Here's the topline result from a newly released report by the USC-Annenberg Inclusion Initiative:
Depending on how you count, the API share of the population is 5-6.5%. Far from being "absent," they're represented at about the level you'd expect. In 2019, they were represented well above their share of the population.
The report is on more solid ground when it looks at behind-the-camera positions, where the API share hovers around 3%. So that's fine. But why insist on pro-forma outrage even where it's not warranted?
Just another example of dialectics. Trying to create outrage for the sake of it.
True dat.
I'm less worried about this in the case of Asians because, like Jews, there's too much respect in the community for the true perversions of truth that have taken over other Grievance Studies. Already I have seen pushback against the attempts by the usual loons to insert blatant lies into the Asian-American studies worldview, the kind of honest scholarship that looks at a bunch of facts and says "hmm, that's interesting, what explains it" rather than "how can I cherrypick from this pile so as to make whitey look bad".
So yes, we'll get a year or two of attempts to push the simultaneous "Asians are being singled out" and "Asians are being marginalized" narrative, after which enough people in the Asian community will have been educated to the real facts (and will prioritize truth over whining) that we'll go back to the status quo as of a few years ago.
Over the years I’ve known/worked with/was-am friends with/even related to a large number of men and women of Asian heritage. Thinking about it, not a single one of the practices martial arts.
I've had a lot of Italian-American friends. Thinking about it, not a single one of them is a mobster or even the son or daughter of a mobster. Also, I've known plenty of evangelicals, but not a single one of them was a sexual pervert. Though I will say, one of my Asian-American friends is in tech, so there's that. He's also a table tennis enthusiast, come to think of it.
I grew up in a community with a significant number of Japanese Americans. Most of the boys did take Judo lessons growing up, although I would hardly characterize them as martial arts experts. Many of them also took bridge lessons. In my school classes whether one's ancestors were Asian or European was generally not a big deal, and inter-racial dating was common. I was quite surprised to later learn my hometown had been a hot bed of anti-Japanese sentiment after WWII, with one of the protagonist saying "Yes, they may be hard working people, but would you want your daughter to marry one?". Based on the amount of intermarriage among my classmates, the answer was "sure, why not?". The whole experience has given me some hope.
They used to own the strawberry farms when I was a kid...which is weird because I was taught that all their land was taken from them during WWII. They owned a lot of (plant) nurseries too. Those guys really liked to garden!
The opposition to Asian-Caucasian intermarriage these days is generally from Asian-American activists and the so-called ricecels.
Sigh. Imma throw this comment out there without even clicking on the link. If you exclude Duane Johnson, how many API's are leads?
Provisionally going to give them credit for Keanu Reeves if he's being counted as API.
People who read the link can tell me if I'm wrong.
Taika Waititi, Chloe Zhao, & Jon Chu all have either a Marvel film or Broadway adaptation coming up.
They are also three of my favorite directors.
Representation is coming around.
Don't forget The Supreme Gentleman.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g_VkGx9y2fI
Constance Wu? Jackie Chan? Priyanka Chopra? Hannah Simone? Olivia Munn? Geraldine Viswanathan? Kunal Nayyar? Manny Jacinto? Rob Schneider?
Hell, if we're being technical all those Kardashians are Armenian-American, and Armenia is, uh, where?
I suspect that you know pretty much all of these. You just don't bin them as "Asian", rather you bin them as "pretty/funny people on TV and in movies". Which is the way it should be, and would be, without the meddling of grievance entrepreneurs.
So....you didn't click on the link either, huh?
Sure, nationwide APIs are 5-6% of the population. I think some people feel they're underrepresented because on the West Coast especially, APIs are, relatively speaking, *over-represented* in a lot of visible professional areas, esp. higher education, tech, etc. So seeing so few of them in movies, TV, etc. seems like underrepresentation perhaps. If you're in Montana or Arkansas, though, it probably doesn't seem like such a big deal.
APIs are the fastest growing population in the US right now but clustered on the coasts in the suburbs of large cities like the NYC area and the DC area on the east coast. When you are living in a diverse community, my county is 20% Asian, 11% Hispanic and 9% Black/African American.
So it's natural that my community would want TV and films to better reflect that diversity.
APIs are way overrepresented in immigration. Immigration should reflect our national population, like it did back during the Baby Boom and the Space Program (the successful one).
Racist posts racist comment online film at 11.
BRING BACK THE CHINEE EXCLUSION ACT.
One of the best pieces of legislation ever passed. Probably prevented a Singapore type situation on the west coast.
Immigration should be ethnic balanced to reflect the US population, and a lot lower.
If the founding fathers had shared your wisdom, they would have self-deported.
Actually the Founding Fathers limited naturalization to 'free white persons', you can look it up. And given that they saw naturalization of European-(Americans) as a good thing, shows you what they were thinking. That law, btw, remained until the early 1950s, when the Cold War and war brides was the motivation for changing it.
Also, learn the difference between establishing an almost entirely new, settler society from immigration into an existing society.
Whoosh. The sound of a sarcastic comment going over Mitchell's uncomprehending head.
Where do you draw the line between Asian and Caucasian?
The Ural Mountains?
Because the High Verbal university educated middle-class Lefties have gone all in on their Cultural Progressivism and voila.... hand-wringing about minor percentages and representation.
And of course as they both dislike and have written off the old white ethnic working class for its neanderthalic attitudes in race and other Cultural Progressive fads (true enough on the neanderthalic of course).
Veritable route to political success. (not)
They aren't lefties. Try harder
They got their start in lefty circles, and were encouraged for many many years by the USSR.
Blowback is a bitch, ain't it?
Does this one metric signal equality?
I definitely think things have vastly improved over the decades. There are more lead roles for AAPI than there were even 10 years ago.
But, that's been a hard fight, and backsliding is easy when pieces of the old culture remain stubbornly ingrained.
Henry Golding as the next James Bond, please.
It would be hard for me to think of something I care less about then Asian representation in movies. Lefties really do spend a lot of time and effort finding things to be outraged about.
Shorter Atticus: "The less it's about me, the less I care". Righties really do spend a lot of time and effort finding things they can attribute to lefties to be outraged about.
Literally Hitler.
And Boba Fett.
Fun fact, Asian Americans are overrepresented among mass shootings according to the FBI/Mother Jones criteria of 'mass shooting'. And in fact the second worst one...for a few years the first, was the VA tech shooting, commit by an Asian immigrant with a couple of handguns.
Why pair the two? that's like asking if Africans and Europeans are underrepresented.
Personally I wouldn't have said Asians as a group are underrepresented, but I can think of very few Pacific Islanders, and almost all of them Hawai'ians.
But that's nothing to the underrepresentation of American indians.
Define "American Indian"...
Now we're going to get into wonderful discussions of whether you're an octaroon or a zambo? Nuremberg laws about how far back you can show pureblooded red ancestry? Look at what happened to Elizabeth Warren.
I fail to see how we have made progress when the exact same classifications (based on the exact same criteria, and with the same policing of who is "passing") as in 1921 are being forced on us in 2021, only this time being forced on us by the minority side.
But I suspect at least part of why you see few Native Americans on the screen is that
- there are very few "pureblooded" Native Americans in the US
- anyone who is not "pureblooded" has no reason to push their Native American ancestry precisely because they will then be crucified by the genetic police who insist that they are claiming credit for something they are not, ala Rachel Dolezol.
It's a strange world where they're more afraid of the Red purists attacking them than of Whites supposedly turning against them, but that's where we are right now.
Still, Wes Studi is a delight in any role.
"But why insist on pro-forma outrage even where it's not warranted?"
I'll pass on evaluating the claims made about representation and comment only on Kevin's rhetorical question.
Activism is, for some, a business, a way to earn a living. Like any other business that offers a product or service, activists have to stoke demand. Thus, pro-forma outrage whether it's warranted or not.