Where do these stereotypes come from?

[HazelNutCoffee]

I think that East Asians are perceived as being good at math because the math curriculum over here is much harder than most Western countries. The average Korean kid will go to the US and find themselves near the top of their class.

[NDP]

@Really_Not_All_That_Bright

Why so many Jews went to Hollywood, I have no idea. D.W. Griffith, the first director/producer to set up shop there, was not Jewish. My best guess is that since film was an entirely new industry, they were able to rise as high as their talent took them, without having to deal with the institutionalized anti-Semitism of other industries of the time.

I also have no idea if most Hollywood moguls are still Jewish. The only one I can think of off the top of my head is Michael Eisner.

There were at least three reasons why the American movie industry moved to Hollywood, California in the early 20th century:

1. Climate - Early American film-making originated in New York and New Jersey where outdoor shooting is limited by at least four months of lousy weather. In Hollywood and the Southern California, it’s sunny most of the year and you don’t have to worry about snow and excessive cold.
2. Real Estate - Land was then still relatively cheap and plentiful in Southern California when compared with the northeast. Thus, you could build bigger studios than you could in New York or New Jersey.
3. Location - Within a short distance of urbanized Hollywood, you have high mountains, forests, deserts, and lush valleys. You therefore have nearly any type of outdoor setting for nearly any type of movie (especially Westerns which on their way to becoming one the most popular film genres) a short train ride or drive away. Compare this with New York or New Jersey where the variety of topography is considerably more limited. (And how convincing would a Western look if they tried to substitute the broad plains of Montana with some vacant lot outside of Orange, New Jersey?)

[Cisco]

@NDP

There were at least three reasons why the American movie industry moved to Hollywood, California in the early 20th century:

1. Climate - Early American film-making originated in New York and New Jersey where outdoor shooting is limited by at least four months of lousy weather. In Hollywood and the Southern California, it’s sunny most of the year and you don’t have to worry about snow and excessive cold.
2. Real Estate - Land was then still relatively cheap and plentiful in Southern California when compared with the northeast. Thus, you could build bigger studios than you could in New York or New Jersey.
3. Location - Within a short distance of urbanized Hollywood, you have high mountains, forests, deserts, and lush valleys. You therefore have nearly any type of outdoor setting for nearly any type of movie (especially Westerns which on their way to becoming one the most popular film genres) a short train ride or drive away. Compare this with New York or New Jersey where the variety of topography is considerably more limited. (And how convincing would a Western look if they tried to substitute the broad plains of Montana with some vacant lot outside of Orange, New Jersey?)

In addition to your three legitimate reasons, a forth reason:

4. To be physically far away from the litigious Thomas Edison.

[Justin_Bailey]

@Cisco

If someone crunched numbers and found out that that Jews and blacks were in the media in roughly the same numbers they are in the general population, then I would freely admit I’m wrong. I’m just pointing out things from casual observation which can be and often is mistaken. I realize confirmation bias is strong.

The NAACP crunches the numbers every year for primetime TV shows and every year they complain they’re aren’t enough minorities in those shows. Even though their own report shows (from 2001)…

http://speakout.com/activism/apstories/10083-1.html

Fox boosted the number of minority actors in prime-time series to 41 percent in the 2000-01 season, up from 24 percent in the preceding season.

CBS shows increased in black actors to 29 percent, compared to 17 percent the previous season.

I realize “minority” does not mean “black”, but the idea that minorities are overrepresented on TV in relation to their real prevelance in society is not crazy. Oh, and I’ve also notcied an increase in black people appearing in commercials as well, including a series of Old Navy ads last Christmas that featured an interracial family (which I don’t think I’ve ever seen in commercials before).

[MandaJo]

As far as “Jewish people in the media” goes, I think the stereotype is exacerbated by how few Jews there are in many of the flyover states: while there are thriving Jewish populations in Atlanta and Dallas and some other interior cities, people living in small cities and rural areas in this country may well not know any Jewish person personally. Percentege wise, there are a lot more Jewish people in the sorts of places where they make and set TV shows–the East and West coast–and so Jewish people and references to Jewish things come up in those shows. So to many provential types, Jewishness is almost a TV convention, like everyone’s phone number starting in 555.