"What Color is That Baby?"

(picture from here)

Bob Herbert writes a poignant Op-Ed about media coverage and race in today’s NY Times. 

“What color is that baby?” he asked.

A tremendous silence fell over the room. Everyone understood what he meant. If the baby was white, the chances were much better that the story was worth big play. It might be something to get excited about.

This is the concept of Orientalism in a nutshell.  People have certain ideas of what races are supposed to be, what people of certain races are supposed to act like, and how we should feel about people depending on what race they are.  People are supposed to feel sad when White people get murdered.  They don’t extend the same empathy if the victims are Black, Latino, or Asian.   Those stories get cut before they’re even written.

It’s similar in film and literature, especially in film.  The social issue with a biased media is that the public, if it didn’t already have these racial values, adopts these racial values.  The cycle perpetuates itself, and since media distribution in this country, for the most part, is controlled by non-minority men, it becomes difficult to break the cycle.

In another of today’s NY Times Op-Eds, David Brooks talks about a fascinating longitudinal study of 268 promising young men (Download the Atlantic article today).  This would be a very interesting experiment for Asian American people, especially as it relates to mental health.  Maybe some rich Asian American organization will someday like to take it on?

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