Steve Ly challenged in Elk Grove mayoral race + Marvel exec accused of racism: Your AAPI newsletter
It is Friday, July 31, and this is The Sacramento Bee’s AAPI weekly newsletter.
Here’s a recap of the stories I’ve recently covered and issues I’m following:
Longtime Elk Grove school board member Bobbie Singh-Allen announced Tuesday she will challenge Mayor Steve Ly in the mayoral election this November. Singh-Allen said alleged harassment toward her and other women “fueled my fire” to run against the incumbent mayor.
Since June, Ly has been accused of failing to stop his supporters from directing online harassment toward them or other people viewed as adversaries. Ly was also accused by his former campaign manager, Linda Vue, of trying to pressure her into removing damaging comments on Facebook. Singh-Allen is one of the four women who have criticized Ly.
Singh-Allen said Ly criticized her appointment to the school board in 2012 and tried to have her removed. She said his attempt was followed by a barrage of attacks online from his supporters — almost as if it was coordinated.
An online petition recently surfaced on Change.org calling for her to resign after Singh-Allen began criticizing Ly in June.
“I’ve been under a lot of stress from all of this since it started. I can now use that stress because those tactics aren’t going to stop. He’s going to continue using his associates to come at me,” Singh-Allen said of the online petition.
In other news
Chinese researcher arrested by FBI when she left consulate for medical care [The Sacramento Bee]
- Inside Queens, San Francisco’s Expertly Curated Korean-American Superette [Bon Appetit]
- Traveling while Asian during the pandemic [CNN]
- Young Asian American DNC delegates aim to get out the vote, increase party representation [NBC News]
- Don’t settle: Woman in arranged marriage reflects on colorism, misogyny in ‘Indian Matchmaking’ [NBC News]
- Man accused of running over Sikh man charged with hate crime [Associated Press]
One Korean American’s reckoning [NPR]
Gardena resident imprisoned in camp paves way for generations of Asian American activism [Spectrum News]
Fifth-generation Japanese-American shares journey of embracing his identity [Spectrum News]
California woman yells racial slur at Asian American USPS worker in video [Newsweek]
This week in AAPI pop culture
Peter Shinkoda, who played Nobu on Netflix’s hit Marvel series “Daredevil,” alleged that a Marvel executive cut his and another Asian actor’s storylines from the show after telling him that “nobody gives a s—” about Asian people.
During this weekend’s virtual #SaveDaredevil Con, Shinkoda claimed that Jeph Loeb, head of Marvel Television, ordered the show’s writers to stop making storylines for Nobu and another character named Gao, played by Wai Ching Ho.
“Jeph Loeb told the writers’ room ... and this was reiterated many times by many of the writers and showrunners — that nobody cares about Chinese people and Asian people,” Shinkoda said during the virtual event. “There were three previous Marvel movies, a trilogy called ‘Blade’ that was made where Wesley Snipes kills 200 Asians each movie. ‘Nobody gives a s---, so don’t write about Nobu and Gao.’ So they were forced to put their storyline down and drop it.”
Loeb has faced backlash before after wearing a mock karate outfit to promote Netflix’s “Iron Fist” — which has been widely criticized for appropriating Asian culture — at San Diego Comic-Con in 2018. And when BuzzFeed reporters asked Loeb in 2016 why the main character of “Iron Fist” had to be a white man, he defended the casting by saying the lead had to be an “outsider.”
Got a story suggestion? Please reach out to me at awong@sacbee.com.
That’s it for this week’s newsletter. Thanks for reading!
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This story was originally published July 31, 2020 at 9:50 AM.