Why aren’t APA sportscasters in more prominent roles?
There’s an old joke in electronic media circles with the punch line that goes, “You’ve got a face for radio.” But sometimes looks even count on the radio, it would seem. Especially if you happen to be of Asian Pacific American descent. One APA sports radio broadcaster, who asked not to be identified by his surname, tells a story of traveling outside of California to interview for an on-air position only to be greeted with a cold shoulder once the station’s general manager realized that the tapes he enjoyed so much were created by an APA. “Before the interview, I was getting a lot of positive feedback that encouraged me to think I had a pretty good shot at the job. But the reception I received was not warm. Nothing was said outright, but I had no question that my ethnicity had something to do with my not getting the job. It was easy to put two and two together,” he says. APA faces have become common in recent years. Scores of Asian names now dot baseball box scores on a daily basis. The
