In January 2007, we covered a cover story in the New York Times "Education" supplement that wrote about Asian Americans in U.S. colleges, but chose to ignore South Asians among them. Quoting ourselves:
It strikes me as classic American blindness to the diversity within diversity stories and the presumption that Asia means East Asia. I am not saying that every mention of Asians needs to be broken down into subgroups. I just think this race story comes up short for not being truly representative.
Well, two months later, it's the "Sunday Styles" section that needs a diversity and geography lesson. It ran a cover story called "Trying to Crack the Top 100," about Asian Americans and their lack of success in pop music and shows like "American Idol."
There are Asian-American stars in sports, movies, television and classical music. But the “Asian thing” is what Mr. Lee and many other aspiring Asian-American singers say largely accounts for the lack of Asian-American pop stars. People in the music industry, including some executives, have no ready explanation, but Asian-American artists and scholars argue that the racial stereotypes that hobble them as a group — the image of the studious geek, the perception that someone who looks Asian must be a foreigner — clash with the coolness and born-in-the-U.S.A. authenticity required for American pop stardom.
You can guess where this is going: No mention of South Asians in the piece - struggling or otherwise. 
This despite the fact that the current #1 album (since Feb. 17) in the country (see graphic at right, from the Billboard chart) is by a South Asian American named Norah Jones (see her Billboard history, including three #1 albums) and one of the most visible and successful contestants on "American Idol" is 17-year-old Sanjaya Malakar (who has done at least as well as better than the East Asian "Idol" contestant featured in the article, Paul Lee).
And in yet another sign that the writer and the section should be reading more pop culture news, the piece quotes an expert - “We don’t have BET,” said Mr. Hong of ImaginAsian. “We don’t have Telemundo, to have these artists be taken seriously.” - without mentioning the recent troubles facing the three networks that aimed to fill that niche: MTV Desi, MTV Chi and MTV K (all part of the cuts at MTV World and various MTV franchises).
Either the NYT should switch to using "East Asian" exclusively for such stories, or should be more inclusive going forward.
Read this NYT piece here. Read the NYT education piece here. Read about Norah Jones on "60 Minutes" here (I don't think whether Jones, whose father is famed sitar player Ravi Shankar, "feels" South Asian or Asian American should enter into the picture here - the NYT story had references to "Asians of mixed race").
What do YOU think? Post your comments below, please - and we will pass them onto various editors at the paper. Or write to sree[at]sree.net
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