What do you think of the media’s coverage of Obama and Asians?

by Carmen Van Kerckhove

First, let me apologize for how slow/down this and our other blogs have been over the last few days. I’ve got some major database issues and am working on getting it fixed – thanks for bearing with us in the meantime. It’s been tortuous, I know.

I wanted to find out if anyone caught the special on race and gender CNN did this Friday as part of Anderson Cooper’s show? If so, what did you think?

I’m glad they included Jane Junn from Rutgers – I thought her analysis on a lot of issues was really level-headed and thought-provoking, especially the stuff about how the Italians and the Irish used to be racialized too, but now we would laugh at the idea of “the Italian vote.” (She also just wrote a piece on race and gender for the 360 blog.)

By the way, CNN has been catching a lot of flak about that awful piece they did on February 8th about the Asian-American vote. You know, the one that was almost entirely filmed in an Asian grocery store in Seattle and basically concluded that Asians are too racist to vote for a black dude?

And lastly, check out this piece from Time Magazine, with the ominous title “Does Obama Have an Asian Problem?”

What do you think of the way the media has been handling the issue of the Asian-American vote? On the one hand I’m pleasantly surprised to see that it’s being mentioned at all. On the other hand, it’s frustrating to see how clueless many reporters seem about the immense diversity among Asians in the U.S.

What are your thoughts?