Nice try, VA.

As some of you may know (and if you work at a government job, you would) this month is National Asian/Pacific Islander American Heritage Month and it's being celebrated in the work place! February was African American heritage and March was Women's, this month is for the Asians slash Pacific Islanders! Yay! That's great right? I'm Chinese and the big boss of the VA is Japanese.......... Yeaaaaah. I was SO WRONG. In a memo written on the Secretary of Veterans of Affairs, Secretary Shinseki was described as "Japanese American- or more generally, Asian American."

I laughed out loud. First of all, who wrote this article and who MORE GENERALLY labels someone? Oh right. I work for the VA where diversity is pretty limited, as I've come to find. Look my friends, just because I'm Chinese doesn't mean I know what sort of vegetables "Chinese vegetables" on a take out menu means. It also doesn't mean that I know how a dish is cooked. A guy hitting on me asked me if I owned a kimono. Good one, buddy. It boggles the mind that these are questions that have come out of the mouths of adults that have somehow managed to live for more than 2+ decades.

Well, back to celebrating Asian Month at the workplace. I don't know what I expected... I guess, well... here's my baseline. For African American month, there was a huge display of African tribal arts, photos of influential African Americans, and even a daily intercom message of the bio an important African American that we, as VA employees were FORCED TO LISTEN. For Asian Heritage Month, I guess I just expected about about 50% of that. Maybe a nice display in the front hall? No one likes reading and having to listen to bios anyway.

To my dismay, I saw this placed in the elevator banks last week.

I have a high tolerance for things, but even I began to feel a bit insulted. Let's go over this poster corner by corner, shall we? I've circled a few things that I wanted you to focus on.

TOP LEFT:

CENTER:

BOTTOM LEFT:The pixels that I'm talking about are on the actual poster itself. My camera is awesome.

Nice try. I don't feel honored at all. I feel disgusted, but why stop on the 1st floor when there are three more to observe?

Ding! You've just come upon the second floor and what do you see?

Oh, just a Japanese sun painted by someone from Diversitystore.com, that's where they got these posters from.

Third floor, right in front of the Manager's Office.

NICE TRY, VA.  WOW. Things just keep getting better. I guess, I would have to say, thanks VA, for perpetuating that Asian Pacific Americans are hard working, slanty eyed nerds who carry lunch boxes, who are all mustard yellow skinned, chemists, astronauts and other various hardworking white collar workers. It must be the style of the art, but I could have SWORN THAT ASIAN PEOPLE HAD EYES. How is that police officer supposed to protect American when he can't see?

Ding! Fourth floor, right in front of the Director's office.

Is this honoring the Silk Road? BACK WHEN AMERICA DIDN'T EXIST? I'm not sure I understand what this is? Tons of Asians hang out together and trade? Some of them are doctors, others congregate tightly while making transactions, and let's not forget the favorite of the soldiers in the Vietnam, front and center, the prostitute. AWESOME. This, too, is from Diversitystore.com. 

Hey, HR, I think you would have had better luck if you had just posted pictures of Hello Kitty everywhere. All FOUR of the Asians in the office of 300+ might have liked it more, I know I would have.. and I'm 25% of those being appreciated.

Thanks for perpetuating stereotypes and showing just how much you don't care.

... oh and I had to read a mini-bio on Bruce Lee yesterday. I can't wait for what's in store on Monday.