It would seem that common sense left the building this week as it concerns the weekly newspaper AsianWeek, and it's made national news. One of their contributing writers, a man named Kenneth Eng, wrote an article called "Why I Hate Blacks".

It wasn't a long article, but it was powerful, though in a negative way. Immediately after it was published, the online responses were extremely vitriolic towards the writer, and it was nice to see because the respondents were all Asian initially.

But it grew into a big story, as the Asian-American community in California immediately called on the newspaper to print an apology and to cut ties with the writer, who, to his credit (and he needs some), also wrote a previous article titled "Why I Hate Asians".

That the writer had the right to put his true thoughts down on paper satisfies his rights to free speech. That the newspaper actually printed this, and many other hateful articles by this same man, is the ultimate in stupidity. When the uproar first started hitting the news, the editors said they were trying to remain an open publication for the diversity of thoughts of all. As pressure intensified, they realized they were fighting a firestorm and, eventually, pulled the article from its website and issued an apology.

They haven't said yet what they're going to do about the writer or the editor. However, there's a web petition that you can access through this link, as well as not only reading more on the news story, but you can download a PDF copy of the original article and some of the responses to the article.

What an interesting way to end Black History Month in 2007, eh?