Although there are variations to the myth of the Model Minority (MM), the basic premise has to do with the perceived (and sometimes often noted) middle-class success of certain immigrant groups in America, specifically Asian immigrants, often in comparison to African-American, Hispanic, and other immigrant groups. On the surface, MM would seem to highlight and praise Asians for their educational and financial accolades. As a general racial category, Asians are often cited as the most educated and the highest-income earning racial group in the United States–even more so than Whites. And whether or not this is the desired effect, MM is often interpreted as putting Asian-Americans in closer power distance to White-Americans over other racial groups.
MM was coined by the sociologist William Petersen in 1966 in an article he wrote for The New York Magazine entitled “Success Story: Japanese American Style.” In this article, Petersen sympathetically traces through the impact of World War II on Japanese-Americans and the adverse effects American internment camps had on their post-war life. Petersen recollects how many Japanese-Americans lost everything including jobs, homes, and most of all, social capital and legitimacy of being American. Yet, despite the overt discrimination and the setback that internment camps had on Japanese communities, many returned to American life, and over the next few decades following the war, were able to re-establish themselves in middle-class America. Petersen attributed the “success” of these Japanese-Americans to their Confucian values and work ethic and likened it to the Protestant work ethic conceptualized by Max Weber. However, this praise by Peterson was probably not, at the time, perceived as condescending towards any of the other racial groups to which Asians were being compared against.
The 1965 Immigration Act opened the doors to Asian and Latin American countries and prioritized the admittance of professionals and scientists. The import of Asian professionals into America would continue to perpetuate the MM myth, and soon ideas such as “all Asians are good at math” or “Asians are easy to get along with” or “Asians are agreeable people” became the normative way to think about all Asian groups. Not long after Peterson’s article, other similar ones would emerge in popular magazines and academic journals highlighting the success of other Asian groups, such as Chinese and Koreans, often in comparison (and perhaps to the detriment) of African-Americans and Hispanic groups.
Why MM is Truly a Myth
By disaggregating the same data which is used to support the claim that Asian-Americans are amongst the most successful racial American groups, we quickly see that they are also the racial category with the greatest financial disparity. Meaning, while some Asian-American groups may on average join the highest income-earning groups in the United States, it is also other Asian-American groups who are at the very bottom. Asian-Americans make up a disproportionately high percentage of those living in poverty in the U.S. In 2015, Pew Research estimated that 28% of Hmong, 24% of Bangladeshi, and 19% of Cambodians were living in poverty. These groups are not the same as those who have immigrated to the U.S. motivated by economic prosperity. There is a vast difference between refugee immigrants from Asia within the last forty years and those whom MM was attempting to describe.
Furthermore, even Asian-American groups that are educated and financially secure have to deal with a “foreignness” that continues to be ascribed to them by other “more American” groups. As a son of Hmong refugees from Laos who grew up in the city of Detroit, I can attest that there was a regular challenge to our authenticity as Americans. Our nationality was constantly in question. To some African-Americans, we were essentially “White” because they had perceived us as much more “proper” like to the Whites. To some White-Americans, although it was clear that we were not African-American, we were “urban” and “inner-city” because we lived amongst “them.” This was yet another layer that complexified our foreignness. And moreover, to East-Asian and South-Asian Americans, we were just as unknown to them as were the minority ethnic groups in their homeland, tempted to be considered as the non-mainstream Asians. (At least not any of the kinds that were portrayed in the popular movies.)
While it is true that many Asian-American groups have had American “success” stories, placing all Asian-American groups closer to hegemony is a gross conflation of their diverse makeup. Moreover, it is deceptive to try to associate education and financial attainment with social capital and Americanness. Hegemony is designed in a way that achievements and accolades are not always all that you need to earn a welcomed seat at the table. Its trickle-down effects have even proven to be deadly at times for Asian-Americans as exhibited by their higher rates of suicide among young adults, many of whom succumbed to the pressures of achieving high levels in academics and career. The lived experience of many Asian-Americans is contrary to the myth of the MM, especially the version that promotes Americanness as something attainable for immigrants through education and finances. The more some Asian-Americans have lived into this myth, the more they find its premise to be faulty and fantasy.
Seeing the Rise of Minorities Through a Different Narrative
The rise of non-European and non-White communities in North America is inevitably changing the way we talk about race and ethnicity. No longer can we blanket large swaths of the American population with convenient labels, at least not without having carefully nuanced and defined what we mean by them. As the normative “White” understanding of the American way of life (whatever that means and whatever that looks like) continues to evolve, especially because of the global influence of migration, there will be less of an American ideal to be compared against. Therefore, the future may be filled with ideals, which are more likely to depend less on race and phenotype in the way that it has in the past. The model minority came into existence because there was a model majority to be measured against. As that majority inches towards becoming a minority itself, models such as MM become less tenable.
The rise of American hybridity should increase the sensitivity each racial group has towards the other. This empathy should cause individuals of each group to be highly nuanced in how they choose to tell the other’s story so as to not slight the other group’s complex lived experience, but to simultaneously acknowledge both their accomplishments and responsibilities. My presumption is that this level of nuance and honest storytelling essentially erases any meaningful racial category and allows a group’s recent history and longstanding heritage to stand on its own without convenient labels. While this could have been William Peterson’s original intent in pointing out how Japanese-Americans were model immigrants thriving in the face of American adversity, he told the story from the wrong perspective. To the majority, the model minority is a story of how great it is for immigrants to assimilate and make themselves viable in American society. However, for some Asian-Americans, our success is not measured in the daily and painstaking process of assimilation. Our intention in assimilation is more subversive in that we hope in the generations to come, there will be less expectation for us to always acculturate and more willingness from others to receive what we might have to impart.
Now, check out this song and video by my friend Jason Chu.
