 Why do Asian-Americans care so much about how they're represented in the media even more than other groups? Let's explain! Oh man, there's a lot to unpack here. Let's talk about this reddit post. Why do a lot of Asian-Americans attach so much of their individual self-worth to entertainment products? This guy says that he hangs out with Hispanic, Iranian, Bengali, and North African people. They're immigrants. Some are born in America just like him. And he's realizing, Andrew, that they have no angst about their culture and representation in this country and are very willing to share it with anybody. They're willing to tell the stories. They're willing to share the history. Whereas he says that East Asians and Southeast Asians, specifically more like, I guess, Mongoloid people are so angsty and insecure about it. So man, this sparked a ton of comments. Make sure you like, subscribe, turn on your notifications. We're going to address, Andrew, if his sort of whole premise is even correct to begin with. Right. So anyway, guys, make sure you like, subscribe, turn on your notifications. Check out Smallassauce at Smallassauce.com. Andrew, this touched a nerve. Can you see why immediately? Because he's like, why does it seem like only East Asians and Southeast Asians talk about it endlessly for hours at a time on the internet? Yeah, exactly. I think first of all, a lot of Asians are on the internet. And I have my reasons why I think Asians care so much about it. So you agree with him? I do agree that from what I've talked to from my other types of friends outside of the Asian groups, they don't talk about media representation in the same way Asians do. Asians got it down to a science. We know how many Asian characters were in this. We got all the bad Asian characters out of mind. Oh, remember Long Duk Dung? Oh, when Ken Jeong jumped out of the trunk. Oh, and this happened. This happened. Right. The guy in Fargo who's like, oh, yeah, you are a super lady. Yeah. Super lady. Right, right, right. Yeah. And so I guess here are my quick reasons on why. And I think it's actually legit. So, so you agree with the poster? I agree. Some people were disagreeing with him too, saying that, well, yeah, those are just the Asians online. Like most Asians are just like living their life in Enclave, like not thinking about any of this. No, no, no. Asians put actually quite a bit of money and political power. I'm not saying 100% Asians care. I'm just saying it's more the model minority Asians. Is it not? Yeah. And we're going to get into why it's a lot of let's just say, yeah, model minority Asians, whatever Asian you are. If you fall within model minority, here's why. Okay. So, so, so you agree with this, but with some more added thoughts? Yeah. Yeah. Here's why. I think first of all, if you're a model minority Asian, you're already climbing up the white structure ladder. Corporate structures. Yeah. You're already looking at colleges. Like if you went to a good college, you strived and you did what your white teachers were telling you to do or your non Asian teachers or whatever it was. And you're trying to achieve something and in this way that is like built by white people in this country, then you are going to end up desiring more of what white people have. You're climbing the white man's ladder, whereas these groups Hispanic, Iranian, Bengali, North African, of course there is some that do, but at a ratio probably less so. Yeah. They're more operating on their own. No, like think about it. Like let's say you're an Asian who didn't go to college and you just run your own little business in like your Asian enclave. You probably Asian thugs or something. Yeah. You won't care as much about media representation in the movies. My Southeast Asian friends that didn't go to college care way less. They care in their own way. I think they care like about Asian representation and like hip hop or something like that, but way less about the Netflix version of a book or something, right? Because listen guys, book publishers, Hollywood, these are essentially still non Asian sections. These are systems that are ran by non Asians. And aren't they very like foofy sort of bougie sort of systems? Yeah. A lot of Harvard grad school degrees and undergrad degrees in those fields. You know, I talked to some Asians, David, that do a lot of import, export between Asians, Asia and America. That's how they make a lot of money. Yeah. And they don't care that much about representation usually because they're just like, well, I'm already like dealing with Asia all the time and I, you know, I make money there and I'm spending like three months a year in Asia closing deals. I don't care. Yeah. I mean, listen, look at the depression rates and unfortunately the suicide rate of Asian Americans. Clearly Asians have a lot of shame and care a lot about things, right? That these other groups maybe are not, they don't, they're not, the depression rates not as high. No, no, no. And I think that there's a lot of reasons for that. I think they're actually ethno-religious, Hispanics being Catholic, largely speaking Spanish, being used, having a unified, obviously language that when Spain went over to Latin America. The other ones, I believe the other groups may be more Muslim. You know what I mean? So they have an ethno-religious identity, which is very different than just having a ethno floating. I want to assimilate, but this larger culture won't let me fully feel accepted culture game plan. My last reason that I think is legit though, is that a lot of Asians feel or remember what it was like to be misrepresented and therefore they want the representation to be correct. And this is based off history. Asians in heavy numbers have been in America for like 200 years, like heavy numbers. I'm saying 150 plus years. Let's just put it that or 60. Let's just say 100 years, whatever. Yeah, average it out. 60 to 150, 100. All right. Let's just say heavy numbers. Asians have been in America for 100 years. For those 100 years, they have always felt different and never really got treated as Americans. Now maybe it's some wack worker dweebs. Yeah, maybe it was partially their fault. Maybe they always stayed in their language groups, their ethnic enclaves, whatever it was. Regardless, we did not ever get to choose our representation. So we know what it's like to suffer from misrepresentation. And so now that Asians are coming up and have more power in money, they want to make the choices now. Okay. I see where you're coming from. I will say this. I think the biggest problem with the representations, and this is what this guy is referring to, is that they only care about media representation, whereas I'm also very concerned with like movements of communities and how we're perceived in IRL. Like you have to look at every time you're walking on the sidewalk and somebody's like not moving for you because you're Asian. Are you immediately moving out of the way and scuttling out of the way? Like a lot of Americans, not all obviously, I'm just talking about a portion, they subconsciously think that Asians will always be submissive to them. Right? Regardless, if they're just not Asian, they think that Asians will be submissive to them. In your own life, you have to do what you can to fight that and not just rely on like complaining about how Asians got made look stupid or weak in all these shows that come out. Right. And I'm saying that sometimes when people don't have control over their IRL and they might not be dealing with that shoulder check situation or making people move for them to be bold, they might extra focus on the Hollywood side. You're saying if potentially you are weak in real life, you then put your energy into trying to cheer on Asian representation in the fake life, which is media. Right. Even though to be fair, I believe that the media landscape is oftentimes representative of a snapshot of how people are viewed. For example, a lot of people, and this is not just overly sensitive fumbros here, have been critical of the representation of Chinese males Andrew in Netflix's adaptation of three body problem. Now, when you look at that, some people can be mad at it, but for me, I just feel like it's more representative of a snapshot of what is acceptable. You know what I mean? And you can be mad at what is acceptable, but literally the entertainment product is just a symptom of the narratives of the times. And so maybe that's the part that people think about too. It's like understanding a symptom, but not really understanding the systemic core. But since you can't understand the systemic core, you overly focus on the symptom. Anyway, somebody said Asian Americans crave mainstream cultural acceptance a lot more than other minorities. I believe that this has to do with collectivism and just buying into whatever hierarchy that we buy into for the moment. Yeah, listen, Hollywood is a white system and colleges and being a lawyer in America, being climbing up the medical ladder is also a still white ran system or white built system. So yeah, those are white systems like running a little shop in your little ethnic enclave, whatever that may be is less of a white system. Do you think tech is the most is the most lucrative system that's most free from that? Yeah, that's a good question. I don't think there's none in there. I'm just saying the least. I think tech is the most, I guess, Asian large system. Right, right, right. Like Asian, like the most Asian of the large systems. Right, right, right. Because even like a white guy who runs tech like Elon, he kind of reminds me of an Asian. I think that's why Kanye said he was half Chinese. Somebody just said, yep, it's Confucianism, but applied in basically the wrongest ways to like how we're applying Confucianism. Somebody said, nope, media just dictates all the world's first world cultures. All first world cultures in the world, world at this point in 2024, revolve around media. That's what this person says. I could understand that because America, you know, in hip hop, hip hop is funny because it's it's driven from America, which is a first world country. But in hip hop, and people always talk about industry versus in the streets. And there it is different, right? That's why you talk about industry plants and all this stuff. Somebody said, who said Asians even care? That's just online, you and your own little fishbowl bubble. Most Asians are just out living their life, probably watching stuff from Asia and don't even care. This is an interesting point, right? Because I think that some people like Asian Americans, Andrew, they care a lot, but I don't think Asians from Asia care that much that are living in America and have maybe gotten an American passport now, but are still like more tapped into the mainframe hard drive of Asia. Yeah, I don't think all Asians care, but I will say that there are quite a few Asian organizations that have funding that are built that people put their time into to do this exact thing to represent Asians differently. So clearly, there is effort put into this that other groups are not putting their effort into like, like the millions of dollars of Asians monies have been put into representation versus other groups. I don't know if that's true last like five, 10 years more recently, right? This guy said Asians just don't have any community in real life versus, for example, the groups he was talking about people hanging out at the mosque or Latinos being able to just Latin America is just right next to America, right? And there are actually quite a few Latin American communities in America like way more, there's just so many. So he's saying that because you don't feel the in-person camaraderie as much, then you just look for it in the media. I think it's possible. I do think there's quite a few self-hating Asians and even self-hate even has different levels and different on the spectrum of, you know, how much you hate yourself. But I do think that there is quite a bit of self-hate amongst Asians. Yeah, somebody said it's really just the millennials and Gen X people. Positive Asian representation in America started 10 years ago. Your forward of years are from 10 to 18. So pretty much anybody right now that's Asian American over the age of 28 is possibly in the I'm a self-hating Asian range and anybody 28 and below got way better exposure, way younger. Possible. I agree. Somebody said it's actually the parents fault for not showing the kids and making them so angsty and insecure about their identity. Do you think this is true? Because somebody was like, yo, a lot of parents, they're just working so hard. They just want you to get A's. They're not even thinking about you being a cultural warrior at all. They just want you to get a job and fit in and learn English. I mean, obviously some parents more than others. I'm not going to lie. We particularly had a dad who educated us on a lot of stuff and made us read, you know, the monkey king and all this like stuff that a lot of kids didn't necessarily get. See, man, everybody sees the college admissions rates. Everybody sees the Asian income. Everybody sees all the white college jobs that Asians get. They want to look at the credit scores, but at what cost? You know, honestly, I'm going to keep it real. I know a lot of, you know, some Latino friends, whether they're Puerto Rican, Dominican, Mexican, you know, other countries in Latin America, Ecuador. And I remember they always tell me they're like, yeah, man, like to be honest, the way the Asians do it. I wish we could like fix some of the issues in our community, but we would never want to do it like how you guys do. Because it's like too much bowing down to them, like from their perception of what is pride or machismo. Well, they're saying it doesn't look fully worth it to be honest for them and their value system. And I would agree to be honest, like just and then somebody said, yep, it's just a classic lack of racial socialization to their motherland culture. And then they cannot fully get accepted into the mainstream American culture, which is binary and white and black. So then they're left in a nose man's land. No man's land leaves you angsty, insecure, and jittery like a small dog. Right. Yeah. A lot of them do man. And then the small dogs, maybe unleashing online. Somebody said, you know, there's a lot of debate whether Latinos have representation or not even because a lot of people were pointing out all the Latinos that are in media. But then somebody said, but yeah, they're all the quasi white passing Latinos. Right. There's no like indigenous looking Latinos, they get other like Asians do. But then I feel like those indigenous Latinos that I know that I've asked them, they still feel represented by the white Latinos making it in American media. They don't like make that difference as much. Even though that's true though. Yeah, I don't know. That we got to delve into that more. Somebody just said, you know, one media star in America that's Asian is worth a million lawyers and doctors. I don't think that this is the way things should be, but it just is this way. Like in terms of impacting the way that everyday Asian is treated. One Jeremy Lynn is worth a million doctors agree disagreeing with thoughts on that. Man, a million doctors. Come on guys. I don't know about a million. But yes, because because doctors and lawyers, they're there to they study the principles and the law and the rules and the science that is already there. It's not cultural as much, you know, they're there to essentially serve whoever they're serving, whether a lawyer is defending or trying to prosecute, or the doctors trying to serve a patient. You're just consuming knowledge that already was built there. But if you're a front facing person like a rock an Asian rock star, Asian DJ, Asian athlete, Asian politician, Asian actor, it's because people like you, they're drawn towards you. And that really changes people's perceptions more so than even having an Asian doctor. You're saying you're saying the Asians that only provide their swag and their vibe, even though it's great to have Asians provide real structural things to keep the society going. People take those things unfortunately for granted. Yeah, unfortunately. Yeah, that's how the system is. I would agree with actually with that statement to be honest. This guy just went on to say, man, at the end of the day, I get it, man. I don't want to care about this as much either. But culture matters, man, culture matters to me, man. And then the last point was, man, you know what it is? It's just because most Asian Americans have worked their way to the middle class or upper middle class, but they'll never become fully wealthy. And they're not in the poverty state. So when you're in the poverty state, Andrew, you're just living day to day. When you get into the middle and the upper middle class, you're working a job. Now you're thinking about how you're getting treated. But once you get into the wealthy class, Andrew, you just worry about accumulating more money for you and your family. And you almost have the identity of a rich person, even transcending your identity. But yeah, I mean, I would say rich people and even poor people still care about identity, but they might not care about it as much as a middle class person who has like all the time to dedicate to it. Right, right, right. Yeah. Ultimately, I'll say this, man. I think representation matters, and it doesn't matter more than IRL real life. But I think a lot of Asians, especially the ones that are chronically online, they cannot really control their reality because they're locked into this middle class lifestyle assets, debts, liabilities, you know what I mean? The rat race, they have nice things, but it's a rat race. And that's what makes them hyper focus on representation. So even though it's not ideal, I wish everybody could go live in Asia. I wish everybody could go read the classics from everywhere in Asia, including their own motherland country and learn their mother tongue and connect with multi-generational things. It's almost just not realistic to expect. So this is, I'm just explaining why we're at where we're at. Yeah, I just, I just wish Asians would stop hating themselves so much. I don't think Asians, I'm not saying every Asian got to love themselves 10 out of 10, but you got to stop hating yourself. Yeah. And like we said, you know, I feel like AZN people living ghetto, fabulous lifestyle in the enclaves, they are aware that Asians don't have like great representation, but they just don't care because they're like living in their own reality. So it really depends. Like you said, what ladders are you climbing? What pyramids are you constantly looking up towards in your life guys? It's going to vary. Maybe even within a family, the brother made one decision, the sister made another decision. It's not really optimal, but here's where we are. Let us know what you think in the comment section below. Why does it seem like Asian Americans, especially the ones online, put so much of their individual self-worth into entertainment products? Very good questions. A lot of different reasons. Until next time, we're the Hop Hop Boys. We out. Peace.