Imagine this. A 6-year-old girl totters on the edge of her bed, waiting for her favorite television program to begin. She’s anxious as the theme song heralds the new episode and suddenly she is engrossed in the unfolding plot. Her favorite character is talkative and bright, paired with blonde hair and blue eyes in an absolute pinnacle of an "All-American Girl." The character’s best friends are all various versions of this perfected mold. Olivia Chen, the little girl, wants to be exactly like them.

But where the actress’s skin is pale, Olivia’s is peach underlaid with a yellowish tint. Where the girl sported long blonde tresses, Olivia had straight black hair that refused to curl under any circumstance. Where the character fluttered her eyelashes over large blue eyes, Olivia’s lashes framed warm brown ones that seem to be enveloped lovingly whenever she smiled.

Over time, she will wonder why none of the girls on TV looked like her. On Disney Day at school, her friends will force her to play Mulan because, well, what else could she be? She’s Asian, isn’t she? She will grow up investing in eyelid tape, trying to correct what society had told her was ugly. She will grow up expected by her peers to be a math genius, geeky in every way and unable to do anything but study. And then when girls that resembled her first appeared in her shows as minor characters, they did nothing more than reaffirm caricatured perceptions of her culture and create the deafening testimony that she too was nothing more than a supporting role.

Despite being the highest-income, best-educated, and fastest-growing racial group in the U.S., Asian Americans still face systemic racism in today’s media. Cast as the nation’s ‘model minority,’ a term coined in the 1960s by the New York Times to describe the group’s relative financial success, Asian Americans have long battled the myth that they were somehow more economically lucrative and socially accepted than other racial minorities. In light of tragic events such as the death of Alton Sterling and the Milwaukee police shooting, Asian Americans are once again outcasted in the race conversation as the black-white political binary is reinforced. As non-blacks, we cannot lay claim to the same tribulations our African American peers have faced and as non-whites, we cannot access employment opportunities to the same extent as our Caucasian equivalent. Our non-blackness and our non-whiteness are what defines the Asian American identity: we are outsiders in the raging political dialogue, fitting into no distinct category. Our opinions lack credibility since we are seen as incapable of sympathizing with either side. Our frustration stemming from the lack of Asian American advocacy is waved away as trivial in comparison to our comfortable lives as the model minority. As Jenn Fang writes in her website Reappropriate, “There’s anti-blackness, there’s white supremacy, and there’s no room for anything else.”

Racial tensions between black and white communities have manifested in the entertainment industry as well, specifically at this year’s #SoWhiteOscars. As a response to the lack of minorities nominated in the Academy Awards, host Chris Rock rewrote his monologue to encapsulate the discontent of black industry workers, tiptoeing the line between comedic and uncomfortable. However, despite being an impactful critique on racial disparity in America, Rock’s commentary became immediately hypocritical as he chose to slight another misrepresented minority. Bringing on stage three Asian children and referring to them by stereotypically “Asian” names, Rock cracked a joke that they were hardworking accountants from the PricewaterhouseCoopers, following it with a reference to child labor. The New York Times reports, as [the children] clutched briefcases, they visually illustrated the stereotype that Asians are diligent workers who excel at math. Responses to the bit were overwhelmingly negative, as one actress, Kat Dennings, pointed out that Rock was given a full forty-five seconds for the gag, while the Academy cut short the acceptance speech of the only Asian nominee, Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy, in which she urged the world to stop honor killings. In an effort that was supposed to include those who had already been excluded by the Academy, Rock’s performance only furthered the notion that Asian Americans were punchlines of a joke in a society that only cared about racism if it were strictly black and white.

So why was it so easy for Chris Rock to include this jab? Why was there little uproar, aside from the Asian community, concerning this outright display of racism? In truth, Asian Americans uphold a very strange position in our society. “Stereotyped as having acquired a certain level of educational and economic success, many people think of us as funny white people,” (Joyce Wu) thus normalizing the act of berating Asian conduct. However, like other people of color, Asians struggle with their identities as defined by American culture and combat everyday issues of racism.

Composing one of the smallest minority groups in the country, Asian Americans make up around 5.6 percent of the entire population. Within this small group there is a huge variety of different racial heritages, ranging from Chinese and Japanese to Saudi Arabian and Indonesian. Yet those of Asian descent are pigeon-holed into a single stereotype, often one being substituted for the other. Not all Asian cultures are represented fairly in the media and only a few descriptions are perpetuated to encompass all Asian Americans, therefore people tend to see us as caricatures, interchangeably “Chinese” or “Korean.”

Generalizations about Asian Americans are promoted by “positive” stereotyping, exemplified in articles like “To America With Skills: A Wave of Arrivals From the Far East Enriches the Country’s Talent Pool” and Timothy Egan’s “Little Asia on the Hill.” In “Wave of Arrivals,” William Doerner chronicles the influx of Asian Americans into higher-paying jobs and top universities. Timothy Egan records a similar storyline set in UC Berkley, focusing on the quick-paced growth of Asian students at the institution. Both of these articles bolster a false image of a racial minority that has supposedly overcome societal prejudice, preferring to gloss over marginalized groups such as Vietnamese refugees and underpaid South Asian laborers. Implying that the success of individual students is accredited to their being of Asian heritage, Doerner and Egan dehumanizes the Asian American struggle, explaining their accomplishment with reference to their racial identity rather than their hard work. Both authors suggest that the evident success of Asian students contributes to the lack of diversity on college campuses, unmistakably suggesting that they be barred from inclusionary programs such as affirmative action. This demonizes Asians and paints them as invaders of the American education, as well as compile all Asian students into one very amorphous group. Egan goes further to associate being Asian with being socially incompetent, writing in his article, “Berkeley is freighted with the baggage of stereotypes—that it is boring socially, full of science nerds, a hard place to make friends.”

Stereotypes have long been the sole identification of Asian Americans, propagated in entertainment media. Greatly underrepresented in this industry, only 3.8 percent of all television and theatrical roles were portrayed by Asian or Pacific Islander actors in 2008, compared to 6.4 percent portrayed by Latino actors, 13.3 percent portrayed by African Americans and 72.5 percent portrayed by Caucasian actors. Even then, Asians in Hollywood are more or less invisible and subject to the same old stereotypes. Often cast based on their Oriental look, Asian American actors are hired to fill two-dimensional roles, spanning from kung fu fighters to the dreaded math geek. Since the 1920s, Asian women have played “dragon ladies,” attractive but evil women, and prostitutes that fall in love with white men (The Toll of the Sea and World of Suzie Wong). In a 1933 interview, famed dragon lady actress Anna May Wong admitted that she was tired of playing the same roles, asking “Why is it that the screen Chinese is nearly always the villain of the piece —murderous, treacherous, a snake in the grass? We are not like that. … We have our own virtues. We have our rigid code of behavior, of honor. Why do they never show these on the screen? Why should we always scheme, rob, kill?” Today, these stereotypes still persevere: actresses like Lucy Liu have popularized the dragon lady and fictional characters such as Cho Chang from the Harry Potter series still portrays the demure Asian girl pining after a white man. Disney shows like Jessie and Bunk’d capitalize on racist stereotypes, employing child actors of Indian and Chinese heritage to play nerdy and socially awkward characters in several cringe-worthy scenes.

The underrepresentation of Asian Americans in the entertainment industry is largely attributed to Hollywood whitewashing. Described by Complex as “a kind of casting where film studios have placed white actors in lead roles under the assumption that the majority of Americans would rather see a white face than a non-white one,” whitewashing of characters is a grey area particularly when it comes to what is known as “yellowface.” This is best demonstrated in the episode of How I Met Your Mother, a CBS sitcom, where the characters donned exaggerated “Asian faces” like Fu Man Chu and spoke in highly offensive accents. The fact that the screenwriters had even considered such a distasteful feat goes to show the amount of respect the film media has towards Asian dignity and culture: practically none.

White actors have paraded under yellowface since the beginning of film’s popularity, examples ranging from Yunioshi in "Breakfast at Tiffany’s" (1961) to the abhorrent whitewashing of the entire cast (minus the villain who was coincidentally the only Asian) of "The Last Airbender" (2010). Other occurrences include Emma Stone as a Hawaiian woman in Aloha (2015) and Tilda Swinton as a Tibetan monk in "Doctor Strange" (2016). When Scarlett Johansson was cast as Major Motoko Kusanagi in beloved Japanese manga Ghost in the Shell earlier this year, many Asian American actresses protested the decision, demanding an answer to why a woman of an appropriate background, namely Japanese, was not considered for the role. When it became public knowledge that Johansson tested under CGI alterations to make her appear more Asian, "Fresh Off the Boat" actress Constance Wu stated that the alleged act “reduces our race...our ethnicity down to mere physical appearance. And as we all know, our ethnicity, our races, and our culture are so much deeper than how we friggin’ look.” Wu brings up a critical point in the discussion of Hollywood whitewashing. Being Asian is not a game of dress up. You cannot clothe yourself or alter your face in accordance to what you think an Asian person is. You can never inherit the history or the stories or the actual life experience of an Asian American if you yourself are not one. And at the end of the day, “yellowface” is something you can wash off. The rest of us cannot.

This is the bamboo ceiling. Minority or non-minority, Asian or non-Asian, we live in a time where we speak words of acceptance but cling onto imitations and caricatures handed to us by the media. We are puppets of a system that distorts the truth and suppresses the individual voice. But we can be the generation to change that. We can build more complex and nuanced perspectives of those who differ from us. We can fight for others’ causes, establish empathetic relationships, and truly try to understand the world from another’s eyes.

And as for us Asian Americans? We’re done playing the supporting role. #NotYourSidekick #NotYourSideChick