Mea Culpa: Article by Asian American White Supremacist Likely Fabricated

By Louis Chan
AsAmNews National Correspondent

An article published by Medium titled Why I Was an Asian White Supremacist and reported on by AsAmNews was likely fabricated.

Suspicion about the article came to light when Jenn Fang in her Reappropriate blog connected the author “Angie Lee” to the Twitter account of @hmasculazn.

Since that article was published, both Twitter accounts of @hmasculazn and Angie Lee (AKA @SouthernAsaingal) have been deleted. The article has also disappeared from Medium after having been deleted by the author (although it can still be found on a Google cache).

AsAmNews contacted a spokesperson for Medium in an attempt to get the definitive word on the authenticity of the article.

Medium declined to say and gave no indication it had even looked into the issue.

“Medium is a free and open platform for anyone to write their views and opinions,” said spokesperson Sandee Roston. “As such we don’t vet or approve posts before our users publish them, and they are free to delete them at any time.”

That’s what I call “washing your hands of an issue.”

AsAmNews apologizes for spreading the apparent misinformation in the article. While we are an all-volunteer website, we take our responsibility to the community seriously and should have done a better job of vetting the article.

For that, we are sorry.

Larry Shinagawa who founded the popular Facebook page Asians Now and is the former Director of Asian American Studies at the University of Maryland understands why so many believed the article was factual.

“It had all the elements to pull the emotions of Asian and Asian American males, who would feel drawn by its “confession,” said Shinagawa. “It would also seem to validate their perceptions and would antagonize some Asian American women as well. It also was quite apparent that the identity of the person was untraceable.”

But here’s the warning sign that many of us missed, including this reporter.

“The article was too on the dot,” said Shinagawa.

An Asian woman in a predominantly White town longs to be accepted by her peers.

A White teen shows interest in her and opens up a whole new social circle of friends for the young woman. That same White teen begins to show an interest in Nazis and becomes a White supremacist. Asian teen decides to join him.

White teen gets Asian girl pregnant, but the baby looks more White than Asian. White supremacists dumps Asian teen.

Too incredible to be true.

Of course, AsAmNews is not the first publication to be fooled. There was the notorious story by Janet Cook in the Washington Post that even won a Pulitzer Prize, only to be discredited later as fabricated.  Jason Blair of the New York Times was also found to have fabricated stories.

We mention this not to make excuses. We hold our self to a high standard.

Again, AsAmNews is sorry.

AsAmNews has Asian America in its heart.  We’re an all-volunteer effort of dedicated staff and interns. You can show your support by liking our Facebook page at  www.facebook.com/asamnews, following us on Twitter, sharing our stories, interning or joining our staff.