22 May Tammy and Victor Jih winners of “The Amazing Race” 14th season

It’s been a few weeks since this happened; I meant to write about it earlier, but better late than never, right? Asian Americans are finally getting more exposure on the TV screen, both in roles that don’t require FoB accents (that’s “fresh of the boat,” for those of you new to the expression), and also in reality TV shows. Apolo Anton Ohno and Kristi Yamaguchi were “Dancing with the Stars” champions (and Carrie Ann Inaba is the best of the show’s three judges). Each of the three seasons of “America’s Best Dance Crew” has seen groups with mostly Asian American members as its champions. Yul Kwon beat out competitors to win “Survivor: Cook Islands.” (Yul will be a guest on visualizAsian.com’s AAPI Empowerment Series on June 9.)

Now, congratulations are due to the Chinese American brother-and-sister team of Tammy and Victor Jih for being crowned champions of “The Amazing Race 14.”

By accomplishing such a feat of crazy physical stamina, they’ve broken some Asian American stereotypes. And they sure don’t speak with accents (we wonder how often they’ve heard “You speak such good English… where are you from?” growing up). However, they oth attended Stanford and both got law degrees from Harvard, so they’re holding up the model minority myth there. Just kidding.

It’s wonderful to have Asian American Pacific Islanders take such high-profile prizes. Here’s a video of the two being interviewed after they won:

(Cross-posted on visualizAsian.com)