Tag Archives for stereotyping

WLR: Men in media

Photo by Tamara Abdul-Hadi.

UnVilifying the Arab Man: A Portrait Series
Via Schema Magazine:

Abdul-Hadi’s project aims to break these stereotypical images that often misrepresent Arab men in the media. She wants to redefine the dominant narrative to shift from hyper-masculine, angry, terrorist to more realistic images. Her formula to achieve this is simple—she’s literally taking images of real Arab men to juxtapose the erroneous characters in popular media that honestly, reflect no one.

Uploaded: The Asian American Movement

This documentary aims to uncover the extent to which Asian Americans have utilized new media such as YouTube to infiltrate American popular culture and where this momentum will lead. The documentary will focus on the current struggles and successes of important Asian Americans in entertainment, from both online celebrities and industry professionals.

Is it just me, or does this trailer foreground the experiences of Asian American men a little too much? I haven’t seen the film, but come on, where are the Asian American women YouTube stars in this?

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Angry Boys (and Dino-Ray’s commentary) ruffles my Asian feathers


In his post on Australian comedian Chris Lilley’s new HBO show Angry Boys, 8Asians blogger Dino-Ray writes:

We have been introduced to Jen Okazaki, an Asian mom with a “gay” skateboarding prodigy for a son. Armed with a soft-spoken Tiger Mom tongue and a penchant for capitalizing off of her son’s talent, Lilley is sure to ruffle some Asian feathers with his offensive wit and outlandish portrayal of an overbearing mom.

Well, yes, my feathers have been ruffled. Setting aside the problematic history of blackface and yellowface (trigger warning for both links), what other overplayed tropes do we have in this clip?

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Link roundup: the Asian American 99%, Philly bullying victims, Invisible Australians, and Chinese Canadian Stories

I usually do this on Wednesdays, but this Hyphen post about the Asian American 99% is likely to spark a good amount of discussion before then:

The College Admissions Debate & the Asian American 1% – Hyphen

For the past three months I have been in New Orleans, supporting the youth leaders and organizers at the Vietnamese American Young Leaders Association (VAYLA). It’s striking to me that while social media is blowing up with questions of anti-Asian bias faced by the Asian American 1%, the debate is rather irrelevant to the community with which I work. Not one VAYLA youth member or staff member has had a conversation, even in passing, about the latest anti-Asian admissions policy uproar.

While so many people wring their hands and beat their war drums to make the Ivies accept more Asian Americans from the pool of highly qualified applicants, the youth at VAYLA are fighting for basic educational resources. Like textbooks.

I’m very glad that someone is bringing this to the spotlight. The model minority stereotype hides the fact that many Asian Americans, particularly Southeast Asians living in high poverty areas, are still struggling. This is a good segue into the next story:

Philadelphia Story: Voices of Asian American Bullying Victims – New America Media

On a cold December day in 2009, just weeks before Christmas, 15-year-old Trang Dang was walking home from school with her sister and eight friends, all recent Vietnamese immigrants. Also part of their group: the principal of their school.

Dang, who is 5’9” with a medium build and a dimpled, contagious smile, asked the principal to accompany them because she and the others were terrified by the intense bullying and violence against Asian students that had taken place earlier that day at their school, South Philadelphia High School. Midway through the walk, the principal, LaGreta Brown, disappeared, Dang said. “She walked to the corner with us and then we didn’t see her anymore,” Dang said. They debated whether to stay or continue walking. “Our friends said if we stand here, we’ll get in trouble,” Dang said. So they opted to try to make it home that day on their own.

They never did.

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