My friend Corky Lee, the self-described Asian American photographer laureate, has been mentioned by much of the mainstream media (New York Times, Washington Post, CNN) this past week.
He died of COVID on Jan. 27. He’s one of the more than 440, 000 who didn’t have to die. I’m one of the tens of thousands connected to those 440,000 plus who didn’t have to die. We’re the ones left behind mourning and grieving. 
I knew Corky as a fellow journalist dedicated to inclusion and representation, the heart and soul of diversity. If Corky didn’t see an Asian American, he wondered why.
He first noticed this sensitivity while in grade school. He’d see the photograph of the Transcontinental Railroad, the picture that supposedly united the country after the Civil War. But he noticed he never saw any mention of the Chinese who built the railroad. He certainly didn’t see Chinese American workers in any picture or portrait. The photograph of the “The Golden Spike”? From an Asian American perspective, it was not nearly golden enough.
On my podcast, “Emil Amok’s Takeout,” Corky said he bought a magnifying glass to see if he missed anything in the photographs he saw in his textbooks.
After seeing nothing, he actually bought a second stronger magnifying glass.
The Chinese weren’t included.
