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"Asians have become vividly overrepresented in ice rinks and competitions at every level, from coast to coast"

The New York Times has come under fire for stating Asians are “overrepresented” in figure skating.

In an article titled The Asian American Pipeline in Figure Skating, the Times spotlighted Team USA athlete Nathan Chen who won gold in men’s figure skating at the Beijing Winter Olympics.

Sportswriter Andrew Keh and author of the article highlighted how Asian American skaters were dominating the previously white-dominated sport.

“Asians make up around 7% of the U.S. population but have become vividly overrepresented in ice rinks and competitions at every level, from coast to coast,” Keh wrote.

“Gradually, they have transformed a sport that, until the 1990s, was almost uniformly white.”

Keh’s word touched a nerve among the Asian American community. On Twitter, Parents Defending Education vice president for strategy Asra Q. Nomani wrote, “For 2 years, we’ve been feeling explicit racism against Asians. We’re ‘overrepresented’ at Stuyvesant HS. Thomas Jefferson HS for Science & Technology. Lowell HS. Now we’re ‘vividly overrepresented’ in ice-skating?! The anti-Asian bigotry at the NYT must stop.”

Sen. Ted Cruz, Texas Republican, tweeted: “Liberals embrace racism, especially against Asian-Americans. NYT complains that Asians are ‘vividly overrepresented’ in ice skating.”

“Imagine if the @nytimes wrote a piece saying ‘Blacks make up around 14% of the U.S. population but have become vividly overrepresented in the @NFL & @NBA from coast to coast. Gradually they have…,’” tweeted Curtis S. Chin, former U.S. Ambassador to the Asian Development Bank. “And yet the #NYTimes tweets this.”

Keh has since defended the article, which remains unedited on the New York Times’ website.

“I used the word after hearing [it] in conversation with multiple Asian American sociologists,” Keh tweeted. “It literally just means that participation is clearly disproportionate to the population stat cited in the same sentence. There’s no judgment baked into it.”

Kim’s Convenience star Jean Yoon snapped back, “OVER-Represented? Vividly over-represented? Really? Poor choice of words. The kind of choice of words that will be used to attack Asian American & Canadian figure skaters. Way to go, Andrew Keh.”