Missed Photo Ops
By wchung | 21 Oct, 2010

Tracks laid by the Central Pacific and Union Pacific Railroads met at Promontory, Utah on May 10, 1869. Though 90% of the track from Sacramento to Promontory was laid by Chinese workers, they were completely left out of official group photos commemorating the event.

It’s been 140 years since that first huge missed photo op. During that time our labors have expanded upward from the menial to the most cerebral, from the backbreaking to the groundbreaking. And we Asian Americans have been enjoying a bit more success in being included in news photos, thanks mainly to visibility of a few Asian Americans in the political arena. But overall, we remain mostly invisible and unnoted for our real contributions due to an odd kind of media discrimination.

Here are what I see as the most glaring omissions:

Medicine:

IT:

Finance: