Stereotypes can impact us more than we think. Growing up, we were told to dress, act, and react all a certain way, whether it was from teachers, peers, family, or the media. Stereotypes are present in so many things we don’t even realize. The “Model Minority Myth” has been around for decades, which is often used to refer to a particularly more successful, intelligent, and an overall superior group of humans. Though by definition, this term could refer to any certain group, with its popularization in the media over half a century ago, many began to apply this term to the Asian American community, who over that period had been praised for their success in almost every field a man or woman from other racial groups wishes to even attempt. At the end of World War II and the start of the Cold War, the US began to fear that its exclusion of Chinese immigrants would hurt its alliance against Japan with China. In 1943, the Magnuson Act was passed to allow a selected few Chinese immigrants to enter the country, beginning the narrative shift that would occur. Proponents of the repeal “strategically recast Chinese in […] promotional materials as ‘law-abiding, peace-loving, courteous people living quietly among us’” instead of the “’ yellow peril’ coolie hordes.” It created a new paradigm about Asians — one that depicted Asians as a community that assimilated peacefully after facing racism in America.
However, the model minority statement is not without debate and has received the assumption and fallacy labels when commentators have criticized both its assumptions and conclusions. Others point to the argument 's intent as "disingenuous insofar" as it is meant to drive a wedge between different oppressed communities. Others claim it's misleading as performance metrics and even figures of representation don't speak to many of the biases that persist today. In the Asian American community, especially, for example, these apparent achievements are also not representative of a rise to leadership positions.
Retrieved from https://time.com/3475962/asian-american-diversity/
Perhaps the most troubling element of the model minority claim is an inherent conceptual shortcoming — an unwillingness to take note of the Asian American community's complex structure itself. In Harvard University’s “A Snapshot of the Asian American Community” study, a large population is composed of the Asian American culture. Also, diversity has clear implications for the same measures that are perceived as success stories under the minority justification model. This is an unreliable technique. It fails to recognize the different experiences and challenges faced by different ethnic groups. Instead, it homogenizes various racial groups, denying communities of Southeast Asian Americans such as Thai, Vietnamese, Hmong, Laotian, and Cambodian. A breakdown of college degree attainment by Asian ethnic groups shows that Cambodians, Hmongs, and Laotians have a rate of less than 9.2% while Chinese, Filipinos, Japanese, and Koreans are above 40%.
Overtime, Asian Americans have been discriminated against, terrorized, and so much more. From Middle East Americans experiencing hate for terrorist groups’ acts, to Japanese confinement camps in the US, those who even slightly have Asian physical similarities have received hate. This is especially relevant now with the recent tragedy of the COVID-19 or the “Corona Virus”. “Within 24 hours of opening a website for Asians in the U.S. to report pandemic-related racism, there were reports of 40 separate incidents. Anecdotally, Asian American reporters are experiencing racial slurs that they haven’t heard since grade school, and an Asian American member of Congress is fearful for his own safety” (Yale Insights). In Yales’s “Racism Exposes the Model Minority Myth” experiment, they found that this high-status, model minority, Asian-American conception is accompanied by a second common distortion — one being foreignness. Asian immigrants in the U.S. continue to be viewed as divergent and distinct from American society, with different eating preferences, vocabulary, and cultural traditions that allow Asians to be branded as alien or "other," even among Asian populations who have existed in the U.S. for many decades. This component of foreignness, coupled with a foreign viral contaminant that targets people around the world, increases bigotry and racism towards Asian communities. For more information on how Asian Americans are affected by the recent media flame check out the other blog on the WeUnite page titled Voices of Minorities.
Stereotypes still exist, but we as a generation have the necessary resources and motive to abolish them. Everyone deserves to be treated like their own person, not as a group. Asian Americans suffer from Model Minority every single day and it's only getting worse. As a platform, we have the advantages to spread the word. So stop calling them a slur, don’t make stupid Asian jokes, treat everyone as a human being, not a race. Because we are all unique in our own way and we have to let that part shine instead of holding it behind what society wants us to look, act, and react like.
Written by Nazreen Ali from Temecula, California
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