Asian Americans: Mythical Minority: Recent Episodes
Letitia So
"Model Minority". You've probably heard the term, but what does it mean and what does it imply? Find out here.
How does the model minority myth affect other marginalized groups?
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Transcript:
One aspect of the model minority myth that I haven’t yet touched on is its effect on other marginalized groups. By portraying Asian Americans as a group that can seemingly rise above all odds and become successful, the stereotype diminishes the issues facing other races. Rather than being a testament to Asian American success in the face of adversity, it effectively becomes a tool to make it seem like all minorities, including African Americans and Hispanics, don’t face challenges or obstacles to success. Effectively, the trope helps to push the narrative that “Asian americans can become successful, therefore racism against minorities doesn’t exist”.
By doing so, the model minority myth also becomes a way to argue against the notion of white privilege. In 2014, former Fox News host Bill O’Reilly sparked controversy after appearing on Fox News, saying “Do we have Asian privilege in America? Because the truth is, that Asian American households earn far more money than anyone else.” Later, in 2017, political commentator Andrew Sullivan wrote that “Asian Americans are a problem for the social justice brigade”, sarcastically asking, “how have bigoted white people allowed these minorities do so well, earning more, on average, than whites?”.
The scariest thing about the model minority myth is how it crafts a narrative of success for Asian Americans, and then uses that against minorities as a whole by arguing that racial discrimination supposedly doesn’t exist.
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Source:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PrDbvSSbxk8
Are there consequences of the model minority myth for people that seemingly embody being the "model minority"?
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Transcript:
For the past three episodes, I’ve been mostly talking about issues pertaining to groups of people, and focusing on things like history or statistics to make my point. Well, in this episode, I’d like to change the pace a bit and talk about my personal experiences with being the “model minority”, and how this stereotype can negatively impact even those who appear to be successful on the outside.
A bit of background on me: I was born in Taiwan and came to America when I was 1. My mom was already a U.S. citizen, so I was lucky enough to obtain my citizenship through her. Growing up, I was obedient and reserved, and always excelled in my classes, especially science and math. I took honors courses starting in middle school, and, once I reached highschool, AP courses as well, getting nothing less than an A- in most of them. I was lucky enough to receive a scholarship to my dream university, and I will be graduating this year with my bachelor’s degree and a full-time job offer lined up. In many ways, I am the embodiment of the model minority.
In 5th grade, my class all talked about what careers we wanted to pursue when we were adults, and I remember saying that I wanted to be a doctor because they made a lot of money. In 7th grade, my friends asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up, and I said, “successful”. To be clear, I don’t think wanting to be wealthy or successful is inherently a bad thing, but it becomes an issue when one builds their whole identity around it, and in hindsight, that’s just what I did for most of my life.
I grew up in a predominantly Asian-American city, and most of my peers at school were some kind of Asian-American. We were all aware of what the stereotypes of being Asian-American were, and the worst part is, we actively perpetuated them. In high school, our goals weren’t to become prom queen or quarterback of our team. Instead, I and the people around me focused on maintaining a 4.0 GPA average, and getting a leadership position in a club, all to get into a good college. There was even a stigma against people who scored less than a certain number on their SAT. Looking back, I think we all bought into the myth that all Asian Americans were successful, and that we had to be successful too, otherwise we weren’t valid.
Once I entered college, I found myself overwhelmed by the sheer amount of work and the difficulty of my classes compared to before. By the end of my freshman year, I had just barely managed to pass most of my classes. Not living up to the predefined standard of being smart and successful made me feel inadequate, even worthless. I fell into a depression, and the worst part of it was that I didn’t want to reach out for help. I felt like there was something inherently wrong with me, because I was supposed to be the epitome of the “model minority”. Reaching out for help just wasn’t justified, and I felt like I just needed to power through and work harder. I thought that I didn’t have a right to be depressed.
Eventually, thanks to some very supportive friends, I was able to realize that there was more to me than being smart or successful, and that my whole identity wasn’t measured by what my GPA or starting salary was. I started getting professional help, and exploring my interests outside of school, such as making music. I’ve never been happier, but many other Asian Americans haven’t been as lucky as I. The suicide rate for women and girls is 30% higher for Asian Americans than for their white counterparts, and I truly believe that the pressure to live up to the lofty standards of being a “model minority” are part of the reason for this discrepancy. Even for the people that the trope itself might be based on, the model minority myth is exceedingly harmful.
What are some of the deeper struggles that Asian Americans have to face, that are conveniently erased by the model minority myth?
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Transcript:
In the last episode, I talked about the problems that the model minority myth raises for Asian Americans. This episode, I’ll be focusing instead on the existing issues Asian Americans must face that the model minority myth helps to conveniently cover up.
One of the generalizations that comes from the model minority stereotype is that Asian Americans all become rich and successful. This is something that’s partially rooted in truth: Asian Americans as a whole do earn more than other racial groups. But important to note is that Asian Americans are often concentrated in cities, which usually have higher costs of living, something that offsets the higher incomes. In addition, we aren’t necessarily paid fairly or having the same opportunities as non-minorities. According to the U.S. Census, Asian American men with a bachelor’s degree earned almost 16,000 dollars less a year than their white counterparts with the same degree, while Asian American women earned 4,000 less than similar white women.
On the topic of education, let’s look at some more statistics. 20% Vietnamese Americans do not earn a High School Diploma, with many ending up in low-paying service jobs, with this number increasing to 40% for the Hmong community. Now, some may argue that this number isn’t representative of Asian Americans as a whole. And, they would be right - 70% of Indian Americans, and 50% of Chinese and Korean Americans have a bachelor’s degree or higher. But, while this may be true, it only serves to highlight how harmful the model minority trope actually is. As I touched on in the prior episode, not all Asian Americans are the same, and judging us all by a select few groups is classic stereotyping. We each have our own struggles, whether that be as racial groups or as individuals, and calling us all the “model minority” erases the struggles that each one of us have to face.
There’s yet another problem amongst Asian Americans that even fewer people acknowledge. 1 out of every 7 Asian immigrants is undocumented, and while many of these people could apply for the DACA program, they never end up doing so. Because of how pervasive the model minority myth is, many Asian immigrants feel pressured to put on a facade of success, and, unfortunately, refuse to reach out for help.
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Sources:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PrDbvSSbxk8
https://prosperitynow.org/blog/racial-wealth-snapshot-asian-americans
What are the consequences of the model minority myth and other stereotypes on minority groups?
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Transcript:
So, now that you know what the model minority myth is, and how it came to be in the first place, let’s talk about why exactly it’s so harmful. After all, it promotes the idea Asian Americans are intelligent, hardworking, and successful, so why would that be considered a negative? Well, there’s a wide variety of reasons.
First of all, it ignores the differences between smaller racial groups. It doesn’t matter if you’re Chinese-American, or Japanese, Korean, Indian, Vietnamese, Thai-American; all of these varying and vastly different groups are all lumped together under one umbrella of being “Asian”. In fact, a large factor for how the model minority myth even began was because the media in the 60s couldn’t really be bothered to tell the difference between different types of Asians, and applied what was said about Japanese Americans to Chinese Americans, which was then extended to Korean Americans. This is a problem that many minority groups encounter, such as African Americans and American Indians, where the deeper nuances of each culture’s differences are neglected.
Secondly, it takes away any uniqueness that an Asian American individual might have, and replaces it with the label that we’re submissive, disciplined, and good at math and science. But in reality, these things may or may not be true, and there’s so much more to every individual that this trope really ignores in favor of broad generalization. In a sense, this is again a problem that any group that faces stereotypes will encounter: people on the outside looking at us, determining that we belong in a specific group, and assigning traits to us based on their classification.
Lastly, the model minority myth is very reductive. Instead of attributing the success of Asian Americans to their talents, the myth says that Asian American success is because of our race. It makes it seem like any hard work we put in is something that is simply just wired into our code.
Where did the model minority myth originate, and how has it remained as one of the most pervasive Asian American stereotypes, even today?
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Transcript:
Model minority. Maybe you’ve heard of this term, maybe you haven’t. Either way, today I’ll be taking a look at the origins of this misconception and how exactly a label from the 1960’s became one of the most pervasive stereotypes regarding Asian Americans today.
It all began in 1966. Two decades after Japanese internment in concentration camps had ended, Japanese Americans were defying all odds and successfully integrating into American cultures. This led to an article in The New York Times Magazine, written by sociologist William Petersen, titled "Success story: Japanese American style”. In it, he attributed cultural values of family, structure, and hard work to Japanese Americans’ success in overcoming discrimination and integrating into American society. He labelled them as the “model minority”.
So, as you might guess, this term stuck. Soon after Petersen’s piece was published, numerous press articles were written highlighting the success of various Asian American groups. These articles focused on various qualities of Asian Americans, including their Confucian values, work ethic, centrality of family, and even genetic superiority, to explain how Asian Americans could be so seemingly successful in American society. Choice of reasoning aside, one thing these articles all had in common was their labelling of Asian Americans as the “model minority”.
Importantly, one important fact that all these writers and so-called experts had failed to mention was the 1965 Immigration Act, which lifted previously enacted immigration restrictions and had the effect of allowing more immigrants from non-Western countries to enter the United States. Additionally, the act gave higher priority to professionals and scientists (so people like doctors and engineers, a.k.a. people who would have had relatively less obstacles to integrating into American society).
This key fact changes the narrative of immigration, specifically Asian American immigration, drastically. Media at the time would have you believe that Asian American groups succeeded due to their inherent foreign-ness: their aforementioned qualities including Confucianism and discipline. But, looking at the bigger picture shows us that at least part of the reason why Asian Americans were able to successfully integrate was the lifting of restrictive policies that had previously barred them from doing so.
Thus, the narrative shifts: from one where the U.S. government made a mistake by enacting restrictive immigration policies and passed the 1965 Immigration Act in order to make up for their wrongdoings, to a narrative where Asian Americans are inherently painted as outsiders, and only succeed due to their collective foreign-ness.
This is also a key reason why the model minority myth persists even today. By removing the link between the 1965 Immigration Act and Asian American success, it allows the myth to exist beyond just that specific time period. After removing this historical event as a factor, Asian American success can now be portrayed as a result of our “exotic” traits and our supposedly inherent differences from other racial groups.
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Sources:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xWLmVnFaCp0
https://depts.washington.edu/sibl/Publications/Model%20Minority%20Section%20(2011).pdf