Abstract

Excerpted From: Tung Yin, Microaggressions Against Asian-Americans in Hollywood ... and Law Schools, 33 Asian Am. L.J. 1 (2026) (251 Footnotes) (Full Document)

It is a sign of racial progress in Hollywood that a hit show like NBC’s ““Friends,” which ruled the airwaves from 1994-2004, probably would not be made today with its all-white main cast. This is especially true considering the show’s setting in New York City, where white persons constitute just over 34 percent of the population as of 2026. One of co-creators of “Friends”, Marta Kaufman, announced in June 2022 that, as an apology for the show’s lack of diversity, she would donate $4 million to Brandeis University to endow a chair to “support a distinguished scholar with a concentration in the study of the peoples and cultures of Africa and the African diaspora.” Indeed, when “Sex and the City”--a contemporaneous show also set in New York City with an all-white main cast--had a revival in 2021, it added two new main cast members, one of South Asian descent and the other of Mexican descent.

Nevertheless, Hollywood’s treatment of people of color--for the purposes of this article, East Asians--remains a work in progress. There have been a handful of television shows and movies in the 21st century that have featured a large number of Asian characters in the primary cast, but for the most part, Asian characters are relegated to background “nerd” roles, if they are not nonexistent. Worse yet, there are several recent productions that naturally should have cast Asian-American actors because the source material was about Asian characters and/or the setting was Asian. Yet, these productions erased the Asian presence, usually in favor of white characters. These are commonly known as microaggressions.

Although Hollywood produces mere entertainment, its treatment of minority actors and characters merits scholarly analysis. In her essay examining the depiction of female lawyers on television shows, Professor Joan Howarth writes:

Television is important because culture is important. We understand ourselves and our world through the images and concepts available to us through our culture ...

We learn through culture, including television, what it means to be a man or a woman, what it means to be white or Black or Asian American, what criminals look like, or what counts as beauty. We learn what emergency room doctors or criminal defense attorneys do. We learn how to dress, and what we consider to be attractive.

In addition, to the extent they present and reinforce the dominant cultural viewpoint, television shows and movies create what Professor Elizabeth Cooper calls the “expectations of appearance” for women and minorities. The core issue is that the norms of professional appearance--business dress, for example, or the vaguer “business casual”--may put outsiders in the uncomfortable dilemma of conforming to those dominant norms at the cost of hiding or downplaying their “core identities.” Following that same reasoning, one wonders about the impact on Asian-Americans of seeing the television world of the United States consisting mostly of white people and some Black and Hispanic people, with the token Asians relegated to “nerdy” roles as computer technicians or other scientific specialists. Does that create pressure to assimilate and adopt “white” personas, or to resign oneself to being perceived only as STEM types?

Hollywood has had a long history of what we now understand as microaggressions toward Asian-Americans and Asians. In the early-to midtwentieth century, Asian characters were frequently depicted as sinister and alien, such as the villainous Dr. Fu Manchu, or docile and submissive, such as Detective Charlie Chan. Naturally, these characters spoke English in thick accents and broken dialogue. These particular Hollywood microaggressions--erasing the presence of Asian-Americans--are replicated in analogous form in the legal academy in casebook excerpts or law review articles that conspicuously omit passages discussing Asians as well as landmark incidents involving people of color or other minority populations, but not similarly salient instances involving Asian-Americans.

To provide background for this Article’s analysis of Hollywood’s mistreatment of Asian-American and Asian actors and writers, as well as that of law schools toward Asian-American people, it will be useful to review the concept of microaggressions. One of the leading experts on the subject is Professor Derald Wing Sue, who defines a microaggression as “the brief and commonplace daily verbal, behavioral, and environmental indignities, whether intentional or unintentional, that communicate hostile, derogatory, or negative racial, gender, sexual-orientation, and religious slights and insults to the target person or group.”

Professor Renee Nicole Allen gives an example of a microaggression as a law school building whose hallways are adorned with “carefully hung portraits of white men” but none of women or people of color. Intentional or not, these portraits send a message “that Black women are intruders who do not belong.” It is doubtful that the law school intends to send this message, but that is a key essence of the microaggression: it is viewed from the perspective of the recipient, not the deliverer.

In 2007, Professor Sue and his Columbia University colleagues developed a taxonomy of common microaggressions, many of which are relevant to Hollywood’s microaggressive depiction of Asian characters and the legal academy’s ignoring of salient Asian-American stories and cases:

• “alien in one’s own land”;

• “ascription of intelligence”;

• “pathologizing cultural values/communication styles”;

• “second-class citizen”; and

• “environmental microaggressions.”

“Alien in one’s own land” refers to the perception that people of color-- primarily those of Asian or Hispanic descent--are “perpetual foreigner[s] or ... alien[s] in one’s own country.” Professor Sue explains that “[w]hen Asian Americans are complimented for speaking 'good English,’ and persistently asked where they were born, the metacommunication is that 'You are not American’ or 'You are a foreigner.”’

“Ascription of intelligence” usually describes an apparent compliment to a person of color that is actually an insult; for example, “you are a credit to your race” implies something less positive about the person’s race. However, there is also an ascription of intelligence that assumes all Asians are good at math and science.

“Pathologizing cultural values/communication styles” refers to “a belief that the cultural values/ communication styles of White, male, and straight groups are normative and that those of people of color, females, and LGBTs are somehow abnormal.”

“Environmental microaggressions” are defined as “[m]acro-level microaggressions, which are more apparent on systemic and environmental levels.” The wall of portraits of white males mentioned above would be one example; others provided by Professor Sue are “[t]elevision shows and movies that feature predominantly White people, without representation of people of color.” The message that is received is “[y]ou are an outsider/[y]ou don’t exist.”

“Second-class citizen” refers to power dynamics, particularly “when a target group member receives differential treatment from the power group.” Professor Sue gives the example of a female doctor who is mistaken as a nurse, which sends a message that “[w]omen occupy nurturing roles.” There are very few television programs or movies that feature lead characters who are Asian, which sends the message that we are neither heroes nor leaders.

Part I of this article applies these microaggression concepts to Hollywood’s patently offensive portrayal of Asian and Asian-American characters throughout the twentieth century into the twenty-first century, where they remain largely relegated to background roles. It then focuses on a specific kind of microaggression where Hollywood takes stories about Asians or Asian-Americans and whitewashes most of the characters, often while keeping the “exotic” Asian setting. Part II then turns its attention to law schools and the legal academy, presenting four examples where casebooks or legal scholarship downplay or altogether ignore Asian experiences despite their salient pedagogical value: (1) the famous Justice Harlan dissent in Plessy v. Ferguson; (2) the racial-hatred-motivated murder of Vincent Chin; (3) the paired cases of Ozawa v. U.S. and U.S. v. Singh Thind, in which the Court used contradictory reasoning to rule against an East Asian and South Asian plaintiff, respectively; and (4) Students for Fair Admission v. Harvard, which was ostensibly about alleged anti-Asian bias in college admissions, but where legal scholarship about the case (and the case itself) ignored the impact on Asians and turned instead into a full-scale defense or attack on race-based affirmative action. The common threads running through Parts I and II are the underrepresentation of Asians on-screen and in front of the classroom and the erasing of stories about Asians and Asian-Americans. Hollywood can do better, and so can law schools.

[ . . . ]

What are the best ways to deal with the anti-Asian microaggressions discussed in this article? Common advice for those encountering microaggressions consists of deciding whether to respond or to engage in self-care. In an interpersonal context, the victim at least has the choice of confronting the microaggression, either to be heard or to teach the other person about the offense. When the microaggression is the erasing of Asian-American and Asian identity and experience in films and television shows, direct confrontation is not generally feasible.

Fortunately, we are in the digital age of streaming entertainment. Shortly after the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, I discovered a wealth of foreign programming available through Netflix, Amazon Prime, or plain YouTube-- including Chinese, Korean, and Japanese movies and television shows featuring entirely or almost entirely Asian casts. Some of these, such as the South Korean thriller Squid Game, have gained large American audiences via Netflix. If I want to watch something with Asian characters who aren’t relegated to being tech nerds, I can watch East Asian programming where if there is an Asian tech nerd, it’s because just about everyone in the show is Asian.

But what about law schools and the legal academy? For a law student, there is no easy equivalent to “changing the channel,” the equivalent of which would depend on the particular issue. If it is the law school itself that lacks a true critical mass of Asian-American students, the question is whether there is a different school that one could transfer to that does offer such a critical mass? If the issue is that the assigned casebooks erase the Asian experience (such as including the Plessy dissent but omitting the ““there is another race” passage), well, the students probably won’t be aware of the omission in the first place. But even if they were aware, what would be the recourse--asking the professor to change casebooks?

This highlights the importance of student affinity groups, variously called APALSA (Asian Pacific American Law Student Association), AALSA (Asian American Law Student Association), or similar names, as well as specialty law journals (such as this one) that focus on legal issues concerning Asian-Americans.

Although membership in such affinity groups is typically open to all students, the focus is on matters relating to Asian-American law students. For example, at Lewis & Clark Law School, APALSA describes its mission as follows:

APALSA provides its members with personal, academic, and professional support to aid in the development of its law students. We work with attorneys in the Portland area to provide networking and professional development opportunities for APALSA members. We also hold several events throughout the school year to build a sense of community within APALSA and the rest of the student body.

Such groups provide a space for Asian-American students to see themselves at the forefront, rather than in the background. But it should not be incumbent upon law students to remedy the negative environmental microaggressions of the legal academy. Rather, it is the obligation of law professors to learn about the stories that have not been told but that should be. And when those stories are brought forth, it is our obligation as law professors to listen.

Similarly, specialty journals provide a direct outlet for law professors to publish legal scholarship of relevance to the Asian-American community. Yet, at present, the Scholastic clearinghouse website for law journals includes only seven that focus on Asian issues--and five of those do not cover Asian-American matters. Only this journal and UCLA’s Asian Pacific American Law Journal emphasize Asian-American issues. For there to be stories to be listened to, there should be more outlets in which to tell those stories.

Tung Yin is Professor of Law at Lewis & Clark Law School.