Joe and Hussein are Muslims and Americans

The best investigative reporting of 2011 worthy of a Pulitizer | Talking Points Memo. Let’s be honest: Most investigative reporting doesn’t get widely read because it’s dense, inaccessible and not very compelling. It lands with a thud and isn’t heard from again. That’s why I was rooting for a couple of guys this time around for Pulitzers whose work was doggedly reported, widely read, and forced the powers that be to react.

A piece I wrote on racial minorities is up at Goatmilk. “The Balbir Singh Sodhis of America” by Hussein Rashid « GOATMILK: An intellectual playground edited by Wajahat Ali. Balbir Singh Sodhi. I don’t know if that name has the resonance that it should. Amongst Asian-Americans, names like Vincent Chin or Navroze Mody are part of our collective conscious. But Balbir Singh Sodhi is a name that is so important for the telling of the tale of minorities in America, but also a story that sits at the base of a crushing horror of what’s happened in this country after…

The man who said no. The day commemorates his defiance of Executive Order 9066, the government directive that incarcerated more than 110,000 of his fellow Japanese Americans in internment camps during World War II. Korematsu’s decision to resist an unconstitutional edict led to his arrest, conviction and disgrace — and then, three decades later, set the stage for a personal vindication and the establishment of a historical precedent whose implications are more relevant today than ever.