You Are. You Aren’t. You Are.
After years of reading and watching the news in this country, you’d think that the only races that existed were whites, blacks and sometimes hispanics. That’s it. Asians? What are they? Oh, the quiet little nail technicians? (<3 mom)
I guess what bothers me the most about the race discussions is the fact that the statistics for asians in this country are basically treated as a zero-sum category.
Every article or story in the news that discusses race and racism talks about blacks, hispanics and whites. That's it. The few arcticles that happen to mention asians will throw in a line or two, and then just totally ignore them.
For example, this article I was reading on MSNBC.COM. The article starts out by saying how “decades after the civil rights movement, racial disparities… persist, and… are growing”. This would lead you to believe that the article will show how badly the minorities have it. Minorities which include asians, right? Wrong.
The article goes on about blacks, hispanics and whites for about ten paragraphs before it even mentions that there’s even an asian-american race. Oh yeah, we forgot about the slant-eyed folk. Then it presents this as one of its findings
The median income for white households was $50,622 last year. It was $30,939 for black households, $36,278 for Hispanic households and $60,367 for Asian households.
In the very next fucking sentence, they discuss how the racial gap can be narrowed by helping minority families accumulate wealth.
Wtf? Am I missing something here? I mean I’m very proud that asian-americans are doing well, for the most part, but am I the only one that thinks it’s totally fucked up that we’re basically treated as an optional category? Optional in the sense that when the numbers representing asians don’t fit neatly into the jist of the story, we’re just ignored?
You can’t write a story by picking and choosing which figures you’ll use and which figures you’ll ignore.
It’s like writing a story about how all the tall buildings in NY have flat rooftops and you just ignore the Empire State Building. Or better yet, it’s like writing a story about things girls like to use to “get off” and leaving out the pillow or the Rabbit.
Lame.
