Model Minorities

The term model minority refers to a racialized or ethnic minority that has achieved success within the parameters of a dominant culture. Such groups are held up as a model of behavior for less successful or problem minorities. The representation of Chinese and Japanese Americans as model minorities was popularized in the mid-1960s through the publication of two essays: “Success Japanese American Style,” which appeared in the New York Times Sunday Magazine in January 1966, and “The Success Story of One Minority in the U.S.,” a story about Chinese Americans that was published in U.S. News and World Report in December 1966. Both articles contrasted a narrative of Asian-American self-sufficiency and assimilation with the militant demands placed on the American polity by African Americans demanding recognition of civil and economic rights.

Japanese and Chinese Americans might have been surprised to read of their histories described as models of successful assimilation. For Japanese Americans the price of assimilation had been very high. During World War II they were subject to mass incarceration and the theft of their property, and after the war they witnessed the dispersal of their communities. And while there was an emergent Chinese-American middle class in the mid 1960s, American Chinatowns had some of the most overcrowded and dilapidated housing in the country. Rates of tuberculosis and other diseases of poverty were epidemic in these communities. Nevertheless, in the early 1960s the political repression of these communities was nearly complete. The Japanese communities had been

dismantled and dispersed, while the Chinese communities, which included a large number who had entered the United States in violation of the Chinese Exclusion Acts, had faced the threat of deportation if they did not conform to the anticommunist orthodoxy of the 1950s. The resulting political silence of these communities was precisely the quality that critics of black empowerment and affirmative action policies valued most highly. The myth of successful assimilation into the American way of life by eschewing political struggle became an enduring racial stereotype of the Asian-American community.

The Asian-American community grew, due to immigration, from just under one million in 1970 to just over 12 million in 2000. The Asian-American immigrant population in the early twenty-first century is characterized by a large percentage of middle-class professionals alongside a high percentage of poor and less skilled immigrants. The claim of Asian-American upward mobility is disputed however with the relatively large number of professional and managerial immigrants in the population accounting for the statistical claim that the Asian-American population as a whole has been successful. The myth of Asian-American academic success based on supposedly traditional Asian cultural values of obedience, hard work, self-sufficiency, and discipline has been held up as a model for other “problem” groups, notably African Americans, Latinos, and, more recently, the “slacker” children of working-class and middle-class whites.

The use of racial stereotypes of Asian Americans to control or discipline other groups is an old political ploy. In the 1870s the image of Chinese workers as nimble, quick-witted, docile, and disciplined was commonly counterpoised in newspapers and trade journals with stereotypes of the “problem” Irish, who were portrayed as drunkards and troublemakers.

Not surprisingly the representation of Asian immigrants as models for others has bred resentment against Asian Americans. In the nineteenth century the image of Chinese workers as docile fuelled claims by opponents of Chinese immigration that the Chinese were “coolies,” servile and unfit for organization. In the late twentieth century the tale of Asian-American success through thrift and self-sufficiency gave rise to resentment on the part of African Americans and Latinos, about whom the reverse is often claimed. It also caused resentments among white middle-class families who see their children pitted “unfairly” against Asian-American students in academic settings.

Many Asian Americans, especially those who come from working-class and refugee families, do not meet the expectations that teachers and colleagues have formed, based on the stereotype of the high-achieving “model minority” student. These students and workers are often consigned to invisibility in academic and work settings. As a matter of public policy, Asian Americans are often excluded from educational programs designed to benefit underrepresented minorities, despite the fact that certain Asian ethnic groups, such as the Hmong and Khmer, are dramatically underrepresented in higher education. Some Asian Americans have themselves adopted a belief in the model minority stereotype, leading them to believe in a cultural or even genetic superiority, and hence an attitude of racial superiority.

SEE ALSO Film and Asian Americans.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Bascara, Victor. 2006. Model-Minority Imperialism. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Klineberg, Stephen. 1996. Houston’s Ethnic Communities, Third Edition: Updated and Expanded to Include the First-Ever Survey of the Asian Communities, Executive Summary. Houston, TX: Rice University. Available from http://cohesion.rice.edu/centersandinst.

Lee, Robert G. 1999. Orientals: Asian Americans in Popular Culture. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press.

Pettersen, William. 1966. “Success Story: Japanese American Style.” New York Times Magazine. January 9: 180.

Tuan, Mia. 1998. Forever Foreigners or Honorary Whites?: The Asian Ethnic Experience Today. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.

U.S. News & World Report. 1966. “The Success Story of One Minority Group in the U.S.” December 26: 73–76.

Wu, Frank. 2002. Yellow: Race in America beyond Black and White. New York: Basic Books.

Robert G. Lee