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The Model Minority Myth
The term “Model Minority” was first coined by a sociologist named William Petersen in 1966, who wrote a NYT article about the “success” of Japanese Americans. Let me start by saying that there are many people in the Asian American community that buy into the Model Minority Myth and hold it proudly. I am not one of those people. Here’s why:
“Success” in the Model Minority Myth is still determined based on a Majority Culture standard. It’s an aspect of the “white gaze” that is prevalent in American culture, but rarely talked about. People actually use the word “docile” as a desirable quality in Asian Americans—it’s really just a way for the majority culture to say “we want people trying to fit into OUR reality, not standing up for themselves and forcing us to change what we want to do.”
The Model Minority Myth serves mainly to turn Asian Americans into a blunt object that the majority culture uses to beat down other marginalized people. If there’s any discussion about inequality, people can point at Asian Americans and say, “They’re successful. Why can’t you just be more like them?!”
The reality is that like any community, there are the affluent and the poor. The majority culture has simply decided to stereotype Asian Americans as being more affluent than other marginalized groups. The result is that without the Model Minority Myth, people in the majority culture would actually be forced to deal with the reality that there are systemic inequalities in our society. And it’s just easier to position one marginalized group as the “good ones.”
Yesterday I talked about the Model Minority Myth and how it’s rooted in the idea that Asian Americans are seen as being more “successful” than other marginalized communities. One of the aspects of Asian cultures that the majority culture in America loves is the idea that people of Asian descent are “docile.” That means we don’t rock the boat; we operate in the background. That seeming lack of ambition is great for the majority culture. They don’t see people of Asian descent as a community that threatens their status as the majority. Until something does.
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“Success” is capped for Asians and Asian Americans. Our “success” as the Model Minority only works as long as we stay docile; as long as we don’t outshine our fellow Americans or attract attention ourselves. For example: as the success of Japanese car companies grew in the 1970s and ‘80s, so did racial animosity toward Asian Americans.