Tag: Melissa Harris-Perry

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MSNBC is Doing Asian Americans No Favors

When it comes to racial diversity among the Sunday political talk shows, MSNBC is the undisputed leader. In two studies conducted by ChangeLab (January-June 2012, and January-June 2013), MSNBC’s anchor weekend talk programs, Up with Chris Hayes/Steve Kornacki and Melissa Harris Perry included more guests of color and hosted more discussion of issues of race than all of the other networks offering similar programming combined. The difference is not just in quantity but in the depth and quality of the discourse. Now, mind you, the standard established by the major networks is set pretty low, but they do at least … Read more “MSNBC is Doing Asian Americans No Favors”

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“How I Met Your Mother” is Part of a Bigger Problem

 

Like so many, I was dismayed to learn through this Twitterstorm of outrage about the latest yellow-face antics to show up in U.S. pop culture. It’s a long running, ugly pattern. The underrepresentation of Asian Americans in film and television is bad enough without white performers exploiting warped, racist ideas about Asian cultures. The show’s creators apologized, but it doesn’t erase the cumulative damage of historic anti-Asian racism

And TV and film are only the tip of the iceberg. Coverage of Asian Americans in U.S. political media is dismal too. ChangeLab started tackling this problem by analyzing mainstream … Read more ““How I Met Your Mother” is Part of a Bigger Problem”

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Why Reports of Diversity Going “UP” Aren’t All They’re Cracked Up to Be

A March 14 Media Matters story entitled How Chris Hayes’ Show Differs From Other Sunday Shows In One Chart offered this info-graphic to support their contention that Hayes’ weekend TV political magazine, Up, “has provided much-needed diversity“ of race and gender to television political programs.

Echoing this sentiment, Tanehisi Coates chimed in on March 18 with an article in The Atlantic, What Chris Hayes Means to the Debate, calling the Media Matters graphic “a really important illustration of Up With Chris Hayes contribution to ‘The Debate.'”

Now, I’m not trying to minimize the accomplishment indicated by the graph. … Read more “Why Reports of Diversity Going “UP” Aren’t All They’re Cracked Up to Be”

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The Obama Asian American Landslide

Last weekend on the Melissa Harris-Perry show on MSNBC, Wade Henderson the president and CEO of The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights and The Leadership Conference Education Fund said the following regarding the presidential election:

I found the interesting statistic to be the Asian American vote. Because the Asian American community doesn’t have the homogeneity, the cohesion that people have talked about. You’re talking about South Asian, Vietnamese and others. The fact that they gave 73% of their vote to the Obama presidency tells you that it really is about policies and not about demographics alone. They are … Read more “The Obama Asian American Landslide”

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How We Rewrite History

Melissa Harris-Perry included a segment on personal character on her 5/20/12 show on MSNBC. During the segment, Democratic strategist Hank Sheinkopf said of Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR), “We say he is wonderful in character…while millions of people were being destroyed in Europe”(presumably in WWII). Harris-Perry responded by citing FDR’s record of cheating on his wife Eleanor as another stain on his record.

Honestly MHP? Is that all you got?

FDR was a racist. That’s right. He was a segregationist who believed powerfully in the inferiority of non-white people. I’d call that a character flaw, but maybe I’m too extreme.

Maybe…if … Read more “How We Rewrite History”