Beleaguered Alameda County District Attorney Pamela Price is being ridiculed for planning a press conference to announce her “Chinese name” during Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month. The event was abruptly canceled without explanation, sparking backlash and accusations of cultural appropriation.
Price, who is black and facing a recall election in November, had previously been accused of disrespecting the Asian community. Critics mocked the planned event as “ridiculous.”
“I think it’s ridiculous. It’s cultural appropriation and pandering at the highest level,” said Charles Huang, who heads the local National Asian Pacific Islanders Prosecutors Association, as reported by the New York Post.
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Local TV reporter Dion Lim revealed she had to persuade people that the planned press conference was real. “Someone messaged me to ask if this was an April Fool’s joke. I then sent this person the press release that came from the DA’s office!” Lim tweeted.
Price faced swift online mockery from locals due to her contentious history with the Asian community. “She is trying to cheat and lie to the Asians, especially, the Chinese community so the nice and friendly communities will not vote her out in November,” one user raged on X.
Another wrote: “An epic pandering move. In the Trump years, this would be called cultural appropriation. But yes, a number of Asians will change their votes not to recall her based on this move. There are many good, better, district attorneys out there, waiting in the wings, willing to do the job properly. What is so special about Pamela Price?”
“There’s no bounds to her virtue signal game,” one local said, while another added, “Shame on the Chinese people that are supporting her and allowing this.”
Local politicians have been adopting Chinese names for years to connect with the community. Vice President Kamala Harris did the same in 2003 while running for San Francisco’s DA.
But critics accused Price of pandering due to the recall efforts against her and her controversial history with the Asian community, despite her full-page ad in the Chinese-language newspaper World Journal.
Last year, former staffers accused the progressive DA of being “condescending and disrespectful” towards Asians, leading to the resignation of at least two veteran prosecutors over her radically progressive agenda.
“Victims deserve better,” Danielle Hilton, who had been with the DA’s for nearly three decades, said in a scathing resignation later.
Former prosecutor Hilton resigned, stating she could no longer perform her duties in good conscience due to Price’s progressive agenda, which she argued neglected justice for victims of violent crime.
Price has also angered Alameda County’s Asian community by refusing to commit to sentencing enhancements and reducing charges in cases involving Asian victims, notably in the 2021 case of a 2-year-old boy killed by a stray bullet in Oakland.
In that 2-year-old boy’s case, former DA Nancy O’Malley had applied several criminal enhancements to maximize jail terms for the three gang members charged with murder. However, Price did not pledge to maintain these enhancements.
Instead, she instructed staff to avoid criminal enhancements to “bring balance back to sentencing and reduce recidivism,” according to a leaked memo. In a message to the Asian community, Price stated her office was still undecided about the enhancements in this case and criticized unnamed parties for spreading “misinformation.”
“I can no longer tolerate this mistreatment of the AAPI [Asian American and Pacific Islander] community by leaders of our office,” prosecutor Rebecca Warren, who is of Chinese descent, wrote at the time in her resignation letter.
“The AAPI community is not the only community angered and traumatized by the staggering number of innocent children being murdered by gun violence in our county,” she wrote. “The entire community is affected.”
Price, Alameda County’s first African-American DA, has dismissed criticism of her as being motivated by racism.
