The Screen Actors Guild statistics for 1998 revealed what most Asian Americans already know—too few roles went to minorities, and especially Asian Americans. We took only 1.9 percent of movie roles in 1997 and 2.1 percent the year after, according to the study.

We wonder whether those tallied as Asian Americans included Keanu Reeves, whose sci-fi thriller The Matrix is now bringing in the crowds; or Meg Tilly and Ellen Barkin, or even Phoebe Cates, still remembered by millions of former teenagers for her sassy performance in 1982’s Fast Times at Ridgemont High.

Such names are rightly part of any Asian American list because each of those individuals is of Asian descent. But few know that they are. Is it any wonder why? Or to ask the question in a slightly different way: Would Ellen Barkin be as accepted in the heartland of America if they knew the blond bombshell was part “Oriental”?

On top of that, Hollywood only sees things in black and white, brown and yellow. You either are or you aren’t. You either play the the dragon lady with witty one-liners or the starlet, the Kung Fu master or the poor white guys whom he’s defending or beating up.

No one said Hollywood represented reality, but in the area of race they are even more far off: Though data collection shortcomings result in few good numbers out there, many would agree that people of mixed-race, including mixed-race Asian Americans, are among the fastest growing segments of the population.

Until the Supreme Court struck down miscegenation laws 32 years ago in Loving, it was actually illegal in many states for people to marry outside their race. Times quickly changed—by 1979, the outmarriage rate among Japanese Americans was 60 percent, and among Korean Americans in Hawaii, more than 4 in 5 who got married in 1980 married someone outside their ethnicity. And in the 1990 Census, outmarriage among native born Asian Americans surpassed 40 percent, according to Portland State University professor Sharon Lee.

All this has meant that there are more hapas, and the group formed to deal with their issues—the Hapa Issues Forum—has itself been at the forefront of the quick paradigm adjustments that we all must undertake. In 1992 (not that long ago) the group was founded at UC Berkeley to address the concerns of those who met the original definition of “hapa”—mixed-race individuals of Japanese ancestry. Since then, it has grown to embrace not just the original constituency, but the far broader one comprised of intra-Asian mixes and of “double-minorities”—Asian African Americans, for example

Yet even a couple years ago, people snickered when Tiger Woods proclaimed his ethnicity “Cablinasian”—a combination of Caucasian, black, Indian, and Asian. Many thought he was just black—and many would, even today, classify group co-founder Eric Tate as either all black or all Asian.

In the sense that he grew up speaking Japanese and eating Japanese food, he’s probably more “Asian” than lots of Asian Americans born in America to parents of one Asian ethnicity and who look “more Asian” than he does. But the argument really does nothing but point up to our own needs to change our own stereotypes.

We have a need now, at the turn of the millennium, to broaden our own views of what it is to be Asian American. Before Hollywood and other societal forces can get the picture, we have to get it first.