Asian Americans

For many Southern Californians, summer is the season for beaches, chaise longues and the quest for the perfect tan. Not for Margaret Qiu. She and thousands of other Asian American women are going to great lengths to avoid the sun -- fighting to preserve or enhance their pale complexions with expensive creams, masks, gloves, professional face scrubs and medical procedures.

The United States has reached a historic tipping point, with children born to Latino, Asian, African American and mixed-race parents now constituting a majority of all births, the Census Bureau reported Thursday. The long-expected demographic shift is considered a milestone for the nation, though one that California passed three decades ago when births to racial and ethnic minorities surpassed those to white parents. The new report shows that minorities accounted for about 2 million, or 50.4%, of U.S. births in the 12 months ending July 1 of last year.

Holmes Stoner's proposal sounded about as logical as pouring soy sauce on a burrito. While there were Cinco de Mayo parties all over Southern California two weekends ago, Universal Studios was hosting an Asian-American festival. Figuring that it wouldn't attract many Latinos that weekend anyway, it chased after the Asian-American market instead.

WASHINGTON - The Senate confirmed Jacqueline H. Nguyen of Los Angeles to the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals on Monday, making her the first Asian American woman to sit on a federal appellate court. By a 91-3 vote, the Senate agreed to Nguyen's nomination as part of an earlier deal to begin acting on President Obama's nominees. Republicans had been holding up some of the president's choices as part of a protest over White House appointments. The Senate also approved Kristine Gerhard Baker of Arkansas and John Lee of Illinois to federal district courts - making Lee the second Korean American on a federal district court.

Bing Wang and Shaun Gong plan to ring in the Chinese New Year Wednesday by taking their 10-month-old daughter, Anna Ying Gong, to Hsi Lai Temple in Hacienda Heights to burn incense in hopes it will bring her extra good luck. But fortune already has smiled on the child. Anna, born March 6, came into the world in the Year of the Dragon, the most fortuitous sign in the Chinese zodiac. Her parents, like many Asian Americans, planned it just that way.

Of all the drives, dunks and dazzling shots Jeremy Lin is forcing upon the stars of the NBA, none of it compares with the moves he's putting on a larger collection of everyday people. Jeremy Lin has dribbled America into the previously quiet corner of its casual prejudice and lazy stereotypes of Asian Americans. The true beauty of his story is in awareness of the ugliness that has been found there. It's been barely two weeks since the beginning of a tale that rocked the sports world with great basketball and bad puns, but so much already has changed.

Taiko and Gemma Chen may not celebrate all 15 days of the lunar new year, nor do they believe they are sweeping away prosperity by cleaning the house. But there is one centuries-old tradition the Asian American couple still swears by: having a baby in the Year of the Dragon, considered the most auspicious year in the 12-year zodiac cycle. "We're both dragons ourselves," said Gemma Chen, "so three dragons in the family would be really, really lucky. And we're 36, so we can't wait another 12 years.

The rise of New York Knicks basketball player Jeremy Lin has drawn fans as diverse as Harlem street ballers, late-night talk show hosts and Sarah Palin, but nowhere has his story been more deeply felt than within Asian Americans. In the Asian American community even third and fourth generations must contend with being treated as perpetual foreigners. So it comes as no surprise that they have embraced the big pop culture bang that created "Linsanity" — a force that already has turned long-entrenched cultural stereotypes on their heads and made the Ivy League-educated point guard the most visible Asian American in the country, if not the world.

Asian Americans typically have the lowest unemployment rate of any ethnic group in the United States. But in this weak labor market, once they lose their jobs, they have an especially hard time reentering the labor force, data show. In July, nearly half of all jobless Asian Americans in California had been out of work for 27 weeks or longer, compared with 40% of Latinos and 42% of whites, according to an analysis of data from the state Employment Development Department. Experts said the strong family and cultural ties that bind Asian entrepreneurs and a largely foreign-born Asian workforce can be a liability during tough times; laid-off workers often aren't sure where to turn for work outside their ethnic circles.

Akari Nakahara wakes up at 4:30 a.m. six days a week. While most people are asleep, she races through breakfast before rushing off with her mother to an ice skating rink. Once there, Akari will spend two hours stretching, spinning and soaring through the air like a ballerina on ice. Only 7, Akari is one of a growing number of young Asian Americans who have fallen in love with figure skating and dream of becoming the next Michelle Kwan or Kristi Yamaguchi. "She loves to skate," said Akari's mother, Kaori Nakahara, a piano teacher from Japan who recently began driving her daughter from their home in Santa Clarita to the Pasadena Ice Skating Center to train with her favorite coach.

The Los Angeles riots - six days of arson, looting and death - are known to Korean Americans as Sa-i-gu , "April 29" in Korean, the date the civil unrest started. Sa-i-gu erupted after the acquittal of one Latino and three white police officers charged with the beating of Rodney King, a black motorist. Blacks, whites, Latinos, Asian Americans, Korean Americans and others were directly and indirectly affected - and involved - in Sa-i-gu . But it was Korean immigrant merchants who were, memorably, too often caught in the middle.

The rise of New York Knicks basketball player Jeremy Lin has drawn fans as diverse as Harlem street ballers, late-night talk show hosts and Sarah Palin, but nowhere has his story been more deeply felt than within Asian Americans. In the Asian American community even third and fourth generations must contend with being treated as perpetual foreigners. So it comes as no surprise that they have embraced the big pop culture bang that created "Linsanity" — a force that already has turned long-entrenched cultural stereotypes on their heads and made the Ivy League-educated point guard the most visible Asian American in the country, if not the world.

Of all the drives, dunks and dazzling shots Jeremy Lin is forcing upon the stars of the NBA, none of it compares with the moves he's putting on a larger collection of everyday people. Jeremy Lin has dribbled America into the previously quiet corner of its casual prejudice and lazy stereotypes of Asian Americans. The true beauty of his story is in awareness of the ugliness that has been found there. It's been barely two weeks since the beginning of a tale that rocked the sports world with great basketball and bad puns, but so much already has changed.

Wilshire Boulevard, which collides with many enclaves as it wends through Los Angeles, is the perfect thoroughfare for a presidential aspirant looking to woo niche voters. Newt Gingrich made his pitch Thursday to two distinctly different groups along Wilshire: Asian American business leaders in Koreatown, and Jewish voters who paid to lunch and pose for photos with the former House speaker in an Italian restaurant in Beverly Hills. Gingrich, who arrived in California on Monday, has trailed badly in polls and fared poorly in the last five states to hold voting contests.

Taiko and Gemma Chen may not celebrate all 15 days of the lunar new year, nor do they believe they are sweeping away prosperity by cleaning the house. But there is one centuries-old tradition the Asian American couple still swears by: having a baby in the Year of the Dragon, considered the most auspicious year in the 12-year zodiac cycle. "We're both dragons ourselves," said Gemma Chen, "so three dragons in the family would be really, really lucky. And we're 36, so we can't wait another 12 years.

Miles Young strode down a narrow passageway in a bustling Chinatown fish market, methodically scanning aquariums and plastic bins filled with hundreds of live frogs selling for $3.99 a pound. They were imported from frog farms in Taiwan, the environmental activist and former game warden said. The species is particularly susceptible to a skin fungus linked to vanishing amphibians around the world. And the conditions in which bullfrogs are raised, transported and sold are ideal breeding grounds for the fungus and its waterborne zoospores.

It was a shame to see that Asian Americans have their self-appointed Jesse Jackson-like spokesman, Stewart Kwoh (Commentary, May 28). He dredges up the Japanese internment story (60 years old), exaggerates human rights abuses of Asian immigrants (comparing them to violations in China) and promotes the same tired victimization theme so common today. Fortunately, most Asian Americans I know, including my wife and relatives, don't think that way. They don't expect America to be perfect and they know that there will always be bigotry, but lacking in self-pity and full of appreciation for the freedoms and opportunities they have found here, they continue to focus on the positives that have helped them become the most successful American minority.

Brandon Cao is an especially observant 15-year-old. He can see that his father, a Cambodian immigrant and independent trucker, is working himself sick — the stress is causing patches of his skin to break out in crimson-colored rashes. In fact, the northeast L.A. neighborhood where Brandon was born and raised is making everyone who lives there a little sick, and a little crazy, with its freeway-polluted air, back-breaking jobs and skyrocketing rents. "All that we're asking for in our community are jobs that you can feed your family with, a home that you can live in and a place with air to breathe that doesn't kill you," Brandon told me. Brandon is a community leader in training.

Truffles shaved onto wild-caught yellowtail sashimi or kanpachi nigiri splashed with black caviar might begin your omakase at Got Sushi? Or the chef might enrobe supple ribbons of pristine snapper in creamy cured uni brightened with the sharp citrus snap of yuzu and house-made soy sauce. Close your eyes and for a moment it's easy to forget that this tiny sushi bar is squeezed into a corner of King's Burgers, a fully operational burger joint in Northridge. With its vintage beige leatherette tuck 'n' roll booths and faux wood grain Formica tabletops, the classic setting is visually perfect for a place known for enormous breakfast burritos and fully loaded pastrami burgers.