California Filipinos not tested for COVID-19 + CSU ethnic studies bill: Your AAPI newsletter
It is Thursday, June 25, and this is The Sacramento Bee’s AAPI weekly newsletter.
Theodora Yu’s last day with The Bee is Friday! She’ll be going home to Hong Kong to freelance. If you want to keep track of her future work, follow her on Twitter, @theodorayuhk. We will miss her!
Here’s a recap of the stories we have recently covered and issues we’re following:
A University of California, Davis, survey found that hundreds of at-risk Filipinos living in California have yet to be tested for COVID-19. The Bulosan Center for Filipino Studies distributed a survey over 10 weeks to more than 800 people in the Filipino community statewide. Despite the fact that 41 percent of the respondents reported they or other members of their household were health care workers, 93 percent said they still had not been tested.
Additionally, 56 percent of the respondents said they were living with people with preexisting health conditions that would put them at greater risk for contracting COVID-19, the illness caused by the coronavirus. Yet 41 percent said they did not know where the nearest testing facility was.
“This shows me how information is being sent out there,” said Roy “RJ” Taggueg, a UC Davis doctoral student and the survey’s lead researcher. “Is that information easily accessible for Filipinos? … It’s not.
A bill requiring ethnic studies as a graduation requirement for California State University college students has been approved by the state Senate. The bill would require students starting with the incoming class of 2025 to complete at least one three-unit course in ethnic studies as an undergraduate requirement. Currently, all but one of its 23 campuses offer ethnic studies classes.
The core classes will focus on four historically marginalized groups: Native Americans, African Americans, Latino Americans and Asian Americans. Critics worry about students not being able to graduate on time, and some say the Legislature should not intervene with academia, especially when the CSU system was already facing lean budgets due to COVID-19.
Nia Gregory, a graduate student at Sacramento State, said ethnic studies is about more than educating people about unfamiliar communities.
“Is taking a three-unit course going to be more of a hardship than leading a society with ignorant people?” Gregory said. “Something is missing in the curriculum.”
In other news
- Congressional candidate questions if ‘kung flu’ is racist, drawing ridicule on Twitter [The Sacramento Bee]
- Affirmative action will be on California’s ballot in November [The Sacramento Bee]
California effort to restore affirmative action divides Asian Americans [San Francisco Chronicle]
- An Asian-American author talks about racism in the pandemic [New York Times]
- The 1982 killing of Vincent Chin was ‘the first time Asian-Americans came together’ to fight for justice [South China Morning Post]
- Building Sikh studies at UCI [UCI News]
- Oakland professor on leave after asking student to ‘Anglicize’ her name [Los Angeles Times]
- Kellie Chauvin and a history of Asian women being judged for whom they marry [NBC News]
K-pop fans are being credited with helping disrupt Trump’s rally. Here’s why that shouldn’t be a surprise [CNN]
- Opinion: The link between anti-Black racism and Trump’s ‘kung flu’ comment [The Mercury News]
This week in AAPI pop culture
“Asian Enough,” a weekly podcast hosted by Los Angeles Times columnist Frank Shyong and film reporter Jen Yamato, had U.S. Sen. Kamala Harris on this week to talk about the rise of anti-Asian racism, growing up Indian and Jamaican and how the California Democrat’s mixed race identity played out on the campaign trail.
Got a story suggestion? Please reach out to me at awong@sacbee.com.
That’s it for this week’s newsletter. Thank you for reading, and take care of yourself today!
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