What is a Secret Asian Man?

 I and someone named James Woo (and it might have been James who thought of it first) adopted the name Secret Asian Men when we joined forces to run a monthly ballroom dance in the San Fernando Valley. That venture lasted no more than a year or so and we went our separate ways and I ended up co-opting the phrase Secret Asian Man as a response to how asian males are typically portrayed in American mainstream media by the following (and sometimes overlapping) categories:

1) grocers who speak bad English
2) martial artists (including gang members and spies)
3) homosexual
4) geeky lab tech/academic type

I recall back in the 90's when the CW created the series "Vanishing Son" and series star Russell Wong (who is only half asian, BTW) had a caucasian girlfriend, and would connect with other caucasian women when he was on the run. It was a big deal and a topic of conversation amongst my peers. We also noted that there was a fear that the mainstream would somehow assume that all asian men sought to have sex with caucasian women, so in later episodes the character merely befriended women that he met. Even recently, Asian American males have made it a big deal when a Korean actor had (simulated) sex with a caucasian female on the series The Walking Dead.

We can be smart and great at sports like badminton and table tennis, but by and large we remain marginalized by mainstream media. 

We are the secret asian men. We hide in plain sight. And we change the perceptions of the people around us one person at a time.