The Asian Meter is one of the tools I use to demonstrate the marginalization of Asian Americans in Buddhist publications. You can find similar approaches at the Op Ed Project and now at economist-staff.com. I just found out about the latter site today—they even have a word cloud!
The site sprang up in response to issues over a particular article on Korean women golfers. I don’t have much to say on that topic, but I certainly can commiserate on the topic of editorial diversity. As I mentioned over two years ago, if you take a look at the staff of the most widely distributed Western Buddhist magazines (Shambhala Sun, Tricycle and Buddhadharma), it’s not hard to see the irony that an Asian American’s more likely to show up on the White House Cabinet.
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MumonFebruary 4, 2012 at 7:34 AM
Or the fact that none of the publication’s Japan specialists [sic] are listed as Japanese speakers?
LOL. That’s pretty lame. But I will profer one piece of commentary in response: Being a speaker of an Asian language doesn’t necessarily bring with it any special kind of useful expertise. Though it can help immeasurably.
If you looked at the media (and even “inside expert”) coverage of Kim Jong Il’s death, so much of it was off the mark, and completely, blissfully unaware of how organizations actually function, whether they’re Asian or Mexican or Roman.
MumonFebruary 4, 2012 at 7:35 AM
Forgot to add: And I know that some of those “experts” were indeed fluent speakers of some Asian languages.