NY Times talks to Asian/Americans about race ... but not any Filipino/Americans

"CONVERSATIONS on Race," the New York Times' year-long series of Op-Docs, or videos, talks to some young Asian/Americans this week. The subjects  who appear to be in their 20s, talk about how stereotypes unfairly confine them - particularly the "model minority" myth.

"As the subjects of our film explain, this perception not only devalues the experiences of other racial minorities, but it also renders the diverse experiences of Asian-Americans invisible," wrote filmmakers Geeta Ghanbhir and Michele Stephenson.

"My parents meant 'white' Americans."

The stories might sound familiar. Most of us have had similar experiences.

One young man remembers the first time he realized he was "different," when he was 6-years old, a playmate told him, "You're the color of poop."

Another subject is amazed that children at such a young age already know the derogatory implications of calling someone, "chink" or "gook."

A young woman relates, "When my parents talked about Americans, they really meant white Americans."

Unfortunately, none of the subjects appeared to be Filipino/American, the second largest Asian group in the U.S. E.J.R. David, wrote a reaction piece in Psychology Today pointing out this oversight, entitled, Why Are Filipino Americans Forgotten and Invisible?

"This type of marginalization isn’t unique. It's not new," writes David. "The NYT documentary is not exceptional in its disregard of Filipino American stories. It's just that the NYT documentary reminded me of the painful reality that Filipinos have been historically ignored and unappreciated, and how such marginalization still happens to this day!

UPDATE: Earlier versions did not include comments from E.J.R. David.

Hopefully, the Op-Doc lets non-Asians know that racial discrimination and biases affect not just African/Americans or Latino/Americans, but also the so-called "model minority," too. And that AAPI have more in common with other minorities than people realize.
"The experiences expressed here provide complicated narratives of race and identity that we hope can contribute to a more nuanced understanding of how institutionalized racism works — especially as it has affected the Asian-American community," say the filmmakers.

RELATED: Are Filipinos Asian or Pacific Islanders?

"As the people in this film suggest, the way we usually discuss race does not reflect the vast range of experiences of discrimination and opportunity in this country. If we’re going to change that, we need to embrace diverse voices — and also work harder to understand and dismantle the biases around us. We think the people in this piece do exactly that — and approach these difficult themes from a position of both vulnerability and strength."

To watch the Op-Doc Conversations on Race with Asian Americans, click here.

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For more news about Asian/Americans & Pacific Islanders, read AsAm News.

#JournalismSoWhite: Oscars' dilemma shared by the news media

THE LACK of diversity among Oscar's acting nominations has provided a lot of tsk-tsking and wagging fingers and plenty of grist for journalists and media watchers, but it has also prompted other professions to take a cold, hard look in the mirror.

Journalism has been wrestling with the lack of diversity among its own ranks for decades with little improvement to show for all its lofty intentions. The discussion about hiring more minorities in the media has been an on going  conversation limited to the industry but #JournalismSoWhite, launched by Asian/American journalist and immigration advocate Jose Antonio Vargas, has pushed the profession's ugly little secret to spill out of the newsroom and into the public realm.

I have often been the lone journalist of color in thousands of editorial meetings throughout my 28-year journalism career, which involved an ethnic community newspaper and four (or was it five?) different mainstream newsrooms under a similar number of ownership groups in the San Francisco Bay Area.

The only exception was my time spent at the Oakland Tribune under the late Publisher and Editor-in-Chief Robert Maynard, one of the country's strongest advocates for diversity in American newsrooms. He was the first African/American owner of a newspaper in a major city and he practiced what he preached. The Trib had one of the most diverse news staff in the profession. Editorial board meetings always had a wide range of perspectives where sometimes, there would be only one straight, white male in a room of 10 editors.

In the other newsrooms, most of the editors I worked with were Euro/Americans. It was hard not to notice my minority status in those meetings. Knowing that my experiences in my circuitous route to a journalism career was unlike the other writers and editors in the room, I always made it a point to offer news angles or assign stories that other editors might not have thought of. 

In news meetings, as we evaluated stories and their placement in the print newspapers, I always offered value judgements of stories that they might have passed over but which I thought might be of interest or importance to minority communities. In the diverse Bay Area, this perspective was invaluable from a business standpoint because our readership is as diverse as they come in the United States. 

It was a balancing act because I didn't want to be the "representative" of all minorities in those meetings. At the same time, I could not stand by and stay silent. "Uh, excuse me but with all due respect, ..." Kowtowing? I don't know, I thought I was being polite.

I'm not sure how the work environment is in television or radio, but in print, my minority status was hard to ignore. Being Asian in a leadership position was rare back then. Funny thing, the more management talked about increasing minority representation, compared to my time at the Maynard Tribune, the number of minorities in journalism seems to have declined as time passed. 

I hope it is different in the big city newspapers but newspapers in the suburbs, which until relatively recent have been the domain - or, should I say, refuge - of Euro/Americans remain largely white even as the suburban demographics are shifting with minorities seeking the American dream of home ownership. Today, the Beaver Cleaver neighborhoods - at least in the San Francisco Bay Area - are harder and harder to find and increasing the number of journalists of color becomes even more critical.

Pulitzer-Prize winning journalist Jose Antonio Vargas, probably the best-known undocumented immigrant in the country, opened up a can of worms recently when he tweeted the following.

Vargas, who started the organization Define American in his quest for citizenship, is a Filipino/American who came to this country at age 13. It wasn't until he was in his late teens that he discovered he was undocumented. 

He won a Pulitzer while working with the Washington Post. He revealed his immigration status in a Huffington Post confessional. Since then, he has been in the forefront advocating for immigration reform, including a documentary about his situation and a TV doc "Dear White America." 

RELATED: Jose Vargas, an undocumented American

Continuing the #JournalistsSoWhite conversation, he tweeted these queries:

When candidates for the U.S. presidency are spewing anti-immigrant hate and hurling racist  statements against Asians, Latinos, African/Americans, Syrians, Muslims, etc. It becomes critical that our voices are heard amidst all the mischaracterizations and stereotypes but sometimes - like me - one can get tired of holding up the banner for diversity.

Maybe it becomes a case of burnout when journalists of color get tired of trying to explain themselves and the communities they came from to editors and management who -- despite their best intentions to diversify their staff -- still preferred to hang out with people who look like them, go golfing with them, joke with them, and share the same values and perspective that they hold. In other words, it was never a meeting in the middle. One always had to move into their enclave, talk like them, dress like them and let the everyday slights slide off one's shoulders. 

According to the American Society of News Editors' census released last summer, the percentage of racial minorities at newspapers was at 12.76 percent in 2014. With minorities making up 37.02 percent of the U.S. population, our newsrooms are not representative of the society we live in.

For every 100 employees in the media industry, 2.8 are of Asian descent according to the ASNE survey. 

RELATED: Find out how diverse the American newspaper industry is with our interactive.

Sadly, my anecdotal observation is also true, minority percentage of newsroom employment is on a downward track, falling to 12.76 percent in 2014. A year earlier it was 13.34 percent. ASNE president Chris Peck in a press release, hailed this as good news saying the stats shows employment of minorities as holding steady. I don't know about that; to me it looks like its is getting worse.

It may be too late for the newspaper industry. Minority journalists are finding a place for themselves in the new media platforms which have younger and more daring owners who are more open to the diverse ideas those journalists bring with them. There is a fear that newspapers are the dinosaurs of media. Their inability to change and adapt to the changing demographics and technology may be its undoing.

The tech industry has been under heavy fire for its lack of diversity and opportunities for minorities and women but compared to the print media, they are light years ahead. Google, for example, said this year that 60 percent of its overall staff is Euro/American. At Facebook, only 55 percent of the overall staff is white. Euro/Americans at Microsoft make up 59.5 percent of its overall staff. (Of course those numbers are misleading because the inequities come in the board room with minorities clustered in the lower paying jobs and women in supporting roles.) 

RELATED: Asians hit a bamboo ceiling in Silicon Valley

BuzzFeed founder and chief executive Jonah Peretti says that diversity is a priority for the company. “We care about diversity for moral reasons,” explains Peretti in not to employees “but we also know a diverse staff is a competitive advantage that allows us to recruit from the broadest possible pool of talent and have team members with a wide range of experiences and perspectives.”

The cynic in me says "I've heard this song before," but maybe the online news sites may be the proving ground for minority journalists in the future. The news outlets on the Internet have the advantage of not having the historic template that perpetuates the old boys' networks. 

I like to think that there will always be a place for good journalists. Computer skills don't automatically translate to good story telling. Digging for information, getting the facts straight and writing compelling stories are skills that will always be in demand, no matter the medium.

The Poynter Institute's Kristen Hale, whose article inspired this discussion, wrote: 

"Journalists love holding people and institutions accountable — we speak truth to power. That is our job. But given our own power, are we holding ourselves accountable? #JournalismSoWhite is meant to spark conversations, uncomfortable as they may be. I would like to think, and I hope, that the conversation that was started online can move to offline conversations in newsrooms across the country (and also in journalism schools, where the new generation of journalists are being trained). One of my favorite quotes about journalism came from the playwright Arthur Miller: 'A good newspaper, I suppose, is a nation talking to itself.' Since #JournalismSoWhite, we are nowhere close to hearing everyone."

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Do European/Americans get too stressed out when talking about race?

From a BuzzFeed video.

DON'T BE too hard on your European/American coworkers or classmates. Life is getting more uncomfortable for them as they find it nearly impossible to not interact with people of color in our changing America.

As the Black Lives Matter movement, the political rhetoric of the presidential candidates,  the attacks against Muslims, Supreme Court Justice Anthony Scalia and the attempts to use the Model Minority Myth against other people of color clearly demonstrates - race is still a dividing line in America.

The lens through which we People of Color (POC) see the world is dramatically different from the way European/Americans see the world.

While European/Americans may find it difficult to talk about race, that is a topic most of us are all too familiar with since we deal with it every day. EVERY DAY! 

Racism has taken a different form from the days of lynchings and cross-burnings that spurred the Civil Rights Movement.

In our country's discourse, racism is still defined as a matter of individual, intentional and overt action. If there isn’t a noose hanging, many people will not identify an action as being racist, even if it results in racial disparities. Redefining racism as something that is often systemic, unconscious and hidden is a reboot that all Americans need right now, whatever their age.

The brilliant satirist Molly Ivins said: ‘The second George Bush was born on third base but believes he hit a triple.’ In the same vein, GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump's father gave him $1 million to start his career and the Donald believes he's a self-made man.. That gets to the heart of what white privilege is all about, Bush, Trump and many folks in the top 1 percent are people who achieved their status in life and believe it’s solely because they have sacrificed and worked hard.

it may be too easy to dump on Euro/Americans in retaliation for all the slights and microaggressions heaped upon you as you were growing up, you might unwittingly push them into a self-defensive corner.

As this video from our friends at BuzzFeed demonstrates, not sharing the experiences of POC, even the most well-intentioned EA's - many of whom we call our friends - get tense and awkward about the topic or race. They may be reluctant to join the race conversation, you shouldn't avoid it either when the topic arises. It is important that they understand your perspective if you want your friendship to flower or professional relationship to prosper.

When is the best time for that conversation on race? It could be anytime or anywhere. Drinks after work, at a friend's party, during a video game, at a pizza joint or in the classroom. Your EA friend/corworker/classmate should feel honored that you trust them enough to include them with the thoughts we have been taught to keep to ourselves.

When the forbidden race topic comes up, try hard not to get defensive or too combative, says Derald Wing Sue, a psychology and education professor at Teachers College, Columbia University and author of “Race Talk and the Conspiracy of Silence.”and “Microaggressions in Everyday Life: Race, Gender and Sexual Orientation,”

“Most whites get defensive – ‘Oh no, you are just over-sensitive. You are reading something into it,” Sue says. “Entertain a possibility that the individual bringing up the observation, complaint or a problematic situation may be accurate. Don’t shut it off immediately by denouncing it because it is not within your consciousness."

When people say that they are "color-blind" in their relationships, they are missing the point. The color of my skin helped define who we are. If someone doesn't see the tone of our skin, they are not seeing us.

People of color shouldn’t let themselves off the hook, either, says Sue. Consider how you might respond to the earnest efforts of whites you know by asking questions and allowing them to be human, too. “Committing blunders is okay if we learn from them. When you commit a racial blunder, it’s how you recover, not how you cover up. ... I try to communicate that we are all good, moral, decent individuals. I don’t see you personally as the antagonist or the enemy. ... You weren’t born wanting to be a racist. ... You took this on, through a painful process of conditioning, just like I as a person of color have been culturally conditioned in ways that have been harmful to me. . . . We need to work together to overcome these shackles of cultural conditioning.”

We are all human and we all have our own personal biases based on our own personal experiences and the environment in which we were raised. Maybe admitting that is Step One.

For more news about Asian/Americans and Pacific Islanders, link to AsAm News.

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TGIF FEATURE: "Shine A Light" - A concert for progress on race in America

John Legend and Pink duet on "Someday We'll All Be Free" 

DO YOU WANT do do something to promote racial peace in America? Tired of waiting for something to happen? Tired of waiting for someone, anyone, to do something, to act? Tired of just ... waiting?

"Shining a Light: A Concert for Progress on Race in America" is a two-hour special event featuring the biggest names in music as they join together to perform, promote unity and progress on racial equity, and encourage reconciliation and positive change in local communities.

Robert Sharenow, executive vice president and general manager of A&E Networks, which will carry Friday's show on A&E, the History Channel, Lifetime, H2, LMN and FYI, said that the idea for the concert and special was a response to the shooting in June at the historic Emanuel AME Church in Charleston that left nine churchgoers dead.

"There was a universal reaction of horror from all sides of our company," Sharenow said. "We're a big media company. We thought, 'Is there something we can do to raise awareness? To raise money?'"

The musicians wanted to do something more than have a "kumbaya" moment. Some of the artists include Pharrell Williams, Bruce Springsteen, John Legend, Pink, Sting, and more.

WATCH: More great performances by clicking here. 

It is clear that the nation’s long struggle with racial bias is far from over. But in the past year we also have witnessed moments of inspiration, most notably from members of the Charleston community, who, in the face of hatred, did something amazing. They forgave.

Incidents of racial bigotry have impacted Asian/Americans just as it has other people of color: anti-Chinese graffiti in San Francisco, the beating of an Indian grandfather, a questionable focus on Chinese scientists by the FBI, the beating of an Asian family by motorcyclists, anti-immigrant rhetoric from supposed political leaders ... the list continues to grow.

That reaction inspired A+E Networks to create the Fund for Progress on Race in America Powered by the United Way to support organizations and individuals (through a sponsoring organization) working to heal historic racial divides, identify and eradicate bias, and activate solutions, as well as to directly aid the Charleston community that inspired this effort.

RELATED: Among Asian/Americans, talking about race

                             RELATED: Two Americas

The inaugural donation from the Fund is expected to help seed the Master Planning process for a new memorial wing at Charleston’s Mother Emanuel Church, which will also tell the story of the rich history of the oldest AME church in the south. A portion of the proceeds from concert ticket sales will go to the City of Charleston’s Mother Emanuel Hope Fund to provide support for victims’ families and survivors.

There are also many organizations and individuals doing great work to raise awareness about the causes and effects of racial divisiveness; to promote social and criminal justice reform; and to help eliminate racial bias and discrimination. Donations to the fund will be used to provide grants to organizations and individuals working on making such progress on issues of race in America.

DONATE: Show your support by donating to the Fund for Progress on Race in America. 

FOR MORE INFO about the Fund and to see if your organization qualifies for a grant, go to this website.

Your donations to the Fund will help to provide grants to those who are doing great work to raise awareness about the causes and effects of racial divisiveness, promote social and criminal justice reform, and help eliminate racial bias and discrimination.

"Racism is as American as baseball and apple pie," said Morello, guitarist for Rage Against the Machine. "Will one concert end it? Not likely. But shining a light on racism is an opening to dialogue."

"Shine A Light" - Nov. 20, 8/7 central, on A&E, History, Lifetime, H2, LMN and FYI.

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Racist spray-painting suspect arrested

San Francisco residents redeemed themselves by altering one of the a racist graffiti.

SAN FRANCISCO'S police department is thanking the public for their help after an arrest was made Tuesday in a vandalism case that is being considered a hate crime. 62-year-old John Schenone of San Francisco has been charged with five counts of felony vandalism and five counts of felony hate crime after it is believed he's the person responsible for spray-painting the words 'NO MORE CHINESE' in multiple locations Monday in the Portola and Bayview districts.

As KRON 4 reported Tuesday, the graffiti raised serious concerns in the neighborhoods "about a growing racial divide in the city."

Per a release from the SFPD:

"On the morning of September 7, 2015... the words “NO MORE CHINESE” ... [were found] sprayed in orange paint at the following 6 locations: Palega Park, Somerset Street/Silver Avenue at a vacant grocery store, University Street/Bacon Street on the fence of a vacant lot, the 100 Block of Brussels Street on a house under construction, the 100 Block of Brussels Street on a house for sale, and the 1300 Block of Silver on an office building. This incident was immediately determined to be hate motivated and investigated by SFPD’s Special Investigations Division Hate Crime Unit. SID investigators were immediately able to identify a vehicle and person of interest. A crime alert was subsequently distributed throughout the department in an effort to identify the suspect in these incidents."

Suspect John Schenone

RELATED: Sign of hate mars neighborhood

Then on Tuesday, September 8, officers spotted an individual and vehicle matching the description from the crime alert, and detained him. Based on evidence they were able to make the arrest, and Schenone was booked in the county jail.

San Francisco Supervisor Julie Christensen issued a statement saying the suspect was arrested on Tuesday night. She credited “the diligent and swift actions of our city staff.” Christensen said, “Disrespect for our fellow residents and visitors, especially based on ethnicity, is not and will not be tolerated in San Francisco.”

This was the latest of a recent series of incidents that could be linked to racist motives.

• On Sept. 1, vandals broke into the Saint Paul Tabernacle Baptist Church, where they covered the walls with what was described as "hate-filled and racist graffiti." The office of the church's pastor, Rev. Greg Valentine, was also vandalized, large mirrors were smashed, and bleach was poured onto every single pew. 

• Less than a month ago, Twitch founder Justin Kan had the phrase "F**k you Gook!" written in black marker on his garage in the up-and-coming Duboce Triangle neighborhood by a white, bearded stranger. The crime was caught on security camera installed by Kan. 

• Also this past August, in the predominantly Latino neighborhood called The Mission District, someone spray painted "White Power" on two Latino-themed murals and a swastika on the nearby McDonalds.

Do you think that some San Francisco residents are starting to feel uncomfortable with being a minority? In fact, they already are. In San Francisco, whites make up about 48% of the population according to the 2010 Census. Asians make up a third of the city; Latinos are 15% and African Americans about 6%.

San Francisco is just a microcosm of the demographic shift that is happening all over California. On July 1, 2014, there were about 14.99 million Latinos living in California, edging out the 14.92 million whites in the state.

RELATED: America's challenge is to learn to live with itself

If whites are feeling edgy now, imagine how they'll feel in 2040 when demographers estimate whites will be less than 50% in the United States.

I may be wrong, but, let's assume that the comparatively benign (compared to cross-burning and beatings) graffiti in San Francisco was done by whites. If that sentiment can arise in tolerant, liberal, diversity-celebrating San Francisco, imagine what can happen in less open-minded parts of our nation. Throw in a political campaign based on racist rhetoric stoking the fears that have thus far been suppressed, it's like lighting a match to leaking gasoline. It all adds up to a dangerous formula for a very heated 14 months ahead of us in the short term; and the potential for a nation divided in the long-term. 

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Reality bites wunderkind Justin Kan; racist message unsettles internet entrepreneur

Justin Kan's garage door before it was painted over by a neighbor trying to be helpful.

YOU WOULD THINK that in San Francisco, which touts it's rich diversity, takes pride for it's tolerance and spouts left-of-liberal politics - almost to a fault - would be the last place in the world where an Asian man would encounter the ugliness of bigotry. 

No matter how rich and famous you become, no matter how long you've lived in the United States, no matter that you speak English without an accent, when people look at you, they see the hair, the skin color, the eyes and see you as a foreigner, an interloper, a stranger, an outsider ... a gook - a derogatory term Filipinos were called by American soldiers fighting in the Philippines War of Independence and more recently, was popularized during the Vietnam War to refer to all southeast Asians.

Justin Kan learned that harsh lesson last weekend when someone scrawled an obscene, racist message on his garage door.

They might as well have burned a cross in front of the internet entrepreneur's house.

“It’s pretty messed up,” Kan told tech writer Thomas Lee of  SFGate.

“I haven’t had any racist experiences in America,” Kan told SFGate. “It was a huge surprise.”

Up to last weekend, life for Kan was almost too perfect to be true.

When justin.tv was on the air, Justin Kan became a mobile video studio recording every moment of his life.

Born and raised in Seattle, Kan graduated from Yale with degrees in physics and philosophy. He’s the cofounder of Exec, justin.tv, SocialCam, and Twitch.tv. Currently he’s a partner with Y Combinator.

He's perhaps best known as the creator and subject of justin.tv, a live broadcast of his life that ran on the web 24/7 from 2006 to 2014. It gave birth to the term "life casting." Kan gave up the live broadcast when he co-founded twitch.tv. Justin.tv was immensely popular - despite its slow moments when nothing was happening - spurring lots of imitators, who were more showboating and entertaining. 

The vandalism was caught by Kan's security cameras. It showed a white man with a beard bicycling up to his driveway in the predawn hours and scrawling his hateful message on Kan's garage door. No one recognized the man. 

Kan couldn't figure out why the unknown man did what he did.

Things like that aren't supposed to happen in San Francisco ... but it did. Ignorance and bigotry know no borders. The whole incident, says Kan, "is pretty unsettling." 

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REVIEW: Documentary explores the pros and cons of being white in America

Besides plenty of tears, there were plenty of a-ha moments in MTV's "White People."

WHITE PEOPLE,  the MTV-produced documentary by Jose Antonio Vargas created a bit of stir - for a little while, anyway.

There were those that hated it and those who loved it.

Critics said that the 40-minute documentary that explored what it is like to be a white in America, circa 2015 was simplistic in its approach and didn't go far enough.

Those who loved it, loved that the white subjects found themselves in an uncomfortable situation confronting their biases, expectations and the privilege built into our society.

As expected, the show generated a lot of response on the Internet. (Here is another article.) As one tweeter-of-color wrote: (I'm paraphrasing) "They were uncomfortable for an hour, I'm uncomfortable all my life."

To watch the entire episode of White People, click here.

Many of the issues addressed in the documentary are familiar to people of color. That's because people of color are always talking about race issues and race relations. The issue of race is woven into their everyday lives and impossible for them to ignore.

Pulitzer Prize winner Jose Antonio Vargas was the "White People" host.

To many of the young white people in documentary, the concept of race was an unfamiliar  topic - something they just didn't talk about much - and they were clearly uncomfortable when confronted with the advantages and privileges that they had never considered.

The show was at its best when it debunked white beliefs of minority advantages.

Katie, a young woman from Scottsdale, Arizona, complained about minorities winning all the scholarships was chagrined when she learned that whites in fact, win 75% of all merit=based scholarships and have a 40% greater chance of getting a scholarship than students of color. 

UPDATE: Jose Antonio Vargas responds to the critics

In another segment, an Italian American family who believed Asians were "taking over" Bensonhurst, a neighborhood in Brooklyn that was once an exclusively Italian enclave, was made to realize that the new immigrants were doing what all their own immigrant forefathers did  - "transitioning" not only neighborhoods, but themselves as well.

The host, Filipino/American Vargas, to his credit, took great pains to not  attack his subjects but only to tell them the facts. 

White People - the show - shouldn't be viewed as a standalone. MTV has provided a website - lookdifferent.org -where one can explore the topic further, what they can do, how to counter one's own biases, listen to the celebrities and personalities express their thoughts on the subject.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, the key to the future of America's race relations, is not how people of color or immigrants integrate themselves into society, but how white Americans adjust to being another ethnic group among many. Will the latter be willing to share the benefits that our country offers, or will there be more Trumps, Dylann Roofs and O'Reilly's to rile up the white (soon-to-be) minority.

In a way, White People, is asking that question. And to MTV's credit, they know who their audience is - the young people, teenagers and people in their 20s - the so-called Millennial generation. Even the young people interviewed in the documentary, despite their awkwardness talking about race, seemed to realize the inevitability of the demographic changes that is occurring. 

RELATED: America's challenge is learning to live with itself

Numerous studies have concluded that the Millennials are - despite the Roofs of the world - are more tolerant of different lifestyles, different religions and different races.

White People is far from perfect. There was no way 40 minutes, no matter how well crafted, could convincingly address the complex issue of race relations in the United States., especially from the perspective of European Americans.

Yeah, White People didn't get as complex as some may have wanted and there it would have been easy to get bogged down in the historical, psychological and sociological factors that makes race such a difficult subject to tackle for a single television documentary. What MTV and Vargas did succeed in was to make the topic more accessible to its young target demographic. I hope there are follow-ups especially addressing MTV's audience, (cliche' it may be) who will eventually decide which direction the discussion on race will go; and which direction America will go.

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