Overview of Stereotypes

Jessica B Ochoa

AS 3451

Overview of Stereotypes

October 18, 2012

            Stereotype is the idea about a specific type of individual or the ways they do things. In this case, we are studying the images of Asian and Asian-Americans in rewards to T.V, politics and media in general; and how the Asian stereotypes make outsiders create an image of this culture from a different prospective far away from reality. Asians establish four percent of the entire U.S population mainly coming from China, Vietnam, Philippines and other parts of Asia, making them the fastest growing minority group in America.             Television network over the course of years has created and misled an image of Asians with different stereotypes and the audience or the outsiders began to establish assimilations such as “Asians are perpetual foreigners because they eat weird food” like fish, chicken head and related them to lower class people. In contrast to Europeans who eat healthier and belong to higher class. “Asians have funny names” Fook Yu and Fook Mi representing Japanese twin sisters in Austin power in Gold member. “Asians are short and small” Seinfeld film in which Asians visitors sleep in draws due to their body size. ”Asian women have special power towards men” Women are exotic, sexual in a bad negative way like the Thai maid in Sex in the city when she manipulates her male boss and arranges to separate him from his girlfriend Samantha. Television is one of greatest inventions in the history of mankind making it a great source of information since people spent an average of three hours watching television. It is from television that people learn different cultures and customs sometimes in a good way but others in a negative way. One of the main problems is the writers who are mixing languages, names, and American actors playing Asian people creating stereotypes like the ones mentioned before leading Asians under-represented. With the course of the years, Asians were able to work up politics positions such as Elaine Chao (former secretary of labor during Bush administration). Gary Locke (Governor of Washington State, today is the American Ambassador in China. Asian should follow these steps and keep trying hard to become active members of society, let their voice be heard by others and produce a clear and real image of their culture and customs.