Mass Conditioning, Social Norms, Asian Images

(i found this buried in my email, of lots of links and articles written by an aaf named 'judy' on these topics. copied and pasted below):
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"i don't get it. why do some people who make martial arts movie always want to have a white guy beat up the asian. how come its not the asian guy the good guy and the white guy the drug lord, the bad guy or something along the lines of that? not to be too racist in all."
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Race relations and media biases are subjects which I study and research a lot. By the way, I'm an Asian American woman and I study sociology and do research on sociological issues. With that being said I'd like to start by saying that there really needs to be more Asian Men and Non-White Men in leading roles in movies, commercials, etc. A clear example of this factual disparity is the lack of Non-White Men in leading romantic roles in romantic movies with Non-White women. In fact, there are more romantic movies in Hollywood that cast White Men as the leading romantic partners for Non-White Women. That is just wrong and it has to change. The racial pair-ups are clearly one-sided and it is easily observable.

There is covert racism in Western Media -- that is a fact (I suggest you all research it before posting). It has nothing to do with talent. It has everything to do with Mass Conditioning. The Western Media is mostly owned by White Male executives, producers, corporate CEOS and such. They shape the minds and perceptions of the people according to their own subconscious racial biases (whether they are aware of it or not). This is why so many people in the Western Hemisphere subconsciously perceive Whiteness as the standard and norm of society. This is why when White Men perform in movies as lead characters, or in music, or in the porn industry, or in commercials, they appeal to the masses more (because society has been conditioned through the White Male owned media into subconsciously perceiving Whiteness as the norm and human standard).

The images that we see through the Mass Media are really dictated by the Media Owners -- who are predominantly White Men. Society has been conditioned to see through the Media Owner's eyes and racial biases -- and thus society has been fed a very one-sided view of the world. It is because White Men have been subconsciously and deceptively established as the "norm" of society (by way of the White Male owned Media), that White Male leads are able to generate more box-office numbers than Non-White leads. It all comes down to Mass Conditioning and Manipulation by the Media Owners (who are mostly White Men). Please refer to the academic sources below that address the mass deception known as "White Privilege":

http://seamonkey.ed.asu.edu/~mcisaac/emc598ge/Unpacking.html (Source: Arizona State University)
http://www.media-awareness.ca/english/issues/stereotyping/whiteness_and_privilege/whiteness_defining.cfm (Defining Whiteness and White Privilege)
http://whiteprivilege.hampshire.edu/ (Source: Hampshire College)
http://www.gcc.mass.edu/library/pathfinders/WPInternet.htm (Source: Greenfield Community College)
http://www.whiteprivilege.com/definition/
http://www.edchange.org/multicultural/sites/white.html (Multiple researchable resources on"White Privilege")
http://academic.udayton.edu/race/01race/whiteness04.htm (Source: Universty of Dayton)

Lack of racial diversity in the highest media positions:

A survey during the 1990's which was conducted by FAIR reported that 80% of ABC's Nightline guests were professionals, while 89% of those professionals were male, and 92% of those males were White. Fair then continued to find consistent numbers done for other shows as well. For example, 90% of the guests in PBS's Macneil and Lehrer NewsHour were White, while 87 % of those guests were male, 67 % of those men were from the government. In 1996, there was a survey that reflected the numbers of the subjects interviewed in American network news to be around 86% for White men.

Such statistics are consistent with the argument that White men seem to be the leading force behind the structures of the mainstream media: " White journalists dominate the mainstream media; and White people hold most creative positions in the entertainment media as actors, writers and directors. All these factors contribute to the prevalence of Whiteness in media, and help to reinforce White privilege as the norm....Most mainstream media content also reinforces White privilege by featuring White characters and addressing white interests and experiences. When programming does feature non-white characters, they usually appear in supporting roles."

Source: http://www.media-awareness.ca/english/issues/stereotyping/whiteness_and_privilege/whiteness_authority.cfm

Also please go to the link below as it is a source that talks about the racial biases in the pornographic industry and why such a racial bias is really an unnatural sociological dynamic that has been deceptively installed by the predominantly White Male owned entertainment industry. The author of the article also gives some suggestions on how to take progressive steps to fix the problem and therefore establish racial equality in the porn industry as well as in the general industry of media itself:

http://yellowworld.org/arts_culture_media/47.html

I just want to point out an excerpt from the article in the link above which reads as follows: "Lei, who is part Thai and part Cambodian, has long brown hair that frames a wide smile and meshes seamlessly with her dark bronze complexion. Chun is a tall, strapping Korean-American who exudes a youthful charm on the screen. Lei said Chun was her first Asian male costar and she enjoyed the experience. "I feel like when it's Asian and Asian, it's more comfortable," Lei says. "I don't feel awkward when I kiss him."

By the way, the article in that source is written by an Asian American studies professor Darrell Hamamoto from the University of California at Davis. More statements in that academic article reads as follows: "Asian-American sexuality has been damaged by years of colonialism and racism that has turned Asian women into a sexual fetish and Asian men into eunuchs. Asian-Americans have internalized these attitudes, Hamamoto says, causing a rift between the genders and perpetuating the stereotypes."

More excerpts:

"The whole sexuality part of our lives is warped and deformed from larger white racism," he said. "I want Asian-American people to look at it and examine it themselves, take matters in their own hands and come up with a solution."

"I think there are two different things going on here: the image of Asian-American male sexuality and power. Who controls what is sexy in film, and basically what is sexy, is defined by white guys," says Joyce Guan, who works at the Asian-American Telecommunications Association, and had just seen "Masters of the Pillow," a documentary about the making of Hamamoto's porn video. "Seeing an Asian-American male in a film or in roles where they are sexual is a good thing."

But those roles in porn or mainstream entertainment are lacking, largely because film studios, movie producers and TV news directors assume that Asian-American men can't hold an audience.

Much of what is produced in the mass media is created for the pleasure of white men, according to Elaine Kim, an Asian-American studies professor at the University of California at Berkeley. "[White men] can have every woman of every race. For Asian men, they're just not supposed to be men..."

It is also because of the Mass Media that so many false negative stereotypes have been used on so many social groups in today's world. Of course whether negative stereotypes are sometimes only intended to be jokes or not, they usually have severe ramifications on society because they influence the the direction of social identities on people's perceptions (subconsciously). The facts listed below emphasize on the term STEREOTYPE THREAT. and such facts are irrefutable -- again, they cannot be debated, as they have been consistently documented, peer-reviewed, and archived by highly credible top Universities for many many years.

Evidence of the Stereotype Threat:

http://www.units.muohio.edu/psybersite/primetime/THREAT.shtml (from MIAMI UNIVERSITY)
http://www.mtholyoke.edu/offices/comm/csj/092404/steele.shtml (from MOUNT HOLYOKE COLLEGE Archives)
http://www.kzoo.edu/psych/StereotypeThreat.pdf (From the KALAMAZOO COLLEGE ARCHIVES)
http://www.u.arizona.edu/~schmader/Stereotype%20Threat.htm (from the UNIVERSITY of ARIZONA)
http://www.princeton.edu/~psych302/lectures/stere_threa.pdf (from PRINCETON UNIVERSITY)
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=14498781&dopt=Abstract (THE NATIONAL LIBRARY | GOVERNMENT SOURCE)

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Exactly. I have seen plenty of Asian movies where the bad guys were white. Every culture's movies do this. If a majority of the population is white, they will be better able to identify with the white guy as the hero rather than the Asian.
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The problem is, in America, even though the single largest ethnic group belongs to Whites, most people in America are not White (when you group all the Non-White people together). I find it odd that so many leading protagonist roles in movies are taken by White guys. If you compare the number of movies in which Asian guys or Non-White guys play the lead protagonist, the numbers don't compare. The American Media is biased and is subconsconsiously favoring White Guys more than Non-White Guys in movies, despite the fact that there are more Non-White Guys in America (combined) than there are White Guys in America. This is no secret and you can even research these things online.

Why shall this be a race issue?

Because IT IS a racial issue, no matter how many times one tries to avoid the FACT THAT IT IS. Simply ignoring the overwhelming researchable facts only serves to obscure the sociological issues at hand. The westernized entertainment industry is clearly geared towards elevating the image of White men above Non-White men. It is because of this repetitive elevation of White Male protagonism in movies, that society in general have become subconsciously conditioned into falsely perceiving White Men as the standards and ideal representation for all males. I dare you to research these things. I provided several academic sources in this post for to help you get started with your research. The facts can no longer be ignored. You can either ignore this post or ridicule all together, but no matter what you say, nobody can refute the data in this post (which mind you, are repeatedly supported by University sources and Official Government Sources as well).