By Louis Chan, AsAmNews National Correspondent
Actor Daniel Dae Kim Thursday presented Angry Asian Man Phil Yu with the Peabody’s Trailblazer Award.
In the video presentation, Kim described the honoree as “an advocate before there was such a thing as social media advocacy.
“Twitter started in 2006, Facebook started in 2004, our next recipient, our honoree, started his blog in 2001. When he started, he was one of the only people doing advocacy in this way.”
Kim went on to describe Yu as an “indispensable voice in the Asian American community.”
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The man known as Angry Asian Man says he grew up as a child of pop culture and “rarely saw stories or people or characters that reflected my experience. It just felt like there was a misrepresentation or just invisibility which came to the way Asians were depicted on screen…when I felt the sting of racism it was flung my way in a way that said ‘what are you going to do about it.'”
What he did was start Angry Asian Man, an opinion and news blog about the Asian American community. He said the words angry and Asian may have seemed as an oxymoron together-the words just didn’t fit together and he felt at times alone.
He says readers told him he was articulating things that they had been feeling all along and it gave him permission to do so as well.
In its announcement, the Peabody said “He spoke up when others did not. He built community and allowed space for that community to be creative and innovative, to see themselves as creators and valued/respected audience members.
“For upholding the original vision of what the web could be, encouraging and inspiring the next generation of creators and community, for being unapologetic about centering the Asian American experience and for staying angry, Phil Yu is awarded a Peabody.”
Yu says the award, while to him feels like a prank, also “confirmed that the stuff you were doing Phil was worthwhile and it connected with people and that kind of storytelling matters. It feels pretty good. Mom, look what I got. It feels really cool.”
Phil, stay angry.
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