Asian Stereotypes Of Media

In the past couple of decades, media has been emerging to become a major part of human civilization; it certainly has changed and shaped our lifestyle, culture, and future. Media brings variety of things to our lives, both positively and negatively. It has made our lives more entertained, resourceful, engaged, connected, updated, and abundant. It is nearly impossible to find someone living without a smart phone, laptop, tablet, and or television. People are so connected to media and technology for various reasons, and one being the access to media content. It is harder and harder to see an individual carrying a newspaper with him or her; instead, we see people read news on their devices and television. Furthermore, people can also access to

There are numbers of major issues that were created by media and are strongly influencing the society; a few examples are, “Fear of Missing Out”, violent content, content inaccuracy, portrayals and stereotypes of gender, race, religion, and country. Most people tend to think human has control over media and technology, but in fact, media and technology can easily control us physically, mentally, and psychologically. As an Asian, who has spent over six years in the United States, I have noticed the impact and encountered experience that were directly caused from the Asian stereotype from media. The issue has slowly become a topic that the society cannot avoid to address and fix, as the Asian and Asian American population grow rapidly in this country. In this paper, I am going to do an in- depth research on portrayals on Asian and Asian American in

“You speak English very well!” A statement that seems complimentary or neutral to groups like the Asian American is often times considered “exceptionalizing stereotype” or “microaggressions.” Such statements come from the assumption toward a group and are actually forms of subtle discrimination. An Asian American parent and her child were sitting close to me on a M15 downtown bus; they were having their conversation while the parent was teaching her kid how to read the bus map. Right from the get-go, I knew both of them were American-born based on their accents. An African American lady who was also in the area noticed the conversation; she seemed very interested in the interaction between the parent and the 4-year-old. Right before they exited the bus, the African American lady paid her compliment to the parent: “Are you from America? You speak great English.” The Asian American parent expressed a bit of awkwardness facially and answered, “Yes I was born and raised here.” To Alisia G.T.T.Tran & Richard M. Lee’s point in their study “You Speak English Well! Asian Americans’ Reactions to an Exceptionalizing Stereotype”: the ambiguity and subtlety of biased racial communications can be further heightened in cases when the