While the community appreciates Seth MacFarlane and the Family Guy team to have an Asian American character on their animated sitcom, we demand that they apologize for the character Tricia Tanakawa, allowing for both (1) what amounts to contemporary "yellowface" and (2) racism against Asian Americans, and in particular, propagating fetishization of minority women, to wit, Asian American women, and further, to remedy a years-long problem by finding a new voice and revising the character to comport with real Asian American women.

Last summer, following racial justice protests in the wake of George Floyd's killing, Mike Henry announced that he would stop voicing Cleveland Brown on the animated sitcom. He thought it was inappropriate for a white man to voice a Black character. However, Alex Borstein, a white woman, continues to give the voice for a Japanese-American woman who works as a local news correspondent. It is concerning that the character is inspired by Ms. Borstein's MadTV character Sue Napersville, as opposed to being inspired by the lives of actual Asian Americans. 

Tricia is the most prominent Asian American on the series. However, her inclusion and demeanor merely serve to deride the millions of Asian Americans in this country and to further preconceived notions that Asian Americans are foreign, exotic, unusual, etc. The most blatant example is her job for the local television network. She is always introduced as "Asian news correspondent Tricia Takanawa" or "Asian reporter Tricia Takanawa." The inclusion of "Asian" is disturbingly redundant when in fact the sitcom portrays Tricia with narrow football shaped eyes to highlight her ethnicity. Moreso, despite the show's erasure of the character and co-anchor Diane Simmons in Season 9, the sitcom makes no effort to promote Tricia to a higher role. Instead, Tricia remains relegated to news reporting as "Asian news reporter Tricia Takanawa" in rain or sleet, directly or indirectly showing that Asians are inferior compared to their non-Asian, and particularly, white peers.

Additionally, Family Guy's portrayal does a not-so-subtle job to sexualize Asian American women via Tricia Takanawa, or at least, further them being fetishized. The most egregious example of this is the episode "Carter and Tricia," where the main storyline depicts a rich, older, white man abandoning his wife for a younger Tricia Takanawa. This unfairly sheds the image that Asian American women are "vixen" and "gold-diggers" who would seduce older white men for money. By pairing a rich, older, white man with a younger Asian woman, this painfully reminds our community of how Asian sex workers are preyed upon, especially in the wake of the Georgia massacre, and more broadly, how the non-Asian public sees Asian American women.

Anti-Asian stigma is nothing new. Although Family Guy has done a remarkable job in bringing out certain motifs and viewpoints, it has fallen behind on promoting the image of Asian Americans. While the inclusion of an Asian American character could have been a powerful opportunity to give our community the voice it needs in the entertainment industry, it is instead used to mock and pillory Asian Americans, and especially Asian American women. In the advent of the anti-Asian bias attacks and the Georgia massacre of Asian massage parlor workers, it is especially incumbent on Seth MacFarlane's team at Family Guy to apologize for these injustices, find a new voice actress for Tricia Takanawa and to have her character rewritten.