In recent years, South Asian Americans or desis, as they are colloquially known, seem to be making inroads into U.S. national consciousness as pop-culture icons, cultural commentators and media content creators. However, there also remains plenty of evidence that historical legacies of racism, Orientalism, and colonialism continue to shape mainstream imaginations about South Asian Americans as characters, as creative professionals, as audiences, and as a cultural group. In this presentation, I draw on the research for my current book project, Race and Ethnicity in U.S. Media Industries, and offer a combination of institutional, textual and discursive analyses of trade and consumer reports, “diversity” initiatives, entertainment media texts, multicultural advertising and interviews of actors and writers. I locate the increased visibility of South Asian Americans in the U.S. media within the ongoing industry investment in notions of “diversity” and “multicultural consumers.” I contend that dominant industry narratives about “diversity” sidestep the issues of institutional and structural racism as well as problematic narratives about race and difference in media representations and storytelling. I argue that the ongoing rebranding of U.S. media capital by incorporating ethnicity and immigrant culture into its core business outlook is shaped by, and in turn shaping, what I call the culture of “screening desis.” I consider screening in three ways—as an interactive interface (social media), a projection of images (diverse representations across media) and as a filter that regulates (the policing of desi bodies on the screen and behind it).