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American Community Media (ACoM) recognized outstanding journalism by California-based English-language or in-language ethnic media outlets at an awards celebration on Nov. 7 at the PG&E Conference Center in Oakland.
About 250 ethnic media, community leaders, communications specialists, and government decision-makers attended the ACoM Expo, which featured panel discussions and an awards ceremony.
ACoM received entries from ethnic media print, digital, broadcast, and social media platforms that highlight issues to tell the stories and amplify the voices of their communities.
“California’s ethnic media have shone as trusted messengers of news throughout a year of polarization and fear for many of their communities,” said ACoM staff.
Vignesh Ramachandran’s op-ed won 2nd place in the Education category for his article, The Price Of Indian American “Exceptionalism.“
A judge who reviewed his entry wrote, “In an editorial in India Currents, Vignesh Ramachandran critiques how Indian American ‘success stories’ held up as evidence of model minority achievement can obscure emotional, cultural, and psychological costs within the community.
Ramachandran recalls how his father, accepted into IIT Madras at age 15, later realized the emotional costs of early success and intentionally raised his children in the U.S. with more balance and play: no skipping grades, time for art and neighborhood friendships, rejecting the toxic competitiveness of elite-track education.
Ramachandran quotes and echoes Pakistani American journalist Zaid Jilani, who wrote a New York Times essay about Vivek Ramaswamy’s perfectionist rhetoric about Asian American students in STEM fields: “Fear of precarity doesn’t have to rule our lives. The Indian American dream doesn’t just have to be about hard work; it can also be about enjoying the life that hard work has produced.”