Race and ethnicity, NYC 2006

[oyceter]

My experiences of California are such that most of the people of color I run into are either Asian or Hispanic. There is a very clear class divide. The places I go to around here tend to be upper-middle class, which is almost exclusively Asian and white in the very gentrified Silicon Valley (excluding Oakland, Berkeley, San Jose proper, etc.). Many of the Hispanics I see tend to be in the service industry, and I very rarely see black people. It is very easy for me to avoid seeing other non-Asian people of color, much less talk to them. I would like to pretend that I'm not consciously avoiding them, but since I'm also not actively seeking them out and since I do avoid neighborhoods are "bad," that's really not saying much.

In New York, it was more difficult to avoid other people of color. I don't live there, so I can't say why, though a) less of a class divide, b) neighborhoods closer together, and c) more people of color overall are my uneducated guesses. People in the service industry still tended to be people of color. On the other hand, there were many more POC on the subways and the streets, at least in the parts of Manhattan that I was going around. It felt like there were much fewer Asians, though, with the obvious exception of Chinatown.

I tended to notice and count POC more on the subway than anywhere else, for reasons that may be purely idiosyncratic.

Personal experiences:

• My sister and I were the only two Asian women in Sam Ash, a music store. There were several black men, both customers and salespeople. I felt extremely awkward and unsure and ashamed of my instinctive action to be frightened. Naturally, the salesguy (black) who ended up helping us was immensely polite and nice.



• I saw a "Jews for Jesus" poster in the subway and mentally shook my fist at it for coffeeandink.



• There was one subway ad for occupational education that featured an Indian, a black person, and a Hispanic person in the pictures (I don't remember if there was an Asian), with explanations of how each of them entered the program, earned their college degrees and got higher-paying jobs. I cannot decide if the specifically targeted marketing is merely practical from a business standpoint or annoying from a moral standpoint.



• There were many Jewish bookstores and shops with Hebrew in the windows; I am not sure if I thought there were many simply because I don't see a lot in CA, or because I have only started to notice.



• I noticed many more POC around lower Manhattan than upper, particularly when we were trooping around Upper East Side for the Met.



• While my sister, her friend and I were walking up Upper East Side to go to Le Pain Quotidian, a man on the street (I think he was white, though I am not sure) yelled, "Get out of America!" I tried to ignore him and unobtrusively look around at the same time to see if he was yelling at anyone else. There was a middle-aged white couple behind us, but other than that, it was just us (three Asian women) walking by the guy. The man from the middle-aged white couple started arguing back with the man on the street, though his wife pulled him away. I thanked him for trying. It took about half the meal to shake off the fear. My sister and her friend said that it had never happened to them before.



• I saw even more ads for the new NBC drama Heroes, along with a magazine spread. I've decided to Tivo the pilot at least, if only because the cast is multiracial (4 out of the 9 are visibly minorities, and I am guessing the two brothers are supposed to be Italian-American). I am particularly happy because while two of the minorities are black and Hispanic, the other two are Indian and Japanese. On the other hand, I am very irked that all the white people, the Italian-Americans (duh), the black woman and the Hispanic man are the Americans, while the Indian lives in India and the Japanese guy lives in Japan. I appreciate the attempt to be international, as cursory as it is (and it is very cursory!), but I am pissed off because it feels like the Japanese guy and the Indian guy were only cast because of their characters' nationalities. Like there aren't Japanese and Indian people in America!

Comments

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

"Get out of America" guy-- Gah! How awful!

I too am very curious about Heroes. I see potential for the Japanese and Indian settings to be incredibly cliched, but also potential for them to be very interesting. (When has an American TV show ever had scenes in India? Unless they really hash it up, I'm pretty excited about that.) The Japanese and Indian settings do mean that the central Japanese and Indian characters will not be the only ones on the show. Of course, this could have been accomplished in American settings as well, but that definitely forces it.

Although I don't know if the show will continue to keep the characters separated from each other, as that would be difficult to structure, so they might not all stay where they started out.

[oyceter]

Ugh, yeah, that experience was really not fun, and I think the three of us felt shaky for a while after that.

I'm really, really, really hoping that the Japanese and Indian settings and characters aren't too cliched, though I was incredibly disappointed when I read some brief character bios and found out the Japanese character, who is dressed in a somewhat nerdy sweater vest with glasses, is a salaryman. I am hoping that there won't be the standard "Japanese salarymen are like emotionless robots being pushed through the system by a society that tries to make everyone fit in the same mold" type thing.

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

Uh-oh. In that case, I can guarantee you that his story in the pilot will be about how his new powers either help him rebel against crushing conformity, or how they give him a happy outlet from said cc.

On the other hand, if the series succeeds, it may run through that and then go on to a different and more interesting story. That's why I'm so obsessed with TV casting: shows change. Small or stereotyped roles sometimes become larger and less stereotyped with time. (This can go in the opposite direction too, alas.) But if people aren't cast at all, there is no hope.

Is the Indian a computer programmer?

[oyceter]

The Indian is apparently a genetics professor who is going to NYC in search of his father's murderer (actually, that sounds rather cool).

And for further "yay marketing" moments, the character description for Hiro Nakamura (the Japanese character) is:

"A cubicle jockey for Yamagata Industries in Tokyo, Hiro is a worker bee in a sea of worker bees, but there's the hint of the nonconformist in him."

Hope is fading by the second...

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

I am mildly amused by Hiro's name (shades of Neal Stephenson's Hiro Protagonist) but otherwise that sounds awfully cliched. Also, hello, mixed metaphor! Are those mutant marine worker bees?

Agreed that the Indian's storyline sounds pretty cool.

[oyceter]

Hee, yes! A mutant marine worker bee that rides horses!

[readsalot.livejournal.com]

A friend of mine downloaded a copy of the pilot of Heroes last week and several of us watched it together. The Japanese guy was kind of a nerd, and cute in a nerdly way. And definitely not emotionless. I was amused that all of the scenes he was in had dialog in Japanese with subtitles since so many movies and TV shows have everyone speaking English when you're supposed to assume that they're actually speaking their native language. On the other hand, the people in India were all speaking English, which seemed unlikely.

I'll definitely watch the first couple of episodes, but there were a lot of cliches, and I'm not very hopeful. It seems like one of those shows where you have to spend the entire time mocking the writers.

[racyli.livejournal.com]

Actually, numberwise, India is the largest English-speaking country in the world.

[fresne.livejournal.com]

As I recall his power somewhat indicates that they're going for the conformity thing. As his abilities are escape oriented.

Although, it makes me curious about the Indian. Well, other than wondering if there won't be many other people with powers, but these are the ones they're focusing on. Given the size of the population in India. And for that matter, the rest of the world that isn't the US.

[oyceter]

Yeah, his character write-up on the website sounds a lot like that as well.

The Indian character is apparently a genetics professor.