MEDIA WATCH: NYT "Styles" section needs a diversity - and geography - lesson

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

[ PLEASE NOTE: All opinions expressed in SAJAforum do not necessarily reflect those of SAJA or its Board. ]

Comments

[John Laxmi]

Dear Mr. Sreenivasan and The New York Times:

First, could you please let the show be what it is, "American" Idol, without the hyphenated bickerings?

Yes, American media must learn more about South Asia, whose importance keeps growing, especially as it begins to specialize in global terrorism (Pakistan and Bangladesh), global IT services (India) and civil wars (Sri Lanka).

But, you do know the reason why Americans think Asia is East Asia. For the same reason most South Asians don't think of themselves as "Asians." South Asians think they are a distinct region and culture in their own right; they may be right; the Indian subcontinent, with much closer ties to Africa and Europe and the rest of Asia, is a specialty region, not to be lumped in with "Asia."

Nearly three billion people cannot be lumped into one continent. If we start aggregating like that, all we have are "East" and "West." And, you know those terms have become politically incorrect too.

Regards,
John Laxmi

[Preston]

The bottom line is that the terms "Asian" and "South Asian" are just too broad to define anything, especially when it comes to the immigrant experience in the US. What, really, do Cambodian and the Japanese immigrants have in common, other than the fact that they arrived from a place once known as the Far East or the Orient? By the same token, the "South Asian" community isn't a community at all. It's a collection of groups and subgroups, whose main shared trait is that they are brown and not East Asian. But many Desis are not South Asian at all--they are Kenyan, Ugandan, Guyanese, Trindadian, Fijian. Or Kenyan-American, Guyanese-Canadian, Ugandan-British, etc. Not all brown people who trace their family history the subcontinent are "Asian" in the geography of the word.

[Jaya Kamlani]

Preston, you are so right. I say, if you live in America, then just blend in the melting pot and call yourself AMERICAN, regardless of where you originated from. Then you don't have to worry whether you are an India from India, or an Indian from Kenya or Uganda, and you can claim "equality" as an American.

On a broader scale, just call yourself a 'citizen of the world' if you care for all the people of this world, regardless of where they live.

Jaya Kamlani

[Mark]

Don't forget Asians include Saudi Arabians, Israeli/Palestinians, Russians, and many others in western Asia. Unfortunately we have to deal with the inadequate description of the world left to us by the Romans and early explorers. There are a lot of countries that get left out when speaking about continents, for example does Bermuda come to mind when speaking about NA? Now that people are more culturally sensitive even those are no longer adequate and confusion from re-naming East Indian to South Asian and Oriental to Asian arises. It's human nature to generalize and be offended when one is the subject of such generalization. I would say accept the frustration of educating people about where your country is in the world - it's far easier dismissing someone from a region than a specific place - and then enjoy complaining about how little people know about the world with your friends later.

[roopa]

While it's true that parsing out Asia into east and west may feel like overkill, I do feel that Sree raises a valid issue about the article. It's points out that "looking Asian" is an obstacle, but doesn't account for the success (considerable or momentary) or acknowledge the Asian origins of Nora/ Sanjaya. Odd, incomplete and worth calling out.

[anita]

This is a multi-faceted issue, one of geography, culture and generation.
East West magazine gets asked the question all the time, how can you "lump" such regions/people together, and there are always those that get hung up on the notion of Desis as Asians. It is true that most Indians, Sri Lankans, etc, don't go around proclaiming themselves to be "Asian," but we do say we are "South Asian", i.e. part of Asia. And when you are discussing the work of a major U.S. newsspaper, it is important that the reporting makes these distinctions clear. East Asian, South Asian or all, Asian American.

It is not about simply aggregating everyone into either East or West, but rather it is about discussing the similarities we face as we navigate through a mix of cultures. For 2nd and 3rd generation Asian Americans it is less about being Asian or South Asian or whatever you want to call yourself, instead it is about being American but yet still different and standing out in a way that can bring great pluses but also many obstacles (i.e. American Idol). That is what we have in common, that is the common thread along with many deep rooted cultural values. Idol's Paul Kim, AJ and Sanjaya might not really relate to being "Asian" depending on their background and family makeup, but still they may face obstacles or benefits because of something as simple as the way their ethnic makeup affects their appearance. That is their common thread. (if you watch idol, Sanjaya's thick, flowing locks are constantly getting him positive remarks, his singing however has been lackluster)

So while the NYT isn't wrong, they aren't being clear. They aren't speaking in what needs to be our modern dialogue, where if you insist on classifying people, then you must get it right. Better yet don't group at all and instead just look at the immigrant/minority experience as a whole and boil it down to each individual's story.
Sorry to be so long...

[Dan Nainan]

Have any of you been to the UK? When they say "Asians" in the UK, they are specifically referring to South Asians.

[Shurjendu Dutt-Mazumdar]

I am continually flustered by this fascination with lumping the Indian continent (yes, you read that right) with the rest of Asia. We're talking about a lesson diversity and geography? How about this: unlike Europe, the Indian continent actually sits on its own tectonic plate and has a much more significant, tangible split from Asia (the Himalayas) than does Europe. Hence, India is more of a continent than Europe. The reason people are so desperate to propagate the repackaged Orientalist notion of the Indian Plate as "South Asia" is because they slavishly follow trends set by a "Western" perspective.

Additionally, the whole East-West split is a farcical socio-historical construction that only becomes more real the more we feed into it. Rationalist, secular conceptions of a "West" and the typical mystical, tribalist conceptions of an "East" are way off base. Histories of Europe and America, and places in the "East" like India, China, or Western Asia countervail simplistic generalizations like the East-West split. The reason East and West will never meet is because they're definitionally opposed to one another. Do fascism, the Holy Roman Empire, the Crusades, communism, jive with the notion of the West? Do rationalist philosophical systems like Nyaya, or forward-thinking universalist faith-systems like Vedanta Hinduism or Buddhism, or non-violent movements like Ashoka's new conception of governance or Gandhi's Satyagraha fit neatly into what it is to be Eastern? No.

"South Asia", "East-West", racial categories that go beyond mere descriptive elements, and the tendency to orient everything in relation to Europe (the Near East, Far East, near and far from what?!) will one day be viewed as being as preposterous as phrenology and alchemy.

Why do people have to swallow their spit and patronize European sentiments of how to perceive the world? Relax. It's not a matter of distinction to be called Asian. People need to start taking their identities into their own hands. Wouldn't you think that postmodernism would have taught us the tenuousness of artificial intellectual structures?

Note, I don't recommend abandoning all nomenclatural systems: that would just be silly. Nor am I some kind of India nut who thinks it's a big deal to 'have' your own continent. It's just that the arbitrariness of these squabbles, the unthinking indignation that is constantly trumpeted about how sad people from the Indian Plate are that they're not considered fully-fledged Asians is ludicrous.

If you want a lesson in diversity, and a lesson in GEOGRAPHY and GEOLOGY, then you'd never call the peninsular landmass south of Asia "South Asia". In fact, you'd technically call it a continent of its own.

Maybe it's time for the world to rethink the classificational schemata of the colonial eras. I'm not a hundred percent sure of exactly what the right one would be, but this "South Asian" nonsense needs to be left in the discard pile.

[RC]

There is a lot of common ground in the bicultural experiences of East and South Asians in America. Rather than decry the conflation, the shared experiences should be celebrated. Good grief, man, the article is actually quite good and probably could apply to South Asians as well. An occasional Kal Pen, Norah (who feels far more attached to her white upbringing), and Sanjaya belie the fact that South (and East) Asians are rarely seen in the mainstream media. So, while I agree that the author simply did not even consider South Asians, the same thesis applies. Cheers.

[Sarayu]

Other "South Asians" (ie with origins on the Indian Subcontinent) in music include legendary Kim Thayil, SoundGarden; Sarah McLaughlin's drummer (who she is incidentally married to); Dave Baksh from Sum 41; Tony Kanal, No Doubt, Bobby
Dahl-Poison...the list goes on and on.

Point is they either "blend in", don't make an issue of ethnic origin or are not acknowledged as Asian American (by East Asians or the general populace)..they
either are integrated or something "different".

Can think of a few examples in sports too-there's an American football player whose of Indian descent, Brandon Chillar, and Monica Bharadwaj, the gymnast and Olympic silver medalist (who Pamela Anderson funded on her quest for the gold).

Hard to classify Indians as one thing or another since they hail from so many different ethnic, racial and cultural backgrounds. Its easy to say "Asian" and have that refer to Oriental Asians.

Plus Asia is a continent from which radically different cultures, races and ethnicities sprang from and share today. Its not like saying "European" where you may have different ethnic and cultural strains, but there is one homogenous general race from which these sub-families spring. Can't say that about Asia.
Or even India.

[Sanjoy Hazarika]

Dear Sree:

I am in complete agreement with your points and feel they should be raised with the NY Times. The Times has its own Style Book on language, descriptives etc. It has (and has had) several South Asians reporting for it over many years. If these nuances are not reflected in the overall approach to major issues relating to ethnic origins, then perhaps one way would be to describe those quoted or referred to also the country of descent.

Cheers

Sanjoy Hazarika

[TerraTango]

Hello, only one person has mentioned the reality that in the UK, the term "Asian" is exclusively thought of as meaning South Asian.

What does this mean?

That everyone's arguements about geography are colored by their unique historical limitations. In the UK, they would argue just the opposite of some of you-- and really there is no questioning that "Asian" means South Asian.

Also its important to point out, for those of you that dont get out into the pan-Asian American world much, that MANY Asian American groups feel "left out" of the narrowly-conceived common perception of Asian Americans as East Asian, or don't want to be "lumped in" either: Filipino Americans, for one, Pacific Islander Americans (and as you may know, the very term "Asian American" has been undergoing change ("Asian and Pacific Islander" etc) and understanding as populations and politics have shifted). If you belong to any listserves or blog subscriptions by people of these backgrounds, you'll easily see that.

It is also important to point out that South Asians do not all look the same in their "difference" from other Asians. This means that there are many South Asians who, to your eye, would appear to be SouthEast Asian, East Asian, Pacific Islander, etc. And not all East or SouthEast Asians conform to your idea of what they should look like. I hate to be blunt, but there is this myth amongst many South Asians that "we" are different from other Asians because "we" do not have epicanthic eye folds. And a myth that all other Asians do have epicanthic eye folds. There, I said it. Its important to acknowledge.

That being said, I too am confused by the Times' decision to ignore South Asians, as there are tons of South Asian American journalists they've worked with, and South Asian American stories too. It points to a problem with the editors. Obviously, someone up there is not doing there job.

[Deepa Kandaswamy]

I'm not in the least bit surprised.

When I used to study in the US, I used to be invited to speak at various institutions in and around LA. They used to introduce me as Deepa from East India and at times from East Indies!

These are relatively well read, rich people and it used to irritate me when Professors @ Universities or teachers in schools did that.

While I would quickly correct that and also remind them their Rand McNally map is wrong -- India doesn't start from Punjab but from jammu and Kashmir and that we come under Asians and not "Other", it would be tough to get them to agree.

Therefore I would talk about the various races in India, which they would find strange and actually new information.

Journos come from the same educational system after all and if their
professors and school teachers make mistakes, it is not surprising
they do too.

I attribute this attitude to three things

1) It is simpler to think of a continent filled with people of the same race which makes the US special -- the melting pot of cultures.

2) The snobbish attitude of both Americans and Indians that each of them know it all and the other side doesn't know squat.

3) Failure of American education system to break the stereotype of who constitutes an Asian -- After all, West Asia, Central and South Asia is left out along with their numerous races. It is like saying Middle East (a misnomer in itself) and consists only of Arabs leaving out the Assyrians, Abyssians, Jews, Turks, etc. Maybe if they play the Doha Asian games opening ceremony video of Asia, they would know the diversity of Asia.

[Jaya Kamlani]

Deepa, who cares whether we come from Central Asia, East Asia, West Asia or South Asia. Our everyday life is so fast-paced that no one cares for such details. If we just mention we are from India, that's all that counts, because it gives a little perspective on our background. But like Preston mentioned, people from parts of Africa also have their roots in India, so they will just say for e.g. they are from Kenya or Uganda without getting someone further confused about India also. Americans have so many roots, with one parent of one culture, another of another culture, and yet they all blended into the melting pot.

I can understand from Sree's viewpoint and that of other journalists who have to report on stories and so they have to state which part of Asia they are referring to. Or, teachers and professors who have to be specific about geography. But when in Rome, do as the Romans do. Just become one of the Americans and life becomes a whole lot easier. Happier too.

Deepa, if someone said inadvertently that I was from the East Indies, I would not get offended. Just think someone made a slip by referring to you as such, or if someone calls you Deepika instead of Deepa. You know sometimes when I have to introduce people, I am so embarassed when I forget my good friend's name and introduce her/him as someone else. What is important is how people treat you and show they care for you. That's all that matters in the long run. Not the minor details.

Jaya Kamlani

[Eddie]

Let's face it. It is East Asia (Japan, Korea, Taiwan & now China) that has been in the news for decades. They all have had or have imperial contact with the US. US forces are still stationed in Japan and Korea. They are richer (culturally and financially), more innovative and inventive.

India has long been soiled with images of the coolie and the babu: poor, low quality, superstitious, irrational,inarticulate.
Even today, India may excel in big business now but remains unimpressive in international forums or the diplomatic front. She has no initiatives to offer.

You see few Indians in ads but lots of East Asians. The latter come out more confident, more photogenic, blend more easily with the Europeans.

Eddie

[swapna]

Eddie,

Wha???

[gregory]

i am so sick of the indian ego... be a human first, forget the damned skin and the names and the geographical background... norah jones, is american... "indian wins pulitzer prize" said the indian express a few years ago... turns out the woman writer was born in uk and raised in america... with a us passport... that aint indian.. get over it, pleasae

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