How the Model Minority Stereotype Tears Us Apart
For as long as I can remember, my academic success has been attributed to or dismissed as being due to my race. But beyond feeling pressure to succeed and receiving less praise for my accomplishments, race-driven stereotypes have been used to fuel hate between races, who are pitted against each other.
Where did the model minority stereotype come from and how does it impact the lives of minorities in America to this day?
Before diving into some of the history behind this, I’d like to contextualize my own background. I’m a second generation Chinese-American living in California. My mom immigrated here from Hong Kong in 1990. The Asian American experience is extremely diverse and I’m only speaking from my own narrow perspective and the perspectives of those who have published their experiences.
This piece is greatly inspired by oliSUNvia’s YouTube channel, check out her amazing video here, which first got me thinking about the topic.
The model minority stereotype was first given this name in the 1980s and suggests that Asian Americans are more intelligent, hard-working, and diligent than other minorities. But as this article will uncover, the applause is not equally distributed among all Asians and the controversial stereotype actually causes more harm than good.
Pitting Races Against Each Other
Gong Lum v. Rice 1927
Way back in 1927, the US Supreme court was put in a position to decide which segregated schools Asians belonged in. Lum argued that if white people refused to send their kids to school with Black students on the grounds that they were “dangerous”, it would be discriminatory to “expose the yellow race to a danger that the dominant race recognizes”. When a minority’s only choice for securing a better future for their kids (ie. through more funded school) is through stepping on another minority, justifications can be made for both sides. In 1927, allying with Black Americans who faced much of the same daily discrimination would put Asian Americans at an opportunistic disadvantage. Instead, by othering Black Americans, Asian Americans gained social capital with white Americans as well as access to better schools.
LA Riots 1992
Flash forward 65 years and the Korean liquor store owner who could have served 16 years in prison for killing 15 year old Latasha Harlins gets away with 6 months probation instead. Also around that time, all 4 white police officers who brutally beat Rodney King after pulling him over for speeding are acquitted.
These incidents sparked widespread looting, property damage, and arson. Given the riots were mostly concentrated in Koreatown, the Asian-American community was massively outraged at the damage caused by mostly Black and brown looters, while the LAPD watched. Two Asian-Americans were killed during the riots but 61 other, mainly Black and brown, people died as well. Most of the 12,000 people arrested were also Black or brown. Although Asians lost property and suffered much emotional damage, unlike other minorities, they didn’t pay the price of their precarious Americanness through loss of life and liberty.
George Floyd 2020
One final, recent example is the killing of George Floyd in 2020. As a white Derek Chauvin knelt on his neck, the Hmong-American police officer Tou Thao by his side argued with bystanders. In his words, “he’s talking so he can breathe.” Wtf.
Race, Stratified: Why Do We Clash?
To understand where this tension comes from, it’s important to understand the chokehold white supremacy holds on American society. It’s deeply ingrained, almost invisible, but oh so present.
White supremacy is defined as anything that upholds white privilege through socioeconomic, legal, cultural, and materialist means. This means that people of color can contribute to white supremacist behaviors. Whether this is a result of internalized racism, buying into colonial beliefs for survival, or simply because many white supremacist ways of thinking are normalized, anyone can harbor racist undercurrents.
What’s most dangerous about white supremacy when it comes to fostering interracial solidarity is the hierarchy it creates, with whiteness as the default, or pinnacle. This power ladder is rooted in the colonial principle of divide and rule, where one party must always clamor over the other and any movement becomes a threat. As the “model minority”, Asians are top beneficiaries of this hierarchy, leaving Black people to rest at the bottom. Furthermore, Asians feel as though they must do everything they can to remain at the top, because they weren’t always regarded so highly by white society.
In the 19th century, many Chinese laborers were brought to the US to do hard labor. They were paid little and heavily discriminated against. While today Asian Americans have been elevated to “honorary white” status, when they first began immigrating to the US they were seen as “black” or “near black”.
The Naturalization Act of 1906, gave citizenship only to “free white persons” and “persons of African nativity or persons of African descent”, labeling those outside of this category as “aliens ineligible for citizenship”.
In 1922, a Japanese American Takao Ozawa filed for US citizenship. But, confused where he fell on the black-white binary, he was racially ineligible for citizenship. Although he had lived in America for 28 years by the time his case made it to the Supreme Court, they argued that because he was not Caucasian, he could not obtain citizenship. This ruling ignored the fact that the law stated nothing about where an Asian fell in this binary system.
Racism is often talked about as a black vs. white issue, making many Asians feel like it doesn’t involve them.
Our Identities are Prescribed to Us
What further exacerbates the Asian American identity crisis is a lack of native culture since the majority of Asians in the US immigrated relatively recently, at least in comparison to many white and Black Americans who have populated the country for much longer.
As a result, despite racism against Asian people being quite prominent, it’s seldom discussed. Perhaps this is simply a matter of culture and the tough immigrant mindset of pushing through all adversity, but most Asians I know act as if racism doesn’t involve us. Because there is little collective memory of oppression due to a large immigrant population, Asian Americans can’t unite around this like African Americans who have endured centuries of history of abuse in the US.
Personally, when I learned about historic discrimination against Chinese communities in San Francisco, where I live, I found it quite detached from my life and hard to relate to because my family immigrated long after the Chinese Exclusion Act.
Another reason why it’s hard for Asian Americans to relate to one another is that there’s little solidarity among groups. The idea of being “East Asian” or “South Asian” is one that’s seldom given weight outside of the West. When I visit family in China, they don’t think of themselves as being part of a larger group of East Asians, they’re simply Chinese. By mushing the largest continent into the umbrella term “Asian American”, suddenly it’s a lot easier to control us and diminish our culture.
Furthermore, by stripping Asian Americans of their inherent cultural diversity, it puts pressure on everyone who belongs to a certain group to act according to the stereotype they are tied with. It’s so easy to be an “Asian Failure” when the expectation is ten times higher for us.
Unfortunately, the individual actions of racial minorities are often used to reflect and represent their entire race. An Asian student who fails a math test is failing their entire race, which is not the case for a white student. Similarly, if an Asian person commits a crime, he is seen as a stain on an entire race. Because of this, minorities may feel pressure to defend the actions of another minority they know is wrong, to protect their own image.
In instances of political uncertainty, Asian immigrants have been repeatedly forced to prove their loyalty to America when white immigrants have not. During WWII, Japanese Nisei fighters had to prove their Americanness by fighting against the Germans and Japanese, while their families were incarcerated. German and Italian Americans never had to prove this to the same extent and were certainly never thrown into concentration camps.
Finally, internal conflicts, usually fostered by some external force, have further driven apart ethnic groups under the umbrella of “Asian American”. During WWII, Chinese and Korean Americans wore stickers proclaiming they weren’t Japanese in order to not be persecuted. How can groups choose to come together when even within their “Asian” label there is a hierarchy?
As a result, the Asian American identity is primarily composed of ideas that have been imposed upon us. In a binary of white and black, anything that lessens this confusion will be embraced. For me, one of the few bits of collective memory I share with peers in my own generation is the model minority narrative. So when:
- The only thing I can relate to other Asians about is a stereotype
and
2. The alternative is being alienated as a foreigner, or facing the injustices that Black Americans face
of course we begrudgingly accept our prescribed role. In fact, this stereotype has been referenced to me, jokingly or not, more by my Asian peers than my white ones.
The Origin of Tiger Parents: Why Assimilate?
The stereotype offers Asian Americans non-Blackness, while at the same time still gatekeeping whiteness, which the narrative says must be embraced to achieve socioeconomic success.
Generations of cruel working conditions, being treated like a virus, and literal imprisonment in concentration camps led Asian Americans to view education and career achievements as the only way out, almost like a survival response. Objective measures of meritocracy such as test scores are a way of thriving in an environment that hates you and proving your worth. Many first generation immigrants didn’t achieve the life they had wanted, so they pushed their kids to work to achieve what they couldn’t.
When the 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act was passed, the racial quota for Asian immigrants was removed and the government became highly selective with who they let in. By allowing already successful Asians to come in, the government painted these new immigrants as a model for other races in America. These Chinese, Korean, and Japanese immigrants were highly educated and affluent, many of whom were flattered to be praised as good citizens and bought into the propaganda themselves.
The government support for these Asians who immigrated at the time would have also felt like a justification for a higher standing on the racial hierarchy. Something I’ve heard referenced far too often in the Asian community is the idea that “if other immigrants worked as hard as us, they could have these achievements too”.
While not diminishing the labor put in by any immigrant coming to the US in the search for a better life, this outlook fails to acknowledge that experiences in America are not analogous. Black success has historically been literally burned to the ground, as with the case of Black Wall Street.
Furthermore, the model minority myth was only meant to apply to those already educated, East Asian immigrants the US government hand-picked to come to the US. By erasing 90% of the Asian American population that doesn’t fit into this category, it ignores the Asian Americans who came as refugees because they’re not consistent with the story.
Plus, at the end of the day, the perks aren’t even that great. Mental health crises from academic pressure and burnout are far too common among those who are pressured to be good at every subject from birth.
Black Asian Tension
So despite both suffering under a white supremacist system, why is there still tension between Black and Asian groups in America?
There’s this idea that any attention received by Black issues comes at the expense of attention to other causes. Like a pie; if someone takes two slices, that means one less slice for another person.
This narrative is a way for non-Black people of color to justify their annoyance with Black attention, when we’re all vying for the same, limited white attention. Yet this is simply not how the world works. Just because I’m interested in playing piano, doesn’t mean I can’t learn the flute at the same time. Instead of seeing attention to Black issues as competition, it should be viewed as an affirmation of the gravity of white supremacy and function as a catalyst for resistance.
Conclusion
Instead of viewing racism as a white-Black conflict or Black-Asian one, view it as a white-non-white one. There have been many notable Asian-Black civil rights collaborations in the past, and there’s no reason this shouldn’t continue. In an increasingly divided world, we need more solidarity with one another.
As the past few years have shown us, the model minority card can be revoked at any time. One moment you’re the perfect minority, the next you’re a virus carrying being, scared to walk the streets of Chinatown alone.
While every group experiences their race differently in America, we all suffer from the same white supremacy. It’s time to realize that no matter how far removed you think you are from racism, you breathe in the products of a white supremacist system everyday. So get over it. Compassion is not finite. Support one another and start a conversation. We’re more similar than we think.
Again, please check out oliSUNvia’s video here for a much more eloquent version of this article!
