Gotta love that General Tso's

Chapters 9-11 of Media & Minorities focuses on the views of African, Hispanic, and Asian Mass Publics in the News. I focused on the Asian chapter (11) since I was not sure about their involvement in the news what-so-ever. According to the chapter, I was justified in this lack of knowledge since Asian Americans are very excluded from the news. When they were mentioned in the news, very much like other minorities, they were labeled with their Asian text, not by their name ("Korean Grocer Receives Probation"). The chapter goes on and discusses the various "model minority" images that the mass news can attribute to Asian Americans. One of the biggest stereotypical images and ideas about Asian Americans were that they were foreigners and thats it. There was a great deal of emphasis on the racial hierarchy saying that Asians could never assimilate into American society. This is ironic because the chapter also mentions how another big aspect of the Model Minority is that Asians are high achievers. Hmmm, in America the strong survive.....yet, if they achieve too much they are deemed as cold and emotionless. This is definitely a Catch 22 for Asian Americans.
Recently, there was an episode of South Park (yeah I know, but I love it) in which the overtly racist Cartman joins in a crusade to eliminate the threat of Chinese in America (because of the Olympics). To do this, he and another character Butters, dress up like stereotypical Chinese and take over a P.F. Changs. To his dismay, all the people working for P.F. Changs are American. I thought that this was hilarious. As the chapter talked about how many Asians were most of the time viewed as foreigners, their conceptual ethnicity is a part of our food consumption. At the same time, I am reminded of a quote from Family Guy, "What do you want to have for dinner tonight? I dunno, maybe Caucasian?" While there has been assimilation with the food industry, Asian food is still stamped with their ethnicity.
all this talk of Chinese food is making me hungry.