Over at ye olde New York Times, Slate alumna Amanda Hess has a new article on the insane difficulties Asian Americans face in trying to score leading roles in film and television. Constance Wu, star of the hit ABC sitcom Fresh Off the Boat, has been particularly vocal about the lack of Asian American representation. So has Aziz Ansari, who addressed the issue in a vivid and heartfelt way in his Netflix series Master of None and in a Times op-ed that appeared last fall. There is a case to be made that Wu and Ansari’s complaints are self-refuting. Both are very successful, and we’re talking about the dearth of Asian Americans on TV and movie screens at least in part because Asian Americans like Wu and Ansari now have really big platforms. Given that there are far more Asian Americans in media today than in the past, it’s not crazy to believe that we will see more of them in prominent roles in the years to come. The march of progress is inevitable, yada yada yada.

But I have a somewhat different and darker thought: What if Asian Americans are underrepresented in media because non-Asians have yet to reconcile themselves to Asian overrepresentation in the uppermost echelons of U.S. society? Don’t see that many Asian Americans as CEOs or in other leadership roles? Just give it time. Whether you look in Silicon Valley, Wall Street, elite academia, or America’s burgeoning medical-industrial complex, you’ll find a disproportionately large and fast-growing number of Asian Americans. Earlier generations of Asians often found themselves stymied by the so-called “bamboo ceiling,” which largely reflects the fact that new arrivals in America tend not to have the social connections they need to reach the highest rungs of the organizational ladder.