Author: YES!

On November 8, my daughter, Samantha Sencer-Mura, a professional educator, became the first Japanese American elected as a representative from her district to the Minnesota State Legislature. And yet the story of our family and community is not necessarily one of democratic celebration. In 1898, my grandfather came here from Japan, forbidden by laws to become a citizen or own property. During WWII, my parents and their families were imprisoned by the United States government in concentration camps placed throughout desolate areas of the American West. My parents were natural-born citizens from Seattle and Los Angeles, 11 and 15...

At the heart of the Korean spirit is a concept called “Han.” It is central to Korean-ness in the same way “aloha” is to Hawaiian-ness. Oddly, however, it is rarely mentioned in conversation or in the media. Its English translation is nonexistent. But I will try to describe it, because Han is the resilience of my ancestors, who have endured the unendurable for the past 9,000 years. There may be clues here on how we in the U.S. may also carry on, as we witness, stunned, our political and ecological systems in collapse. Defining Han is indeed elusive. Han...

Imagine you are reading a news story about race relations in the United States, and the reporter interviews the Grand Dragon of the Ku Klux Klan to get his opinion on Black people. Sounds outrageous, right? Reporters would never do this, because the KKK is designated as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center, and the opinion of the Grand Dragon is not newsworthy, because his views are predictable and beyond the pale. The KKK is just one of over 1,000 SPLC-designated hate groups, and news organizations generally refrain from interviewing any of them, with one conspicuous...

The first time I learned about the history of race and racism in America was during my first year of college, when I read Ta-Nehisi Coates’ book “Between the World and Me.” Before then, I had plenty of lessons on race, only none of them had ever happened in the classroom. Growing up as a mixed-race Iranian American girl in the suburban Midwest, being the target of racism was as integral to my education as learning how to read. As a kid, my skin was much darker than it is today, and in my mostly White classroom, I was...