New York Theater: In response to the killing last week of six Asian-American women in Atlanta and a rise in anti-Asian violence, AAPAC, the advocacy group for Asian-American performers, released a statement today that argues for a connection between these atrocities and “the systemic exclusion and the dehumanization” of Asian-Americans, including in the theater industry: “Theaters cannot stand by and continue to be complicit in this violence. “
1 comment:
I wonder if this is really the best title for this article. A title of an article functions to get people to read it, so I wonder what the author thought was so compelling about the generic ‘Asian American theater artists’ opening. I wonder if using the organization in the title would have been a better call. Obviously, I am white so my opinion isn’t the end-all-be-all by any means, I am just wondering how Asian Americans feel about their race being used as an attention grabber during a time of tragedy. Awareness is important, so of course I am not advocating not to acknowledge race when it is a racial issue, I just think the article could have been perhaps more respectful by saying “Members of the Asian American Performers Action Coalition Speak Out.” It conveys the same sentiment and is more specific to the article. I don’t know, it just rubs me the wrong way to generalize all Asian American artists in a title in order to get clicks. Who knows, I may be in the wrong here. I am just very sensitive to the way the internet and social media handles tragedy, and I am always weirded out by posts about people dying or the like. I am often hesitant to post infographics unless they really speak to me. At the core of it, social media is made for attention, and there is some part of you that wants people to see what you specifically post. The whole epidemic of people posting infographics comes off as super disingenuous to me at times, especially if the people in question don’t do anything else. This is definitely an unrelated tangent because social media and a published article are by no means the same thing, but the title of this article just got me thinking about the internet as a whole and how it handles tragedy. I am just passionate about this issue and am always wondering what could be done better.
Post a Comment