The email that has haunted me for 10 years

Way back in 1998, I was working my first job at the Asian American Journalists Association. That year was the Winter Olympics in Nagano, Japan.

One day, our office was notified that the MSNBC website reported the women's figure skating results with this headline:

"American beats out Kwan"

This was in reference to Tara Lipinski beating Michelle Kwan. Obviously, this was a somewhat misleading and offensive headline since both were Americans.  The not-so-subtle implication was that Kwan was not American, which played on age old stereotypes that Americans of Asian decent aren't really American.

Being young and brash (and recently graduated from college where I was active in various campus organizations), I sent out an email to a handful of friends bringing attention to the headline and making a few jokes. This email came back to haunt me as it got forwarded back and forth across the country several times over. I got emails from friends i hadn't talked to in years saying "dude, i got your email!"

The email was forwarded around so much that Asian Week picked it up and printed it as a letter to the editor without my consent.

It also almost got me fired because I had sent the email from my work email account, so it was taken by some to be a response by the Asian American Journalists Association.

The email continued to float around cyberspace for many years.

Yesterday, i find out that i'm quoted in a frickin' book!

I'm quoted in this book:

Who knows, perhaps this book will be read by generations of young students in their Asian American studies courses.

I'm not really sure what to think of this.  I was pretty pissed when Asian Week printed my email without my consent.  I had even called the managing editor to complain, but they refused to write and addendum.

It's also odd to see my email quoted in a book when the email caused me so much grief at the time.

Here's a copy of the original email I wrote 10 years ago!

Reporting on the Olympic figure skating competition, MSNBC(Microsoft's internet news venture) used the following headline after Tara Lipinski took the gold:"American beats out Kwan"Kwan, which all of you and most of the world should know, is an  American skater.  As such, this headline could be interpretted in a variety of ways:  racist, stupid, ignorant, offensive, etc.The Asian American Journalists Association is writing a formal  statement in regards to MSNBC's use of the headline.  In phone conversations,  MSNBC and it's online newsroom have responded by saying that the reporter who wrote the article did not have it approved by the editor before posting it to the internet.  They have also indicated there was no malicious (AKA: racist) intent.Here would be my suggested alternatives for headlines:"Lipinski beats out Kwan""Polack beats out Chink""Whitey beats out Slant""U.S. beats out Red China""The Great White Race beats out The Inscrupulous Yellow Peril"(Please take those last 4 as jokes)Whether or not there were racial undertones to the headline (i.e. White=American and Asian=foreigner), this was irresponsible journalism and should not be tolerated.If you would like to respond to MSNBC, you may e-mail them at the following address:sports@msnbc.comThanks,Brandon SugiyamaExecutive Leadership Program CoordinatorAsian American Journalists Associationbrandons@aaja.org