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More on the Real Meaning of Diversity on “Up” and MSNBC

My recent post critiquing Media Matters’ laudatory report about How Chris Hayes’ Show Differs From Other Sunday Shows In One Chart got a brief exchange going between me and Mr. Hayes on twitter. My critique was based in part on a six-month study by ChangeLab of the weekend political shows aired between January 1-June 30 of last year in which we analyzed all of the transcripts to isolate every instance in which a person of color was mentioned. That study puts Media Matters’ claim that Up is driver of diversity in a different light.

In regard to Asian Americans, we … Read more “More on the Real Meaning of Diversity on “Up” and MSNBC”

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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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More on Asian Privilege

My post yesterday about Asian privilege got me thinking about the complexities of being Asian American. Blog length articles just don’t cut it when it comes to trying to tackle that subject matter. There are always ideas that just don’t fit within my self-imposed 850 (more or less) word limit.

For instance, while I believe Asian privilege is a real thing, it certainly didn’t protect the seven people murdered when a racist opened fire on members of a Sikh gurdwara in Oak Creek, Wisconsin last August. In fact, post-9/11 Islamophobia has imposed an experience of racism on South Asians in … Read more “More on Asian Privilege”

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Challenging Asian Privilege

Remember the Asian F episode of the TV series Glee? Given it’s name, I definitely caught it. In it, the character of Mike Chang (Harry Shum, Jr.) get’s a A- on a chemistry test and his father loses it, demanding that he quit his girlfriend and the glee club. Apparently, A- is an Asian F. Mike’s girlfriend is also an Asian American burdened with Tiger parents demanding nothing less than perfect grades and money machine career aspirations.

The Glee writers deserve a little grief for this episode, but I’d go easy on them. They are, after all, no … Read more “Challenging Asian Privilege”

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The Unbearable Whiteness of Being GOP

This week on the National Review Online, NRO editor Jonah Goldberg and National Review’s Editor At Large John O’Sullivan had a discussion about GOP outreach.

“I see that the way we will get the Hispanics and the other groups, the Asians, as part of the Republican Coalition is to get them first part of the great American Coalition. Make them think of themselves, not make but, persuade them to think of themselves primarily as Americans. Restore the overarching, all-encompassing concept of an American identity, which we used to have, which we knew how to bring about and which in … Read more “The Unbearable Whiteness of Being GOP”

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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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The Invisible Minority: Why Creating Myths About Asian Americans Is So Easy

Early in October, the surprisingly high percentage (1 in 3) of undecided Asian voters popped up in the media. It took about a minute for that story to cycle through and then, poof! No further discussion.

Pundits and political analysts have talked about Jewish voters, Black voters, Latino Voters, White Voters, young voters, older voters, low-income voters, gay voters, and voting veterans, ex-felons, and independents. But Asian voters? Almost not at all. Or at least that was my theory.

To test that theory, my firm, ChangeLab, conducted a study. We pulled the transcripts of seven weekly political commentary programs televised … Read more “The Invisible Minority: Why Creating Myths About Asian Americans Is So Easy”