For more than a year, Dmae Roberts has been conducting interviews about the historic and current relationship between African Americans and Asian Americans debuts. What began as a documentary featuring the Crossing East Archive collected for MediaRites' 8-hour radio series on Asian American Pacific Islander history series Crossing East has become Relations, a timely chronicle of the Model Minority Myth and how Asian Americans are rejecting that myth to work toward support for Black Lives both in Portland and the Bay Area. Catch the debut of this new work featuring the music of David Ornette Cherry. Hear his music at DavidOrnetteCherry.com.
Crossing East: Relations is a one-hour documentary special produced by Dmae Roberts, executive producer of MediaRites’ Crossing East series with Robynn Takayama and Alan Montecillo. The documentary, with script editing by Catherine Stifter and mixed by engineer Clark Salisbury, addresses the Model Minority Myth and the historic relationship between AAPIs and African Americans.
As part of a 10th anniversary celebration of the Peabody-winning radio series Crossing East, which aired on 230 public radio stations around the country we’ve been producing this documentary as well gathering more than 100 hours of oral history recordings for the Crossing East Archive.
Interviews recorded by Crossing East producer Robynn Takayama in the Bay Area include:
- Anirvan Chatterjee co-creator of BlackDesiSecretHistory.com
- Malkia Amala Cyril, activist with Black Lives Matter and executive director of The Center for Media Justice.
- and Ellen Choy of Asians4BlackLives, both in the Bay Area. Her two photos by Brooke Anderson Photography and by Kiwi Illafonte
Interviews recorded by Crossing East Executive producer Dmae Roberts and Alan Montecillo in Portland in collaboration with APANO’s Kara Carmosino. These include
- Writer Scot Nakagawa of ChangeLab , a grassroots political lab.
- Jo Ann Hardesty, president of the Portland chapter of the NAACP
- Helen Ying, National Vice President of Member in the Chinese American Citizens Alliance in Portland
- Joseph Santos-Lyons, executive director of the Asian Pacific American Network of Oregon
- and participants of APANO’s Model Minority Workshops and at their Rolling Tides Convention.
- KBOO