Last year, I began a blog called Dharma Folk with a friend who goes by the online nom de plume John. I’ve had a great time writing on that blog and exploring issues in the Buddhist community. But Dharma Folk is a group blog, and I get the feeling that my posts have been drowning out the voices of my cobloggers, notably John, Oz and kudos. A couple of them would likely be much more happy to write on the blog if they knew their words weren’t going to be hidden between posts by the Angry Asian Buddhist.
So I’m moving all that rubbish over here.
As of today, I’ve got 27 Angry Asian Buddhist posts over at Dharma Folk. It all started when I was trying to find resources for Asian American Buddhists, followed by two periods when I lashed out against the hegemony of white Buddhists, first in the blogosphere and then in print. Most recently, a rant that began about the exclusion of Asian American Buddhists in a Buddhadharma piece has developed into Asian Meter, an analysis of the under-representation of Asian American Buddhists in high profile Buddhist publications, which in turn has sent me reviewing the statistics in the U.S. Religious Landscape Survey by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life.
The idea for “Angry Asian Buddhist” comes from Phil Yu’s Angry Asian Man blog. The name combines the irony of “Angry Asian” and “Angry Buddhist”, which are terms meant to counter the notion that all Asians are polite and submissive or that all Buddhists are calm and detached. As the Man himself explains it:

I’m not as angry as you think. Yes, racism angers me. But I’m not here sitting in front of the computer, hating whitey and plotting revolution. This is just a subject that has always interested me — pointing out racism and noting any and all appearances of Asians in mass media and popular culture (the good and the bad). It’s something I care about. So I’ve created a little space on the web for it all… I suppose the angry part sometimes scares people, but rest assured, I’m a pretty civil, reasonable guy. Just don’t cross me.

The main difference is that Phil Yu is funny, while I can get pretty snarky. I’m not doing this for money or for fame, I just want to share my thoughts and my occasional research.