Invisible minority

Media outlets love comparing whites to non-whites. The story line generally is [minority group] falls short of whites. When that isn't the case, it's news too--as an aberration to poked and prodded.

In order to maintain this worldview, however, journalists have redefined minority to exclude Asian Americans.

Think about all the headlines that read 'Minorities lag in test scores,' when the fine print reads and common knowledge tells you that white kids always trail Asian American kids.

Instead of focusing the article on why white kids are under-performing against the new standard, or switching to a less punchy but accurate headline, journalists stick with the underperforming minorities story and edit Asian Americans out of the story.

Latest example in the behind-the-Times is a story trumpeting the discoveryBlack Incomes Surpass Whites in Queens , with Sam Roberts writing:

Across the country, the income gap between blacks and whites remains wide, and nowhere more so than in Manhattan. But just a river away, a very different story is unfolding.

In Queens, the median income among black households, nearing $52,000 a year, has surpassed that of whites in 2005, an analysis of new census data shows. No other county in the country with a population over 65,000 can make that claim. The gains among blacks in Queens, the city’s quintessential middle-class borough, were driven largely by the growth of two-parent families and the successes of immigrants from the West Indies. Many live in tidy homes in verdant enclaves like Cambria Heights, Rosedale and Laurelton, just west of the Cross Island Parkway and the border with Nassau County.

The article reels off a bunch of reasons as to why this departure from the norm has taken place, with a focus on the immigrant experience.

But a solitary fact, buried in paragraph 19, makes clear this latest development merely bumps whites down to third, and blacks up to second, rendering the story not-so-unique (as well as not that timely):

According to the latest analysis, black households in Queens reported a median income of $51,836 compared with $50,960 for non-Hispanic whites (and $52,998 for Asians and $43,927 among Hispanic people).

Uncredited photo of Queens Unisphere via Forgotten NY Street Scenes.