There are plenty of television shows with full-cast minorities. Viewers can see African-American families in the new comedy Blackish, the 2000s sitcom Everybody Hates Chris, and more African American families in TV shows from the past, including the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air and Family Matters. Quite recently, Latino families are also making their voices heard in network television with programs like Cristela and Jane the Virgin. Asian-Americans are eagerly wondering: where’s our representation, too?
At the very beginning of my childhood, I didn’t know what race I was. Not because I “didn’t see race”, but because I quite simply rarely saw anyone who looked like me. Due to not having any real Asian-American role models, I didn’t grow up with an identity, a sense of pride in my heritage. I was nearly ashamed of being Asian, because I didn’t see any successful Asians out there in the media that I could look up to. As Eddie Huang noted, “We want [Asian-American children] to have Supermen, Wolverines, and James Bonds that actually look like them, so they will believe they too can achieve the greatness they put their mind to.” Our missing piece in the media may be the exactly form of mass support that the Asian-American community needs to regroup, reassess our goals, and represent our race with pride.
But, Asian-American representation in modern television can be just as important to non- Asians as it is to Asians. Accurate plots and complex characters could reveal a true sense of the Asian-American lifestyle for those who have, figuratively, never before stepped inside an Asian-American home. For the teenagers who live in the Midwest and have two Asian kids in their entire high school of thousands, their only exposure to Asian-American personalities and lifestyles is what they see in the media.