnat's butt. . . . If Sharpton really wants to muse on such minutia, he might consider this: About one-third of so-called 'white' Americans have been found by geneticists to possess 2 to 20 percent of recent African admixture. That's roughly 74 million whites. For all he knows, Thurmond could be a descendant of the Sharpton clan."

• Comments on BlackProf.com
  
  
• Lynne Duke, Washington Post: Pulling Names, And Pain, Out of the Past
  
  
• Austin Fenner and Jose Martinez, New York Daily News: It's not that bad, Rev. Al, sez Strom's biracial daughter
  
  
• Editorial, Cleveland Plain Dealer: The Rev. Sharpton's journey
  
  
• Editorial, Norfolk Virginian-Pilot: Thurmond, Sharpton separated at birth
  
  

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Richard Prince's Journal-isms originates from Washington and is published Monday, Wednesday and Friday. (Full disclosure: Richard Prince works part-time at the Washington Post and is editor of the Black College Wire.) For newcomers: The words in blue (on most computers) are links leading to more information. The Web site BugMeNot.com provides passwords and user names to some registration-only news sites.

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