At first glance, this popular T.V. hospital drama on ABC seems like a step forward for the representation of minorities in Hollywood. I mean, look at this diverse cast. The only problem, of course, is that it's completely divorced from reality. The minority representation in this show is completely skewed towards fantasy land, and utterly shafts the Asian male.
As I write this, there's currently a controversy over actor Isaiah Washington having said anti-gay sentiments about another actor (T.R. Knight), ending up with his eventual firing. While this is a sad story of gay discrimination, it goes beyond the scope of this website. For the purposes of this article, we will ignore the fact that this (Black) actor was fired and strictly focus on which actors make(made) up the Season One and Two cast.
Moving along ... sometimes, to address the plight of Asian Males in Hollywood, we have to address the roles Asian males AREN'T given rather than the ones that ARE. After all, we unfortunately live in a zero-sum-gain world where empowering one group comes at the expense of disenfranchising another.
We're going to look at a lot of statistics in this article. Now I'll be the first to admit that contrary to stereotype -- I'm no math genius, having (embarrassingly for my stereotype) not even reached Calculus. Nonetheless, since I'm usually the first person to figure out a 15% tip at a restaurant, I'm not exactly an idiot at math. If my calculations are wrong, please let me know. According to the 2000 census, America is 75% white, 12.3% Black, 12.5% Latino/Hispanic, 3.7% Asian. If we were to go purely by racial makeup in all of America, a cast of ten would look more like this.
Note how we lost 2 Black doctors and 1/2 of Sandra Oh.
In addition, it may come as no surprise to you that Asians predominantly live in major metropolitan areas and coastal areas, thus skewing the #s higher for Asians in Seattle. Now, by no means do I consider myself to be an expert in Seattle (the fictional home of the hospital in Grey's Anatomy). Nonetheless, I've been there 4 times, so I know a little something about it. The LARGEST MINORITY in Seattle is Asian, with Blacks coming in second. I just happened to know this little fact having read "Rough Guide Seattle" on one of my trips there -- which initially led me to question the reality of Grey's Anatomy. But anyway, let's talk about raw #s here: According to the 2000 census, Seattle is 67.1 % White, 16.6% Asian, 9.7 % Black, and 6.3 % Hispanic/Latino. If we were to go strictly by the racial makeup of Seattle, our cast of ten would now look like this:
We just got Sandra Oh back plus another half Sandra, lost half of the Hispanic doctor, and still leave off the 2 Black doctors from Round 1.
Furthermore, it may ALSO come as no surprise to you that some cultures are over-represented in some professions than others -- namely ASIANS as physicians. According to the 1990 census, 1 in 10 doctors in the U.S. are Asian, while only 4.5 in 100 are Black. Considering that Asians make up only 3.7% of the United States, that means that being Asian makes you 250% more likely to be an M.D. than a White person, whereas being Black makes you 1/5th as likely to be an M.D. as your White counterpart. Furthermore, males of all races are overrepresented as physicians compared to females. Specifically, Asian MALE physicians outnumber Asian FEMALE physicians by almost 3 to 1. In REAL LIFE, there are almost NO Black Males or Black Females on an average sampling of 10 M.D.s in Seattle.
Note in the above chart that I'm simplifying by dividing races down the middle as far as male/female percentages per race. If we were to break up Seattle's M.D.s by race AND sex, Asian males make up the #2 spot in order of representation. Given this information, the cast of Grey's Anatomy should look more like this.
We just lost ALL the Black actors, 2 White female actors, and the single Hispanic actor. On the other hand, we just gained THREE Asian Male doctors, played by positive-Asian-Male-role-model, Garrett Wang.
There is not one-- NOT ONE -- Asian Male on Grey's Anatomy while there are THREE Black doctors and one Asian female doctor. Furthermore, the 3 Black doctors are THE TOP THREE DOCTORS by rank in the hospital. WTF??? This is despite the fact that in the U.S. the number of Asian Male physicians outnumber Asian Female, Black Male, and Black Female physicians COMBINED.
If we take the #s in Seattle, where Asians are 4 times more common than the national average while Blacks are 2/3rds as common , the disparity is even greater.
However, Grey's Anatomy is by no means the worst offender of statistics. In THIRTEEN YEARS of NBC's E.R., there has yet to be (to my knowledge) ONE GODDAMN ASIAN MALE Doctor on this drama, while there's been one Chinese Female (Ming Na) and one Indian female (Parminder Nagra).
The ONLY Asian Male on this show is a NURSE, while there are various Black doctors too numerous to list. Again, let me repeat in case you missed it the first time: Asian Male Physicians outnumber Asian Female, Black Male, and Black Female physicians COMBINED -- but not according to Grey's Anatomy or E.R.
This, my friends, is a recurring theme that we will revisit time and again. It's bad enough that Hollywood makes 1/2 of all Asian Males out to be nerds. If that isn't bad enough, Asian Males are NOT EVEN FUCKING GOOD at the shit that they're nerdy about! I think that we can all agree that being an M.D. takes a bit of nerd skills -- that's a shitload of studying and work over many years. Well, apparently, Asian males are smart enough to be nerds, but they're not smart enough to be M.D.'s. I guess that's sortof the definition of being a nerd -- like the comic book guy on the Simpsons -- somebody who's smart, but has no drive to actually do something with these smarts -- you know, like being a fucking DOCTOR!
