An embattled woke district attorney in California has been mocked for planning a “ridiculous” press conference to announce her “Chinese name” — months after she was accused of being disrespectful towards the Asian community.
Alameda County District Attorney Pamela Price had been set to host the naming event in Oakland on Tuesday to mark Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month, before her office canceled the appearance at the last minute without giving a reason, ABC7 reported.
News of the press conference — and its abrupt cancelation — sparked immediate backlash as critics accused the black DA, who is facing a recall election in November, of cultural appropriation.
“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.
Local TV reporter Dion Lim also said she had to convince people it 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 was quickly mocked online by locals, too, given her rocky past 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 in the area for several years, in part, to become closer to the local community.
Vice President Kamala Harris was among the first to do it when she was running to be San Francisco’s DA back in 2003.
But critics accused Price — who took out a full-page ad in Chinese-language US newspaper World Journal earlier this year — of pandering given the recall efforts against her and her controversial history with the Asian community.
The progressive DA was last year accused by former staffers of being “condescending and disrespectful” towards Asians — with at least two veteran prosecutors resigning over Price’s 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.
Hilton, who told the DA she could no longer perform her duties in good conscience, asserted that Price’s progressive agenda had tipped the scales away from providing justice to those “devastated by violent crime.”
Meanwhile, Price has also enraged Alameda County’s sizable Asian community for refusing to commit to sentencing enhancements and reducing charges in cases involving Asian victims — particularly in the case of a 2-year-old boy killed by a stray bullet while riding in a car with his mother in Oakland in 2021.
In that case, the former DA Nancy O’Malley had applied several criminal enhancements to maximize potential jail terms for the three gang members arrested on murder charges — but Price did not pledge to keep them.
Instead, Price instructed staffers to avoid criminal enhancements — which lengthen jail stints — to “bring balance back to sentencing and reduce recidivism,” according to a leaked internal memo.
In a subsequent message addressed to “the Asian communities,” Price said her office remains undecided about the enhancements in the 2-year-old-boy’s case — and scolded unnamed parties for spreading “misinformation.”
She also stated that her office is working with an Asian law group to “support AAPI victims of violence in ways that open up broader possibilities of healing and non-carceral forms of accountability.”
In her resignation letter, prosecutor Rebecca Warren — who served in the office for over 17 years — argued that Price’s tone was inappropriate “while discussing one of the most horrific and tragic murder cases ever.”
“I can no longer tolerate this mistreatment of the AAPI [Asian American and Pacific Islander] community by leaders of our office,” Warren, who is of Chinese descent, wrote at the time.
“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, who is Alameda County’s first African-American DA, has previously dismissed the criticism of her as being motivated by racism and an outmoded approach to prosecution.
