Historical footnote: Networks feature two panels with all-AAPI commentators

COMMENTARY:

Did anybody notice last weekend a small footnote in history occurred when two major news networks featured two guest panels who were all Asian Americans?

Both MSNBC and CNN had all-Asian guests talking different aspects of the coronavirus.

Saturday, MSNBC's Richard Liu had his guests talking about the economic impact of COVID-19 with businesses forced to shut down by government edict and Wall Street dropping like a lead balloon.(Wiping ou people's 401K investments).

On Liu's weekly show, guests included:

• Kurt Bardella, former publicist for right-wing Breitbart and ex-Republican; 
• Chris Lu, former Obama White House advisor; and 
• Lanhee Chen, director of Domestic Policy at Stanford University. 

At rival network, CNN, Jake Tapper hosted a panel on his Sunday talk show, State of the Union.

His topic were the medical policies generated by COVID-19 and how unprepared the US was for this inevitable happening. 

Tapper's  guests included:

• Dr. Jennifer Lee, senior medical advisor and Emergency Medicine Clinical associate professor at George Washington University.
• Dr. Vivek Murthy, medical author and the former US Surgeon General under Obama;
• Rep. Stephanie Murphy, D-Florida, who is under self-quarantine; and
• Lahnee Chen, who must have driven over to MSNBC after his stint at CNN.

For years, Liu always made sure to have a diverse guest list on his MSNBC show and I don't watch every show he's aired so I can't say for sure if he hasn't had an all-AAPI panel before.

It was not too long ago that one would have to look long and hard to see even one Asian American pundit on a subject that wasn't about race or an Asan American issue. 

No matter how long AAPI have lived in the US, they have always been targeted as foreigners, outsiders or nonhuman "Others." It makes it easier to pass the Chinese Exclusion Act, Executive Order 9066 (Japanese American incarceration), or to the present day limiting of family reunification and work visas to out-and-out travel bans

People need to see AAPI as part and parcel of this country. AAPI are doctors, nurses, lawyers, construction workers, farmers, teachers, students and also homeless, elderly and physically challenged.

And we are journalists and expert enough to be "talking heads." The two TV networks, perhaps unwittingly, provided the visual reminder that AAPI are threaded through every aspect of this country. It was only one weekend and two panels, but they were small steps in the right direction. 

US residents need to see Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders more often -- not only in fictional TV series which is starting to happen more frequently, now -- but also on serious, real-life news events because something like the coronavirus affects all of us, no matter what ethnicity.

What it says, albeit subliminally, is that we are all Americans.

It shouldn't take a worldwide pandemic for this to happen and maybe one day, the occasion might not be worthy of noting. I am waiting for that day.