Incensed And Empowered

After Jun Choi, 34, won the Democratic primary in the Edison, N.J., mayoral race this past summer, a radio host said on-air: "I don't care if the Chinese population in Edison has quadrupled in the last year, Chinese should never dictate the outcome of an election, Americans should." (Never mind that Choi is Korean American.) Yu posted the radio station manager's e-mail, phone number and address on his site: "Do I need to say it?" he wrote. " That's racist! "

Daniel Dae Kim, a star on the Emmy-winning ABC show "Lost," recently gave a shout-out to AngryAsianMan.com, where he had read about the radio host's comment. "I really like that site," Kim told New York-based Asian Media Watchdog. "I like him because he not only takes people to task when they're offensive, but he praises those who make a positive impact as well."

Where Phil Yu begins and where Angry Asian Man ends isn't entirely clear, though Angry Asian Man definitely says things that his creator would never say out loud at parties and other social gatherings. Aside from "What are you so angry about?" the question he gets most, Yu says, is "Why did you start the site?"

"They want a defining moment. But I wasn't a victim of a horrible hate crime when some dude called me a chink and I went all crazy. It was a gradual understanding of the things I was seeing and experiencing," says Yu.

The eldest of three children, he grew up in Silicon Valley, where his second-generation Korean American family (Dad's in real estate, Mom's a nurse) fit right into the racially diverse town of Sunnyvale. It wasn't until he moved to Chicago -- he studied radio, television and film at Northwestern University -- that he started thinking deeply about his ethnic identity, undergoing a hypersensitive, almost comical phase, he says, when everything around him was offensive.

The portrayal of the Asian woman -- fetishized, eroticized -- in that magazine ad? Racist. The word "Chinese" on a random page of Dostoevsky's "The Brothers Karamazov"? Racist.

The yellow traffic light? You got it: racist!

Of course he's not that knee-jerk and splenetic now. Still, Yu says, a little anger does help with keeping it real.