4 Tackle Identity Question at Journalists Conference
When four Asian American journalists get together in public to talk about what that identity means, the conversation can veer from some Asian American men’s newfound attraction to the alt-right to how much to write about race to whether others truly consider Asian Americans to be “people of color,” as they do African Americans and Hispanics.
“Race Relations in the U.S.: Our Place as AAPI Journalists” was the title of a session Thursday at the Asian American Journalists Association convention in Philadelphia, a gathering that attracted 839 people, according to Kathy Chow, executive director. “AAPI” refers to Asian American Pacific Islander.
Participating were moderator Iris Kuo, CEO and cofounder of LedBetter, a research group that runs a database and application showcasing the number of women in leadership at the world’s top consumer brands and companies; Jay Caspian Kang, a correspondent on “Vice News Tonight” and writer-at-large for the New York Times Magazine; Jeff Guo, who writes about media, politics, data and “the unknowability of life” at vox.com, and Tracy Jan, who reports on race and the economy for the Washington Post.
In 2010, Asian Americans were 4.8 percent of the U.S. population; Native Hawaiian or other Pacific Islanders were 0.2 percent. In newspaper and online newsrooms, they were 4.25 percent, according to the 2016 diversity survey of the American Society of News Editors [PDF]. That newsroom percentage more closely matched that of their share of the general population than the figures for African Americans, Latinos or Native Americans.
An abridged, sometimes paraphrased report of the conversation:
Jan: The Asian American voice does get lost in the fray. A lot of the hate is targeted at Muslims, Latinos and black people, though brown Asians, too, have been threatened and killed.
Kang: There’s not much in the national conversation about Asian people. I don’t even know what Asian means . . . I just don’t think there’s an identity.
Guo: It’s not a term we invented. [Some trace it to Yuji Ichioka, a pioneering San Francisco-born historian, in the late 1960s.]
You’re not black and you’re not white.
If you’re the kind of person — upwardly mobile, East Asian, who went to college, it’s easier for you to assimilate into white culture. To pay attention to that kind of [racial] stuff doesn’t endear you to the people writing the paycheck.
Asian Americans have always been a part of the fabric of America; the Chinese helped build the transcontinental railroad. The story of Asian Americans is important because it is intricately tied with the story of race in America. Asians were used to define and constrict African Americans.
Kang: It’s a very, very bad time to write about race. Everything has become so standardized. Too much of the writing is about representation in Hollywood. There’s a lot of baked-in laziness. Some just don’t know how to write about race. [Kang also mentions an anti-black history among Asians.]
From left: Jay Caspian Kang, Jeff Guo, Tracy Jan and Iris Kuo at the Asian American Journalists Association convention in Philadelphia on Thursday. (Credit: Richard Prince)
Jan: I see my work as, “if I weren’t there, it wouldn’t be told.”
Guo: We write, we speak English. I look at some of the foreign correspondents who write about China; they come out with these stories about China that are laughable. For example, recent stories about Chinese idolizing Ivanka Trump. It’s like they’re not seriously worshipping Ivanka Trump. It’s like a joke. Asian people are having fun.
Still, my parents are immigrants. I’m not equipped to write about Cambodian refugees. My parents came in a plane, not a boat.
I feel very conflicted. I do have a responsibility to tell these Asian stories, even if I don’t have (the background), because who else is going to write these stories?
Jan: A good story is a good story. I recall being the only Asian American on a fellowship to China last month. There was so much negative coverage of the EB-5 visa program, [which grants green cards to foreigners who invest $500,000 in the United States. “The nearly three-decade-old program has come under new scrutiny in recent months, in part because of a sales pitch to Chinese investors by White House senior adviser Jared Kushner’s family real estate business,” Jan would write July 7 for the Post.] However, hardly anyone was writing about why the program was attractive to middle-class Chinese. So I did. We’re missing a bunch of different stories.
Guo: There is an assumption that there can be some neutral perspective. Isn’t the “neutral perspective” often the white perspective?
Kuo: I used to work in a foreign bureau in Hong Kong. A pet peeve of mine is how the stories were written as if to say, “Look at how weird these people are.” What frustrates you about race coverage?
Guo: That is also a pet peeve of mine; when people approach coverage strictly from a cultural perspective, not considering the historical and economic background — such as stories about Japanese growing square watermelons that don’t mention why.
Kang: It’s preoccupation with pop culture. I thought people would stop caring about how many Oscars were awarded.
Deportation stories. Every deportation is exactly the same. It’s like deportation porn. . . .
Jan: The sad white working class, with a photo of a sad white person looking out the window. What about poor black people? I’m not going to write about poor white people without writing about poor black people. It’s a trope.
Guo: There are sympathetic narratives. You are writing about situations that these people of color are embedded in, and at some point they’re not human any more.
Kuo: A question arises about whether Asians are “people of color.”
Kang: Asians have been granted “conditional whiteness.” I don’t think we are people of color if you ask the New York Times. When people talk about race and say “people of color,” they don’t mean Asians. . . . “people of color” have been black and Latino.
I’ve been going to Asian masculinity forums. These guys seem to be concerned about their lack of identity. They know about the alt-right touting the idea of Western civilization. If I were black, I would have certain cultural touchstones. They have nothing [comparable, they think], so they go back to the death march of Bataan in World War II.
[The white nationalist group] Storm Front actually recruits Asian people. For a lot of people it’s going to end up being very appealing. My story is coming out next week. I’m also doing a podcast.
Guo: For NPR, Sarah Goo wrote about letters from grandfather to her grandmother. They were love letters, but are also about America and family history. A lot of Americans today have a lot of immigrant roots, but the Asian story is not just an immigrant story.
Kuo: How can one’s Asian American background be used to advantage?
Kang: I was able to get into spaces the white reporters could not because I spoke a little Korean, but there are so few spots to use that advantage.
Jan: Just your understanding of being an outsider can help when interviewing other “outsiders,” such as evangelicals. There are certain ways you ask questions; the way you carry yourself. Everyone uses what they have as a reporter.
When I was at the Boston Globe, I think it helped being an Asian reporter in some black neighborhoods. I have had people explicitly tell me, “I wouldn’t talk to you if you were white.”
Guo: Being Asian, we experience a variegated privilege in America. It’s patchy.
In writing about race, there are so many things you can’t know. I don’t feel qualified to write about race. All I have is my very narrow personal experience.
And yet, it’s the first step to anything else. Until people are sick of seeing Asian doctors, they’re not going to see [Asians as] anyone else. Same with journalists. Until we have more Asian journalists, we’re all going to be [asked to write those stories].
am i the only one who sees a "meet philippines girls" dating ad at the bottom of this thread
Dont understand the Nazi symbolism cause they derived that from ancient Indian religious symbol. The origin of the swastika is the swastik in Sankrit. It is meant as an auspicious symbol when it has 4 dots in it
I wouldn't ever believe that Aryans were originally from Europe or something and invaded India and all that b.s.
To me Iranis and Indians share some sort of Aryan name.
Indians existed in India, maybe mixed, they had their own symbols and religions and everything authentic. Even Buddha is said to originate from there.
This bruh, I'm always thinking about where I can move my fam to and just live free of the BS. South America?
I’m asian, i don’t hate ya.
Word up. Somehow or another a Black person is somewhere in the mix
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