Effects of American Media Representation of South Asian Americans

Abstract

In my research I explored the role of American media representation has on the lives of South Asian Americans and Americans of differing racial, ethnic, and sexual backgrounds. I predicted that such representations had a net negative impact. In order to answer that question, I asked 42 participants what South Asian characters they remember and whether or not they were pleased, displeased, or neutral with those representations. Scholars have ignored the Indian and Pakistani American male perspectives on these topics by promoting Pan-Asianism or exclusively studying broad East Asian American perspectives. There are only two scholars (Shilpa S. Dave and Bhoomi K. Thakore) who have tried to look into Indian American perspectives (because Pakistani American ones have been excluded). But, their analysis primarily focuses on Indian roles from multiple countries (India, England, and the United States) and is still more theoretical. They also only examined a few roles as opposed to letting people really talk about what they have been exposed to in a more anthropological way. That's one way this study is unique even though it should have already been discussed in academia by now. South Asian American roles are mainly discussed in opinion pieces in magazines or on online forums. Chapters one and two show how people are personally affected by the representations they remembered (some people were picked on because of them, others were afraid of South Asian people, ect). My argument then ties in to my second question which is: Does all of this affect people's attraction (South Asian American women, other heterosexual females of differing backgrounds, and people from LGBTQI+ communities) towards Indian and Pakistani American men? My hypothesis was that these representations make it much harder for Indian and Pakistani American men to find romance on all levels including hook-ups. That section was going to be included in my results chapter. But, if it makes more sense than I can include a third chapter for the romance part and then summarize all of these findings in the results section. This second question has not been asked in a scholarly way for South Asian American men before.