There’s something to it. Chinese are very uncomfortable with black Americans (Less so with African nationals). My school lost some of my respect by firing a black teacher because some parents complained (erroneously) that he was teaching their children “non-standard English.” He landed on his feet at another local school, and was replaced at ours with two black South African women.
I think they see gangsta rap videos and it scares the shit out of them.
(Edited text added.) Which makes me even more skeptical about the claim that the reason Hollywood studios are casting overwhelmingly white leads is out of deference to the prejudices of Asian audiences. If Hollywood is so eager for big Asian box-office, an easy way to increase it would be to cast Asian leads.
Is it just me, or are Asians considered the easiest minority - in the sense that they are the politically safest minority to criticize or attack, and that they make the least fuss about discrimination? In America, you can blame or rig the system against Asians in a way that you can’t black or Hispanic or Native American people, etc.
But isn’t that also because of African-American racism towards Asians?
Do Asians not make a “fuss” when discriminated against? I certainly would hope that they would.
It’s true that the “model minority” stereotype in the US sometimes means that Asians are less discriminated against than, say, black or Hispanic minority groups. And they’re less likely to be underrepresented in socioeconomically elite categories.
But as far as my (middle-aged white person) experience goes, I don’t see how that makes them somehow “safer” targets of attack and criticism. I certainly don’t see more criticism/attacks against Asians than against blacks or Hispanics.
Not so much “attacks”, as neglect. No one really makes an effort to represent Asians in areas of life where they are underrepresented, whereas underrepresentation of African-Americans and Latinos is taken as a call to action.
I stopped believing anything Maher said after the antivax stuff.
Why? He never claimed to be an authority on anything. He’ just some former actor with opinions. The whole purpose of his show is to get oddball people on to discuss their opinions. He’s the head oddball.
If someone claimed the the reason few Asians win Oscars is because of racist black people - well, that would be a lively day on social media.
[Trump Voice] The Sub-Saharan market is huge! HUGE!" [/Trump Voice]
Now I’m confused. Are we talking about “Asians” as a group of (comparatively) internally homogeneous national populations that constitute a large overseas market for Hollywood movies, or “Asians” as a racial/ethnic minority within the US?
Because I thought the “we don’t cast blacks because they don’t appeal to Asian audiences” argument (which, I should note once again, I personally don’t find very plausible as an explanation of Hollywood casting practices) was talking about alleged prejudices within Asian cultures in Asian countries.
I don’t think it would cause a lot of outrage either if somebody claimed that various African cultures in African countries tended to have some prejudice against non-African ethnic groups. In fact, this newspaper article casually remarks that “Anti-Chinese sentiment is on the rise in many African countries”, and nobody seems to be up in arms about that or similar remarks in the media.
In short, I think that attributing racist prejudices to a national culture is somewhat different from attributing it to members of that culture. For example, it’s perfectly acceptable to say something like “There’s a lot of anti-black racism in US society”, whereas it’s not acceptable to say “Americans are generally prejudiced against black people”.
Similarly, I don’t see statements like “There’s a lot of anti-black racism in Chinese society” or “There’s a lot of anti-Chinese racism in African countries” as constituting “attacks”. Should I?
What??? Bad reporting? Say it ain’t so! When has that ever happened before? And in a way that sensationalizes something far beyond the meaning of what was really said! This has to be unprecedented in the history of media! 
You mean “oddball people” like … oh, I don’t know … Joe Biden, President Jimmy Carter, Wesley Clark, William Kristol, David Frum, John Edwards, Jennifer Granholm, Christiane Amanpour, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., Anderson Cooper, Chuck Schumer, Sanjay Gupta, Dan Rather, Seymour Hersh, Ken Burns, Paul Krugman, Arthur Laffer, Mark Cuban, Bob Woodward, George Stephanopoulos, Sam Donaldson, Larry King, Jeffrey Toobin, Elizabeth Warren, David Remnick, David Stockman, Neil deGrasse Tyson, Margaret Hoover, Nate Silver, Paul Rudnick, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Colin Powell, Kirsten Gillibrand, Atul Gawande, Gina McCarthy, Kirsten Gillibrand, and Al Gore, just to name a few.
What a bunch of freakish oddballs! 
And incidentally, there are usually right-wing types on to balance the mix – Ann Coulter, the late Andrew Brietbart in several of the early shows, Lou Dobbs, Reza Aslan (to argue in defense of Muslims), Frank Luntz, Ron Paul, Rand Paul, Bill O’Reilly, Grover Norquist, Rick Santorum, and many many others.
Yeah, sounds to me like a totally oddball show of totally leftist communist oddballs!
Really, adaher, we may not agree on a lot of issues, but you’re usually a lot more reality-based than the kind of nonsensical statement that you’ve just put your name to. Maybe you should actually watch the show.
No, he does have serious people on the show, but a lot of oddballs as well and the discussion tends to be driven by Maher himself, which can draw even the smart people into weird places. I recall Wesley Clark once defending the treatment of Muslim women by claiming that they like to wear the burkha. But then again, even with experts like Clark up there, they are going to get into subjects way outside their comfort zone, and Muslim culture isn’t exactly at the top of Clark’s list of top subjects.
Curious why you say this? And if this is Chinese Americans or Chinese in China?
African’s in China have had a pretty rough time generally speaking. Mira Sorvino wrote about this for her [Harvard thesis](She attended Harvard, majoring in Chinese, graduating magna cum laude in 1989, largely on the strength of her thesis, a Hoopes Prize-winning thesis on racial conflict in China, written and researched during the year spent in Beijing, which helped her fluency in Mandarin Chinese.). “She attended Harvard, majoring in Chinese, graduating magna cum laude in 1989, largely on the strength of her thesis, a Hoopes Prize-winning thesis on racial conflict in China, written and researched during the year spent in Beijing, which helped her fluency in Mandarin Chinese.”
She also played opposite Chinese (non martial arts star) Chow Yun-fat in The Replacement Killers. Honky star Chow Yun-Fat is one of the more successful Chinese actors in the US film industry.
Folks upthread rightly point out that if Hollywood did care about the 2nd largest film market after the US, they should be making a hella lot more Mandarin movie star movies…
Joan Chen has given her thoughts in past interviews as well as how if she had been white, would have gone really big Hollywood star after the Last Emperor. YMMV but she didn’t get a lot of leading roles after that…
I notice the top movie on the list was Furious 7, which seems to have a pretty diverse cast.:dubious:
Not trying to pick a fight here, really I’m not, but your original statement was (emphasis mine) “The whole purpose of his show is to get oddball people on to discuss their opinions …”. But now you’ve modified this to “he does have serious people on the show, but a lot of oddballs as well” which is not the same thing, and is moreover IMO not correct, either. He certainly has some controversial people on the show from time to time, but they tend to be balanced on both sides of the ideological spectrum and also tend to be outnumbered by the serious and well-informed ones.
To me the show is characterized by the informed dialogue it engenders among prominent members of the public and government. Even the occasional extremist (and they ARE occasional) helps to precipitate interesting discussions among the others. And while Maher’s job as host is, by definition, to drive the discussion agenda, he can’t necessarily “drive the discussion” itself – a case in point being when, during the panel session on one of the shows, he made a rather eloquent prepared monolog to the audience about the students at Berkeley trying to ban his commencement speech because of his alleged anti-Muslim views, and defending his position. At the end of it one of his panelists (a Muslim activist whose name I don’t recall) really tore into him for his views. What distinguished this interaction was that both sides of the argument were well informed and making their case, and that she had free rein to blast Maher and undermine his well prepared case on his own show, and do it eloquently and well. Kind of took the wind out of Maher’s sails, but maybe helped the audience see both sides of the issue just a little better.
This is one reason that Real Time has been nominated for a prime-time Emmy for almost every year of its 14 seasons on the air. Like it or not, but it presents informative, balanced, intelligent conversation with great guests (and with lots of biting observational humor in the monolog and in the “New Rules” segment at the end). “Controversial”? Sometimes. But it’s neither “oddball” nor, especially, is it pandering – it has no commercial sponsors, and it’s beholden to no one.
Trump is who I was going to bring up. Being the only person with the balls to say something usually means you’re wrong. Not always, but quite often.
Fortunately, he’s not the only one saying this, so there is something to discuss. I wouldn’t doubt it plays a bit of a roll, but not a large one. If they were really pandering to Asians, the number of Asian actors wouldn’t be so low. Sure, they may not mind white actors, but surely some Asians would make more money.
I’m not sure the Star Wars poster even means anything. It sure makes it seem like all they have to do is downplay the black actor in the poster, rather than not have them in the movie. I don’t approve
I agree it would make more sense as an excuse rather than the real story.
FWIW, the NBA is extremely popular in China - athletes like Kobe Bryant, etc. - and it’s a predominantly African-American sports league.
He was just saying something I’ve read several times over the years.
using this graph
Hollywood international box office earnings, 2010 - $21 billion
Hollywood North American box office earnings 2010 - $10.5 billion
Note: Box office only. Revenues from DVD are much higher.