Why an Emmy for ‘Master of None’ feels like a personal victory for millions

"There are 17 million Asian Americans in this country," Alan Yang said Sunday night while accepting his Emmy. Yang and Aziz Ansari shared the win for Best Writing in a Comedy Series (Master of None), becoming the first Asian and Indian Americans to do so.

Yang was unafraid to point out that where an equally sizable ethnic group -- Italian Americans -- is represented across film and television, the so-called "model minority" is underrepresented and met with damaging stereotypes.

Looking at Sunday’s Emmy winners is exhilarating, in the same way that it's thrilling to watch any of the nominated shows. It's a joy to watch Ansari's character hang out with an Asian man and a queer woman of color on Master of None, to see children with immigrant parents on Fresh Off the Boat and a black-ish family back on primetime.

The common thread through these excellent shows is that they are being by, for and about the people whose story it tells. Ansari and Yang wrote their own experiences instead of "relatable" (showbiz shorthand for "white straight cisgender male") stories that had been told hundreds of times before. They didn't discover anything new – they just shed a light on it.

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Yang's speech -- particularly his appeal to Asian parents to "give their children cameras instead of violins" -- flew around the internet within seconds. He was the only Asian American to win an Emmy on Sunday and one of three to take the stage. (Ansari, the only Indian American present, didn't get to make an acceptance speech; after Yang stopped speaking the music immediately began, leaving Ansari awkwardly trying to get a word in.)

“People don’t get that fired up about racist Asian or Indian stuff,” Dev says on Master of None, and even with the accolades for his show, the character’s ability to say what Ansari and Yang couldn’t is immense.

"We've got a long way to go," Yang said in his speech. "But we'll get there."

My nightmare is that Hollywood will think it's met its quota, that a multitudinous list of winners makes it permissible for the industry to slack off on what should be a constant, diligent fight for representation. The stereotypes cited in Master of None and in Yang's speech are symptoms of a latent racism that still needs to be consciously corrected.

In my pre-Emmys research, I found myself on a lot of diversity-related Wikipedia pages: List of Black Emmy winners and nominees, List of Asian Academy Award winners and nominees—there isn’t even a page of Asian American Emmy winners and nominees.

Now, at least, it's time to start one.