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Why the Model Minority Myth Is So Harmful

• Janice Omadeke

In large, conservative industries, there’s historically been a trend of promoting a small percentage  of minority professionals, who the organization then considers to be sufficient for equitable representation on their leadership teams. As a result, the one or two people of color who do make it into senior roles often have to overcompensate, or act as the “model minority.” There is huge pressure on their shoulders to assimilate in order to make themselves more palatable for their non-diverse team members, along with a fear that, if they don’t, their opportunity may be taken away.

• Together, these factors lead to increased feelings of isolation at work, and also feed into a false myth that there can only be one successful person of color in any organization.
• So, if you’re a young, professional of color, how can you avoid the model minority trap and bring your whole, courageous self to work early in your career?
• First, When applying to jobs, look for companies that rank highly on diversity and inclusion index reports and have a proven track record of promoting underrepresented professionals.
• Second, build yourself a support system who can provide you with advice when you face challenges (or biases) in the office, and champion the unique perspectives you have to offer.
• Finally, while the work ultimately falls on leadership teams (and not you personally) to build inclusive environments, there are still ways you can prepare yourself for the worst-case scenarios in order to protect your physical and emotional health.
• Build a script around how you want to respond to biased comments that you encounter during work. Taking the time to think about the tone, language, and message you want to send will empower you to speak out when the timing feels right.

You shouldn’t have to perform for anyone.

Where your work meets your life. See more from Ascend here .

In my early twenties, I was promoted to a senior role in a large, conservative corporation. As a Black woman, I was conscious of needing to fly under the radar and not ruffle any feathers for fear of being seen as difficult in a space where my race was considered a key attribute in earning my title.

• JO Janice Omadeke is the CEO and founder of The Mentor Method , an enterprise platform helping companies keep and develop their diverse talent using the proven power of mentorship. She has also been featured in Forbes, Entrepreneur magazine, and she was a subject matter expert at the 2016 White House Summit on Building the Tech Workforce of Tomorrow.

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What Is the Model Minority Myth?

When I was halfway through the 11th grade, my pre-calculus teacher pulled me out into the hallway. He wanted to talk about my latest test. “You can do better than this,” he said. “I’m so surprised by grades like this from someone like you.” 

Someone like you? I’d never done particularly well in his class, so the implication of his words churned in my stomach. In that moment, I felt acutely the weight of the dark braid trailing down my back and the glasses slipping down my nose. 

I knew my performance was being evaluated not against my own earlier work but against the image of the perfect, straight-A, Asian student who lived in my teacher’s mind: the myth of the “model minority.”   

The myth of the model minority is based in stereotypes. It perpetuates a narrative in which Asian American children are whiz kids or musical geniuses. Within the myth of the model minority, Tiger Moms force children to work harder and be better than everyone else, while nerdy, effeminate dads hold prestigious—but not leadership —positions in STEM industries like medicine and accounting. 

This myth characterizes Asian Americans as a polite, law-abiding group who have achieved a higher level of success than the general population through some combination of innate talent and pull-yourselves-up-by-your-bootstraps immigrant striving.   

What’s So Bad About the Model Minority Myth?

While most people agree that negative stereotypes of Asian Americans are harmful, some still question the harm of the model minority myth. What could be so bad about being part of a group that’s seen as being successful?

Like all stereotypes, the model minority myth erases the differences among individuals.

My own 11th-grade experience offers one example. My mother is Malaysian Chinese; my dad is white. I am usually perceived as Asian. So, because of the model minority myth, my failure to reach an expected level of achievement in math was attributed to some kind of deficiency or lack of effort on my part.

Instead of differentiating for me like I saw him do with others in the class, my teacher let me continue to slip. I was not offered extra help or any other support, and I did not know how to live up to the image of the model minority student. I stopped trying.

While I was eventually able to overcome this negative self-image, many others are not. Asian American college students have higher rates of attempting suicide than those in other groups . The model minority myth hides the pressures and paradoxes inherent within an Asian American identity. If you don’t fit into the myth, it is hard to find your place at all.

The model minority myth ignores the diversity of Asian American cultures. 

Data about Asian American achievement typically lumps this diverse population together into a singular group. Taken as a whole, it shows that Asian Americans tend to hold higher degrees and earn larger incomes than the general population. These successes are often attributed to differences in family attitudes toward education . From these metrics and attributions, the stereotype emerges that Asians are winning in their pursuit of the American Dream. But when we break these numbers down, the myth begins to crack.

Take pay disparities , for example. For every dollar the average white man makes in the United States, an Asian Indian woman makes $1.21 and a Taiwanese woman makes $1.16. A Samoan woman makes $0.62. A Burmese woman makes 50 cents. The experiences of these groups are not the same. 

The model minority myth operates alongside the myth of Asian Americans as perpetual foreigners. 

The model minority myth is just one of a collection of stereotypes about Asian American people. Popular television and films exoticize Asian culture and peoples. If you’re a man, you’re a kung fu master. If you’re a woman, you’re a submissive sex object. If you’re gender non-binary or transgender, you don’t exist at all. Mickey Rooney’s racist portrayal in Breakfast at Tiffany’s lives in our collective imagination alongside every East or South Asian actor who has played a bit part as a humorless doctor or IT guy . 

Buried under these stereotypes, the message is clear: Asian Americans are all the same—and all different from other Americans. On one hand, Asian Americans are often perceived as having assimilated better than other minority groups. On the other hand, Asian Americans are seen as having some foreign quality that renders them perpetual outsiders. 

It’s a paradox familiar to every Asian American who regularly faces the question, “But where are you from, originally ?” 

The model minority myth erases racism against Asian Americans.

Positioning Asian Americans as beneficiaries of the bounty of the American Dream, the myth of the model minority ignores the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 and Japanese internment in the 1940s. It suggests that the U.S. has always been a welcoming place for people of Asian descent, in spite of the mass lynchings of Asian Americans in the 19th century and the murder of Vincent Chin in 1982 . 

The myth persists in spite of the fact that 1 in 7 Asian immigrants in America today is undocumented and facing potential deportation, a fact that is repeatedly overlooked in our national conversation about immigration. The model minority myth says Asian Americans are doing well today and must therefore have benefitted from an elevated status among people of color, in spite of centuries of systematic discrimination. 

The model minority myth is harmful to the struggle for racial justice. 

The myth says that Asian Americans have played within the rules of the American system to their own group benefit. The success of some groups of Asian American immigrants is often held as an example toward which other groups should strive. It suggests that Asian Americans are doing well and that if other groups would only work harder, have stronger family bonds and get over their histories of oppression, they too would succeed. 

When paired with racist myths about other ethnic or racial groups, the model minority myth is used as evidence to deny or downplay the impact of racism and discrimination on people of color in the United States. Given the history of that impact on Black Americans particularly, the myth is ultimately a means to perpetuate anti-Blackness .

The model minority myth pits people of color against one another and creates a hierarchy in which Asian people are often represented at the top. By putting people of color in competition with one another, the myth distracts us from striving together toward liberation for all.  

Dismantling the Myth

Understand that the collective is important while individual differences still exist..

The term Asian American was coined in the late 1960s as a means of harnessing the collective power of people of Asian origin, much in the same way the term Hispanic was first used. Asian American political identity was strongly inspired by the Black Liberation Movement. Today, more inclusive terms like Asian-Pacific American (APA) or Asian American Pacific Islander (AAPI) signal the continued need for collective striving against similar experiences of racism and imperialism within our various ethnic subgroups. This collective political identity remains important.

At the same time, focusing solely on collective identity can perpetuate the model minority myth: The experiences of the most visible Asian American ethnic groups can hide the experiences of other groups. 

Some studies of educational achievement have shown that certain Asian ethnic groups, particularly those from parts of East and South Asia, indeed score very well in some subject areas. When students from these groups consistently do better than even white students, it is easy for educators to take inherently biased actions based on a belief that all Asian students are innately intelligent and hardworking. Those same studies, however, reveal that other Asian ethnic groups have vastly different results. For example, Southeast Asian and Pacific Islander students in particular often underperform when compared with all other racial and ethnic groups. 

As an educator, it is important to understand the different histories and experiences of Asian American and Pacific Islander students and communities. Some of these communities arrived in America as refugees escaping war or genocide, and some were imported as sharecroppers to replace enslaved people of African descent after the Civil War. Still other communities, particularly those native to various Pacific Islands, were here long before white settler colonialism. As educators, we must unlearn the biased, simplistic beliefs that we might hold about what it means to be Asian American or Pacific Islander in order to better attend to the real needs of our students and communities.

Feature Asian American figures and texts in your classroom.

One of the commonly felt experiences of Asian Americans is that of being invisible or erased. The model minority myth means that neither our historical struggles nor activism tend to be covered in schools and classrooms. The significant underrepresentation of Asian American educators furthers this problem. 

Asian American and Pacific Islander history has been a part of American history for centuries. May is AAPI Heritage Month. Use this as a starting point, but do not limit your conscious inclusion of AAPI people and experiences to a single month. Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders comprise the fastest-growing ethnic group in the United States. We must make a conscious effort to represent these stories and people in our classrooms, regardless of our own identities and those of our students.

Raise awareness in yourself and others.

There may be names and examples in this piece with which you were unfamiliar. Learn about activists like Grace Lee Boggs , Larry Itliong and Yuri Kochiyama . Say the name of Vincent Chin. Teach your students about Ela Bhatt . Research Supreme Court cases like U.S. v. Bhagat Singh Thind and Lum v. Rice . 

Dive into data to help understand the collective and individual experiences of various AAPI groups. Check your own biases and assumptions. Do not let a student like me slip through the cracks because you expect her to be smarter or more studious than her classmates. 

As you raise your own awareness, you’ll help those around you to understand and dismantle the model minority myth as well.

Blackburn is a professional development trainer for Teaching Tolerance.

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Inventing the “Model Minority”: A Critical Timeline and Reading List

December 15, 2021

The idea of Asian Americans as a “model minority” has a long and complicated history. By focusing on cherry-picked indicators of “success” like income, education level, and low crime rates—while ignoring deeper social and economic factors—the model minority myth assigns seemingly positive stereotypes to Asian Americans: We work hard. We don’t complain. We’re good at math. You know the ones.

But there is real harm in even these “good” stereotypes. This myth erases disparities between the 40+ ethnic groups that fall under the “Asian American” umbrella, further marginalizes those who struggle to live up to it, and silences those who speak out against it. It’s also anti-Black at its core, and has long been weaponized against Black and brown communities labeled “problem minorities” for fighting back against racism.

In a new collaboration between TED-Ed and Densho, we created a short film and lesson that traces the origins of the model minority myth and the damage it causes. It’s a complex topic to squeeze into just six minutes, so we’ve compiled some additional resources to help you dig a little deeper. Scroll down for a timeline of the history behind the myth and where to learn more—and watch the video below!

A Timeline of the Model Minority Myth

The stereotypes that inform the model minority myth can be traced all the way back to the systems of slavery and genocide upon which this country was built, and the white supremacist beliefs that upheld them. In the interest of providing a brief(ish) overview, this timeline follows the development of the model minority myth from World War II to the present, when it begins to sharpen focus on Asian Americans.

As China becomes a U.S. ally in WWII, Congress repeals the Chinese Exclusion Act and Chinese Americans are recast as “good” Asians in contrast to “bad” Japanese. At the end of the war, Japanese Americans are released from concentration camps with explicit and implicit instructions to assimilate into white society. The record of the 442nd Regimental Combat Team , a segregated, all-Japanese unit that suffered heavy casualties during WWII, is touted as a positive example of patriotism and sacrifice, and used to help rehabilitate the image of Japanese Americans.

1950s-1960s  

The U.S. engages in the Cold War and devastating physical wars in Korea, Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos, claiming to fight communism and “bring democracy” to the rest of the world. But the growth of the civil rights and ethnic power movements puts a spotlight on racism and discrimination at home, and undermines American claims to greatness abroad. Politicians and the media popularize the idea of protesting Black and brown Americans as “problem minorities” and supposedly passive, hardworking Chinese and Japanese Americans as a “model minority.” Some Asian Americans buy into this idea, like Hokubei Mainichi editor Howard Imazeki, who stirs up controversy with a 1963 editorial calling on Black Americans to “better themselves” before asking for equal rights.

The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 ends national origins quotas, allowing more immigration from Asia and other non-European countries. But a new tier system gives preference to “skilled” immigrants with relatives already in the U.S.—creating steep barriers to entry for poor and working class immigrants.

1960s-1980s

Many Asian Americans gain access to better housing, education, and jobs thanks to the Civil Rights Act, the overturning of restrictive housing covenants , and other achievements of Black activists. But racist practices like redlining, predatory lending, and “broken windows” policing create and maintain additional barriers that disproportionately impact Black and brown communities. Hidden beneath the veneer of Asian American “success” are stories of Southeast Asian refugees resettled in under-resourced and overpoliced neighborhoods where they lack access to social services, elderly residents of historic Chinatowns, Japantowns, and Manilatowns displaced from their homes by “urban renewal,” and Asian American youth navigating a crisis of addiction and suicide.

After more than a decade of political lobbying—much of it focused on the patriotism of the 442nd RCT—the Japanese American redress movement culminates in the Civil Liberties Act of 1988 , which grants a formal apology and payments of $20,000 to living survivors of WWII incarceration. The descendants of those who died before the bill’s passage are excluded to avoid creating a precedent for reparations to Black and Indigenous people.

On April 29, four LAPD officers are acquitted in the brutal beating of Rodney King. Outrage over the verdict, as well as decades of widening racial and economic inequality, erupts into five days of riots. Korean-owned businesses sustain much of the damage —fueled by anger over a lenient sentence handed down a week earlier to convenience store owner Soon Ja Du for the killing of Black teen Latasha Harlins , and tensions between Black and Latinx South Central residents and Asian shopkeepers perceived as “middleman minorities.” The LAPD largely ignores the violence in South Central LA to protect wealthier, whiter neighborhoods, while the mainstream press obscures the deeper, systemic problems behind the riots to instead create a sensationalized narrative of Black and brown mobs attacking Korean immigrants. Politicians blame the riots on a “culture of dependency” and, in the aftermath, enact policies gutting the social welfare system while investing heavily in prisons and policing.

Congress passes two laws—the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act (AEDPA) and the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act (IIRIRA)—that allow immigrants to be deported for minor, nonviolent crimes and previous convictions.

2000s-2010s

Thousands of Southeast Asian refugees are targeted for detention and deportation in the wake of AEDPA and IIRIRA. In Chinatowns across the country, an influx of luxury real estate development displaces many low-income residents and the businesses and institutions that serve them, triggering a housing crisis and increasing poverty for many Asian immigrants. These stories are rarely included in mainstream coverage of Asian Americans.

Chinese American NYPD officer Peter Liang kills Akai Gurley, an unarmed Black man, just a few months after the police murders of Mike Brown and Eric Garner that ignited #BlackLivesMatter protests across the country. In response to his 2016 indictment, thousands of Asian Americans rally in support of Liang , claiming he is a scapegoat for white officers who were never held accountable for similar shootings. The rallies are widely denounced as an example of the model minority myth in action—including by many Asian Americans—but pro-Liang and anti-Black sentiment remains in many Asian American communities.

Meanwhile, a small but vocal group of Asian Americans align with white conservatives seeking to end affirmative action, joining a lawsuit and filing federal complaints against Harvard University claiming their race-conscious admissions policy discriminates against Asian applicants in favor of Black and Latinx applicants.

The murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin sparks global protests and calls for abolition. Many see the role of Hmong American officer Tou Thau, who did not act to stop Chauvin, as a symbol of Asian American complicity in anti-Black violence—which then becomes a call to action for Asians to stand with Black communities against white supremacy.

Verbal and physical attacks on Asian Americans surge during the COVID-19 pandemic, fueled by political rhetoric attributing the virus to China. Amid viral videos of attacks on Asian elders and the horrific murder of eight people in two Asian massage parlors in Atlanta in March 2021, some argue that Asian Americans should protect themselves through appeals to patriotism while others say the violence shows just how little protection the model minority myth truly provides.

Resource List

If you’re reading this, you probably already know there is a mountain of literature on the model minority myth. This list of readings, archive materials, and a few other resources—arranged chronologically to follow the myth’s historical arc—is intended as a starting place to learn more. We welcome suggestions of additional resources in the comments below.

Creating “Model” and “Problem” Minorities

“How to Tell Japs from the Chinese,” LIFE Magazine , December 1941.

“Home Again. Japanese-American Farm Families Pick Up Peaceful, Industrious Lives,” The Seattle Times , April 1947.

Denaree Best, “California’s Amazing Japanese,” Saturday Evening Post , April 30, 1955.

Daniel Patrick Moynihan, “The Negro Family: The Case for National Action” (more commonly known as The Moynihan Report ), 1965.

William Petersen, “Success Story: Japanese-American Style,” The New York Times Magazine , January 9, 1966.

“Success Story of One Minority Group in the U.S.,” U.S. News & World Report , December 26, 1966.

“Success Story: Outwhiting the Whites,” Newsweek, June 21, 1971. (Reprinted in the 1972 Pacific Citizen holiday edition .)

“Japanese in U.S. Outdo Horatio Alger,” Los Angeles Times , Oct. 17, 1977.

Asian Americans Push Back against the Model Minority Myth

Amy Uyematsu, “The Emergence of Yellow Power,” Gidra Vol. 1, No. 7 (October 1969).

Frank Chin and Jeffery Paul Chan, “ Racist Love ,” in Seeing Through Shuck , ed. Richard Kostelanetz, 1972.

“Japanese Americans: Model Minority?” Pacific Citizen Vol. 103, No. 25 (December 1986)

Mari Matsuda, “ We Will Not Be Used: Are Asian-Americans the Racial Bourgeoisie? ” address to the Asian Law Caucus in 1990. (Reprinted in Where Is Your Body? And Other Essays on Race, Gender and the Law , 1997.)

Janice D. Tanaka, “When You’re Smiling: The Deadly Legacy of Internment” (film), 1999.

Satsuki Ina on the cost of the model minority myth , Densho interview with Tom Ikeda, March 14, 2019.

Nina Wallace, “ Rooted in Japanese American Concentration Camps, ‘Model Minority’ became Code for Anti-Black ,” Densho Catalyst , May 5, 2016.

OiYan Poon, “ Racial Choices: Justice or ‘Just Us’? ” TED Talk, 2019.

Viet Thanh Nguyen, “ How the Model Minority Myth of Asian Americans Hurts Us All ,” Time , June 25, 2020.

Cathy Park Hong, Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning (One World, 2021).

Tamara K. Nopper, “ Safe Asian Americans: On the carceral logic of the model minority myth ,” The Margins , May 7, 2021.

Scholarly Works on the Model Minority Myth

Bob H. Suzuki, “Education and Socialization of Asian Americans: A Revisionist Analysis of the ‘Model Minority’ Thesis.” Amerasia Journal 4.2 (1977): 23-52.

Chris Iijima. “ Reparations and the Model Minority Ideology of Acquiescence: The Necessity to Refuse the Return to Original Humiliation .” Boston College Third World Law Journal Vol. 19, No. 1 (1998).

Alice Yang Murray. Historical Memories of the Japanese American Internment and the Struggle for Redress (Stanford University Press, 2008).

Scott Kurashige, The Shifting Grounds of Race: Black and Japanese Americans in the Making of Multiethnic Los Angeles (Princeton University Press, 2010).

Kurashige, “ Model minority ,” Densho Encyclopedia .

Ellen Wu, The Color of Success: Asian Americans and the Origins of the Model Minority (Princeton University Press, 2015).

[Header: Still from Densho and TED-Ed video lesson on the model minority myth. Art by Léon Moh-Cah.]

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Discrimination Experiences Shape Most Asian Americans’ Lives

3. asian americans and the ‘model minority’ stereotype, table of contents.

• Key findings from the survey
• Most Asian Americans have been treated as foreigners in some way, no matter where they were born
• Most Asian Americans have been subjected to ‘model minority’ stereotypes, but many haven’t heard of the term
• Experiences with other daily and race-based discrimination incidents
• In their own words: Key findings from qualitative research on Asian Americans and discrimination experiences
• Discrimination in interpersonal encounters with strangers
• Racial discrimination at security checkpoints
• Encounters with police because of race or ethnicity
• Racial discrimination in the workplace
• Quality of service in restaurants and stores
• Discrimination in neighborhoods
• Experiences with name mispronunciation
• Discrimination experiences of being treated as foreigners
• In their own words: How Asian Americans would react if their friend was told to ‘go back to their home country’
• Awareness of the term ‘model minority’
• Views of the term ‘model minority’
• How knowledge of Asian American history impacts awareness and views of the ‘model minority’ label
• Most Asian Americans have experienced ‘model minority’ stereotypes
• In their own words: Asian Americans’ experiences with the ‘model minority’ stereotype
• Asian adults who personally know an Asian person who has been threatened or attacked since COVID-19
• In their own words: Asian Americans’ experiences with discrimination during the COVID-19 pandemic
• Experiences with talking about racial discrimination while growing up
• Is enough attention being paid to anti-Asian racism in the U.S.?
• Acknowledgments
• Sample design
• Data collection
• Weighting and variance estimation
• Methodology: 2021 focus groups of Asian Americans
• Appendix: Supplemental tables

In the survey, we asked Asian Americans about their views and experiences with another stereotype: Asians in the U.S. being a “model minority.” Asian adults were asked about their awareness of the label “model minority,” their views on whether the term is a good or bad thing, and their experiences with being treated in ways that reflect the stereotype.

What is the ‘model minority’ stereotype?

Amid the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s, another narrative about Asian Americans became widespread: being characterized as a “model” minority. In 1966, two articles were published in The New York Times Magazine and U.S. News and World Report that portrayed Japanese and Chinese Americans as examples of successful minorities. Additionally, in 1987 Time magazine published a cover story on “those Asian American whiz kids.” The model minority stereotype has characterized the nation’s Asian population as high-achieving economically and educationally, which has been attributed to Asians being hardworking and deferential to parental and authority figures, among other factors. The stereotype generalizes Asians in the U.S. as intelligent, well-off, and able to excel in fields such as math and science. Additionally, the model minority myth positions Asian Americans in comparison with other non-White groups such as Black and Hispanic Americans.

For many Asians living in the United States, these characterizations do not align with their lived experiences  or reflect their diverse socioeconomic backgrounds . Among Asian origin groups in the U.S., there are wide differences in economic and social experiences. Additionally, academic research has investigated how the pressures of the model minority stereotype can impact Asian Americans’ mental health and academic performance . Critics of the myth have also pointed to its impact on other racial and ethnic groups, especially Black Americans. Some argue that the myth has been used to minimize racial discrimination and justify policies that overlook the historical circumstances and impacts of colonialism, slavery and segregation on other non-White racial and ethnic groups.

More than half of Asian adults (55%) say they have not heard of the term “model minority.” Just under half (44%) say they have heard of the term.

There are some differences in awareness of the term across demographic groups:

• Ethnic origin: About half of Korean and Chinese adults say they have heard of the term, while only about one-third of Indian adults say the same.
• Nativity: 57% of U.S.-born Asian adults have heard the term “model minority,” compared with 40% of immigrants.
• Immigrant generation: Among immigrants, 60% of those who came to the U.S. as children (“1.5 generation” in this report) say they have heard of the term “model minority,” compared with 32% of those who came to the U.S. as adults (first generation). And among U.S.-born Asian Americans, those who are second generation are more likely than those who are third or higher generation to say the same (62% vs. 40%).
• Age: 56% of Asian adults under 30 say they have heard of the term, compared with fewer than half among older Asian adults.
• Party: 51% of Asian adults who identify with or lean to the Democratic Party say they’ve heard the term, compared with 34% of those who identify with or lean to the Republican Party.

Awareness of the term ‘model minority’ varies across education and income

Asian adults with higher levels of formal education and higher family income are more likely to say they have heard of the term “model minority”:

• 53% of Asian adults with a postgraduate degree say they have heard the term, compared with smaller shares of those with a bachelor’s degree or less.
• 54% of Asian adults who make $150,000 or more say they have heard the term, higher than the shares among those with lower incomes. Among Asian Americans who make less than $30,000, only 29% say they have heard of the term “model minority.”

Notably, awareness of the term is higher among those born in the U.S. than immigrants across all levels of education and income.

Among Asian adults who have heard of the term “model minority,” about four-in-ten say using it to describe Asians in the U.S. is a bad thing. Another 28% say using it is neither good nor bad, 17% say using it is a good thing, and 12% say they are not sure.

These views vary by ethnic origin, nativity, age and party. Among those who have heard of the term:

• Ethnic origin: Among Indian adults, the gap between those who say the term “model minority” is a bad thing and those who say it is a good thing (36% vs. 27%) is smaller than among other ethnic origin groups.
• Nativity: 60% of U.S.-born Asian adults say describing Asians as a model minority is a bad thing, while 9% say it is a good thing. Meanwhile, immigrants’ views of the model minority stereotype are more split (33% vs. 21%, respectively).
• Immigrant generation: Among immigrants, 43% of 1.5-generation Asian adults say using the term “model minority” is a bad thing, compared with 26% of first-generation Asian adults.
• Age: Asian adults under 30 are far more likely to say the model minority label is a bad thing than a good thing (66% vs. 8%). Meanwhile, Asian adults 65 and older are more likely to say describing Asian Americans as a model minority is a good thing (36%) than a bad thing (17%).
• Party: 52% of Asian Democrats say describing Asians as a model minority is a bad thing, about three times the share of Asian Republicans who say the same (17%). 

Among those who know the term “model minority,” views of whether using it to describe Asians in the U.S. is a good or bad thing does not vary significantly across education levels. By income, Asian adults who make less than $30,000 are somewhat less likely to say it is a bad thing than those with higher incomes. 18

Views of the ‘model minority’ label are linked to perceptions of the American dream

In the survey, we asked Asian Americans if they believe they have achieved the American dream, are on their way to achieving it, or if they believe the American dream is out of their reach. Among those who have heard of the term “model minority”:

• 54% of Asian adults who believe the American dream is out of their reach say describing Asian Americans as a model minority is a bad thing. This is higher than the shares among those who believe they are on their way to achieving (44%) or believe they have already achieved the American dream (30%).
• Meanwhile, 26% of Asian adults who believe they have achieved the American dream say the model minority label is a good thing. In comparison, 14% of those who believe they are on their way to achieving the American dream and 11% of those who believe that the American dream is out of their reach say the same.

In this survey, we asked Asian Americans how informed they are about the history of Asians in the U.S.

Whether Asian adults have heard of the model minority label is linked to their knowledge of Asian American history:

• 62% of Asian adults who are extremely or very informed of U.S. Asian history have heard of the term “model minority.”
• Smaller shares of those who are somewhat informed (44%) or a little or not at all informed (29%) about U.S. Asian history say they are aware of the term.  

However, among those who have heard of the “model minority” label, views on whether using it to describe Asian Americans is good or bad are similar regardless of how informed they are on Asian American history. About four-in-ten across knowledge levels say describing Asian Americans as a model minority is a bad thing.

The model minority stereotype often paints Asian Americans as intellectually and financially successful, deferential to authority, and competent but robotic or unemotional , especially in comparison with other racial and ethnic groups. Additionally, some stereotypes associated with the model minority characterize Asian Americans as successful in fields such as math and science, as well as lacking in creativity.

Nearly two-thirds of Asian adults (63%) say that in their day-to-day encounters with strangers, they have at least one experience in which someone assumed they are good at math and science or not a creative thinker.

Broadly, Asian adults are far more likely to say someone has assumed they are good at math and science (58%) than not a creative thinker (22%).

Across these experiences, there are some differences by demographic groups:

• Ethnic origin: 68% of Indian adults say strangers have assumed they are good at math and science, a higher share than among most other origin groups. Meanwhile, about half or fewer of Japanese (47%) and Filipino (43%) adults say people have made this assumption about them.
• Immigrant generation: About seven-in-ten Asian adults who are 1.5 generation and second generation each say people have assumed they are good at math and science, compared with 50% among the first generation and 46% among third or higher generations.
• Education: About two-thirds of Asian adults with a postgraduate degree or a bachelor’s degree say strangers have assumed they are good at math and science, compared with roughly half of those with some college experience or less. Similar shares regardless of education say people have assumed they are not a creative thinker.
• Income: 69% of those who make $150,000 or more say strangers have assumed they are good at math and science, compared with 43% of those who make less than $30,000.  
• Race: 59% of single-race Asian adults (those who identify as Asian and no other race) say someone assumed they are good at math and science, compared with 45% of Asian adults who identify with two or more races (those who identify as Asian and at least one other race).

In our 2021 focus groups of Asian Americans, participants talked about their views of and experiences with the “model minority” stereotype.

Many U.S.-born Asian participants shared how it has been harmful , with some discussing the social pressures associated with it. Others spoke about how the stereotype portrays Asians as monolithic and compares them with other racial and ethnic groups.

“You have to be polished. There’s no room for failure. There’s no room for imperfections. You have to be well-spoken, well-educated, have the right opinions, be good-looking, be tall. [You] have to have a family structure. There’s no room for any sort of freedom in identity except for the mold that you’ve been painted as – as a model citizen.”

–U.S.-born man of Pakistani origin in early 30s

“As an Asian person, I feel like there’s a stereotype that Asian students are high achievers academically. They’re good at math and science. … I was a pretty mediocre student, and math and science were actually my weakest subjects, so I feel like it’s either way you lose. Teachers expect you to fit a certain stereotype and if you’re not, then you’re a disappointment, but at the same time, even if you are good at math and science, that just means that you’re fitting a stereotype. It’s [actually] your own achievement, but your teachers might think ‘Oh, it’s because they’re Asian,’ and that diminishes your achievement.”

–U.S.-born woman of Korean origin in late 20s

“The model minority myth … mak[es] us as Asians [and] South Asians monoliths. … I’ve had people go, ‘Oh, so your dad’s a doctor? Is he a lawyer? Do you have money? Do you have this? Do you have that? Are you [in] an arranged marriage?’ And just the kind of image that portrays and gives us. But the expectations put on us as being high performing and everyone assumes you’re going to be smart. … I am a black sheep in many ways, not only within my family, but within Asian [and] South Asian culture, being [in my profession], someone who’s not a doctor, who hasn’t gone the professional, traditional, educational route. So, it’s very harmful, that too, for those communities within the Asian diaspora who have come to the United States. … [M]any of them come from impoverished and underrepresented communities and the expectations put on them to produce or the types of jobs and menial labor they have to take on as a result is really a very poisonous mythos to have out there.”

–U.S.-born woman of Indian origin in early 40s

“One of the reasons the model minority fallacy works so well as an argument against affirmative action [for Indians is] they are a newer immigrant group that has come here and … [t]here’s a lot of education [in India]. People have opportunity there that then they can come [to America] and continue with those connections. Whereas Blacks and Hispanics have had generations of oppression, so they don’t have anything to build off of. So when you bucket everybody – Black, Hispanics and Asians – into one group, then you can make those arguments of, ‘Oh, [Asians] are the model minority, they can do it.’”

Some participants talked about having mixed feelings about being called the “model minority” and how they felt like it put them in a kind of “middle ground.” 

“I feel like Asians are kind of known as the model minority. That kind of puts us in an interesting position where I feel like we’re supposed to excel and succeed in the media, or we’re seen in the media as exceeding in all these things as smart. All of us are not by any means. Yeah, I feel like we’re in this weird middle ground.”

–U.S.-born man of Chinese origin in early 20s

“A lot of people believe that Japanese are the most humble and honest people, even among other Asians. I feel like I need to live up to that. I have to try hard when people say things like that. Of course, it is good, but it’s a lot of work sometimes. As Japanese, and for my family, I try hard.”

–Immigrant man of Japanese origin in mid-40s (translated from Japanese)

Others had more positive impressions of the model minority label, saying it made them proud to be Asian and have others see them that way:

“Whenever I apply for any job, in the drop-down there is an option to choose the ethnicity, and I write Asian American proudly because everyone knows us Asians as hardworking, they recognize us as loyal and hardworking.”

–Immigrant woman of Nepalese origin in mid-40s (translated from Nepali)

“I think any model is a good thing. I mean the cognitive, the word ‘model,’ when you model after somebody it’s a positive meaning to it. So personally for me I have no issues with being called the model minority because it only tells me that I’m doing something right.”

–U.S.-born man of Hmong origin in early 40s

• Some of these groups had relatively small sample sizes. For shares of Asian adults who have heard of the term “model minority” and say using the term to describe the U.S. Asian population is a good or bad thing, by education and income, refer to the Appendix . ↩

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Asian Americans and the Model Minority Dilemma

School of Social Work Professor Hyeouk Chris Hahm says that almost 70 percent of young Asians who responded to a survey said they or their family members had been exposed to some violence or microaggression, and 15 percent said they were exposed to verbal or physical assaults. Photo by Mark Felix /AFP via Getty Images

In light of recent attacks, a BU Asian health expert on the group’s experiences of racism, alienation, and anxiety

Many Asian Americans live their daily lives with a baseline unease that most white Americans rarely experience. They feel stereotyped as a model minority—smart in math and science, but poor in sports, and rarely in need of mental health resources. 

That unease, says Hyeouk Chris Hahm , a School of Social Work professor and chair of social research, ratcheted up last year after then-President Trump branded COVID-19 “the China virus,” a repeated reference that has been blamed for a 150 percent increase in crimes against Asian Americans in 16 American cities in 2020. “We all felt it,” says Hahm, who is Korean-American. “I live in Newton, which is a nice community, but even in Newton, there were incidents. My Asian friends were yelled at: “Go back to your country!”

The March 16 shooting deaths of eight people in Atlanta, six of them Asian women, has left the Asian American and Pacific Islander communities not only grieving and fearful—but also organizing to raise awareness around the bias they live with daily, and to show unity.

Hahm’s own anxiety escalated last spring when she read that an Asian American woman had a chemical thrown at her and an Asian American girl was beaten by a group of boys in Brooklyn. It escalated further when Hahm’s son found the body of a dead animal in the family’s front yard. “I had seen on the internet something that happened to another Chinese couple,” she says. “Somebody had killed a cat and thrown the body in their yard. Immediately, I thought that’s what just happened to us. We called the police, and they came right away and called animal control. Ultimately, the conclusion was that a coyote had killed the animal, but until they came to that conclusion, my body was shaking. I’d never experienced such terror before.”

Hahm’s personal observations are reinforced by academic research. In collaboration with Cindy H. Liu , a Harvard Medical School assistant professor in psychiatry and director of the Developmental Risk and Cultural Disparities program at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. Hahm launched a study of young adults’ well-being and resilience last year. Out of 1,300 participants, she analyzed the responses of 212 Asian American young adults to find the impact of COVID-related anti-Asian discrimination on their mental health. 

“We found that among almost 70 percent of these young people, either they or their family members were exposed to some violence or microaggression,” she says. “That included people making comments about ‘the Wuhan virus,’ or people refusing to go to Chinese restaurants or Asian restaurants because of the coronavirus.” Additionally, she says, 15 percent reported that they were exposed to verbal or physical assaults, and that was at the beginning of the pandemic. “We asked respondents to write anything they want to talk about, and many people said they had PTSD-like symptoms. They said they were in fear, and some said they had been staying in their house for weeks. Now a year into the pandemic, even more Asian Americans have experienced discrimination, physical violence, and murder.”  

Hahm is a founder of the SSW Asian Women’s Action for Resilience and Empowerment (AWARE) lab. Funded by the National Institute of Mental Health, AWARE provides what Hahm describes as “culturally grounded and trauma-informed psychotherapy intervention” for Asian American women. A frequent problem, she says, is persuading Asian Americans to take advantage of resources, such as AWARE and others.

“Many Asian Americans, even though they were born in the United States, feel that there is a stigma attached to seeking help,” Hahm says. “And when they actually try to seek mental health treatment, they often find that the existing psychotherapy does not necessarily help them. That’s because it doesn’t address the ‘dual-culture’ experience of being raised in the United States, but also being influenced by Asian family and community attitudes towards mental health.”

Hahm is now developing AWARE online training courses, supported by Digital Learning & Innovation at BU, in order to teach clinicians to help Asian American women who deal with a unique set of mental health concerns, many stemming from the stereotype of Asian Americans as a model minority.

“A lot of Asian Americans worry that they would not meet the high standards as ‘model minority,’”  she says. “The common stereotype that says Asian students are great in math and science and bad in sports hurts a lot of young people. Asian students feel that they are not automatically smart; they have to work extremely hard to reach it. That creates unreasonable expectations and can cause a lot of stress.”

Hahm also sees institutional alienation of Asian Americans in the amount of research focused on their health. For the past 26 years, she says, the NIH has invested only 0.17 percent of funding altogether for clinical research for Asians, Hawaiians, and Alaskans. “That says to us that we are not worthy of attention,” she says. “We are not worthy of health improvement because we are invisible. And that goes back to the model minority issue, the belief that we don’t have problems, so why should we do research on Asian Americans or look for treatments for you?”

Hahm is convinced that the model minority stereotype can create a harmful dynamic in the broader context of other ethnic groups. It doesn’t just set Asian Americans apart from other groups, she says, it also can place them at odds with other groups.

“When the Black Lives Matter movement happened,” she says, “a lot of Asians showed their support for this movement. At the same time, Asians felt that they were not included in racial discourse conversation. Right now, for example, many people are angry about a recent surge of discrimination. They worry about the shootings of Asian women in Atlanta, which is potentially a hate crime, but there is a feeling that Asian Americans are left alone to deal with these problems.”

Hahm believes that the anxiety that many Asian Americans feel could be mitigated if Asian Americans shared a stronger group identity and felt a greater sense of solidarity and unity. “We don’t really have that,” she says. “Black people identify strongly as Black, but Asians tend not to have strong identity. A lot of Asians are not that sure where we belong. We don’t have a strong group voice.

“The bottom line,” says Hahm, “is that we are an integral part of this society. People forget that Asian Americans can be your neighbor. They are your wives, they are your husbands, or they are your best friends. We need to amplify our voices and have political visibility. We have lots of work to do.”

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There are 16 comments on Asian Americans and the Model Minority Dilemma

Thank you for this thoughtful article! I just want to share some of my experience related to being Asian and mental health.

I am a Chinese student who immigrated to the US in middle school. At that time, I lived in a rural area where I was the only Chinese, and one of very few Asian students in school. I was called racial slurs and asked if I have eaten dogs. It might seem innocent or just a curious comment to some, but to a child who have been raised with love and understanding in her homeland, I felt shocked, degraded, but couldn’t say anything at that time due to language barrier. I loved my motherland and enjoyed my time there, but those heartless comments made me feel very insecure toward myself and my cultural identify.

I have struggled with my identify since then. Even after many years now, I feel traumatized and would easily tear up thinking back about those memories. When I had a psychotic episode years ago, I hallucinated thinking I was watched by the US government, thought of as a Chinese spy, and would be killed because of so. It sounds funny, but I believe it is partly induced by US politics and media’s aversion to China or other countries US deems as its rivals.

I am sure many other Asian people share similar experiences and there are many factors that contribute to our anxiety. I think it is especially important to understand the role of politics that play in one country’s media outlets and not to trust everything from mainstream media as the only true story. Secondly, it is important to train or teach empathy to adults and (especially) children. It is powerful to imagine standing in another person’s shoes and think about how the words we are going to say or have said could make another person feel.

I moved to the US because I wanted to experience and appreciate diverse cultures. Although there are many hardships, I am glad that I have learned new perspectives and met friends that I would not have otherwise done.

Hope you have a lovely day and hope the world will become more peaceful <3

I am genuinely sorry you went through such traumas. As a white student growing up in the 1970s and 1980s I watched students of Asian origin like yourself go through the type of racist comments and attitudes you describe. I felt badly at the time and even worse when I got older: For I knew you were being treated unjustly and while I spoke up in defence of people like you at times, I should have done so much more so. Having lived my adult life in overseas in Asian nations, I am now on the “other side”, experiencing some of the racism you went through. One of the saddest things about humans is that where ever you go, the lower 30% of society “just doesn’t get it” when it comes to racism. Please know that there are many of us –from all colors– who understand what you went through and are supportive.

Thank you Eric for your supportive voice. HC Hahm

Thank you for your thoughtful comment. I was so moved by your comment. HC Hahm

Thanks for sharing your story. I had the privilege of taking a course from Doctor Hahm, and related closely to one of her studies around Asian American women and the intersecting worlds we struggle with, and how this can relate to mental health barriers for second/third generation women. It helped me see myself clearer and tell my story. Thank you for all you do.

Jen, Alaska.

Thank you so much for sharing your experience, that’s not easy to do. I’m so sorry for all of that, and I’m grateful you’ve fought through the hardships and continued to fight to engage with a culture that doesn’t always love you well. I’m glad you’re here.

As someone born in East Asia, on an originally Chinese territory, and with a family history in East Asia, I have a problem with the introduction to this article, which characterizes Asian-Americans as “a model minority—smart in math and science, but poor in sports, and rarely in need of mental health resources.” Surely, it is not that they are “poor in sports” that makes Asian-Americans a “model minority.” It is their academic strength and hard work that makes them a model, so what’s the point of putting them down by stressing a presumed weakness? This weakness is only presumed, because Asian-Americans cannot be in fact considered as “poor in sports”: think of China’s regular performance in the Olympics and the athletics of martial arts. Given the long tradition of these demanding forms of sport, native to East Asia, Asian-Americans may be less interested in the American sports, but interpreting this lack of interest as lack of ability serves only to create and perpetuate a belittling stereotype which adds to the psychological burden of dealing with the stereotype of a “model minority” which needs no consideration afforded to other minorities.

““A model minority—smart in math and science, but poor in sports, and rarely in need of mental health resources.”” In my experience, these stereotypes are held mainly by people who form assumptions based on what they see in front of them or on TV programmes, which often maintain these stereotype of different groups. “The nerdy but runty Asian kid with glasses” is a common stereotype depicted in all forms of media.

Also, in my experience, when someone has formed an opinion about you based on a behaviour that THEY have seen, regardless of how infrequently you actually act that way when you’re not with them, that’s what they’ll tell people about you and you’re kind of stuck with it in their perception.

The private citizens who hold onto these assumptions & images don’t often do their research to find out the truth. I doubt they would know that China is a powerhouse in many sports, such as diving, table tennis, badminton & weightlifting, or that South Korea dominates in archery, because they aren’t really interested in watching these sports or, the Olympics, unless it’s a sport where the US dominates.

Of course many people aren’t like this and they’re curious enough to research other countries, cultures, etc. but that also leads to another rabbit hole of stereotyping – making assumptions about those countries & cultures based on animal welfare, human rights, environmental health, etc. – instead of talking to someone from that country who will hopefully give an honest insight about their culture and the customs they practice.

Powerful article highlighting the importance for more funding of research on Asian-American health. Dr.Hahm highlighted her lab’s effort all while presenting a perspective on the situation that is very honest and humane.

Thank you so much for bringing more attention to these issues in this article. Dr. Hahm perfectly sums up a lot of the pressures and experiences I’ve had since I moved to the US. Before I was aware of important terms such as the “model minority myth” and when I had a weaker understanding of how the AAPI community was treated, I mostly dismissed my own racial and discriminatory experiences as ‘not that bad’. Most times, I didn’t even know these experiences were racially motivated. For instance, I’ve had so many random encounters where strangers would come up to me and say things such as “ni hao” or express other racial assumptions. Only after talking through these microaggression experiences with other people have finally understood how important it is to not dismiss my experiences. Why is it that random strangers are even allowed to do this? How come I still don’t know the best way to respond in instances like this?

Since the Atlanta shootings, I found myself more on edge and more cautious while walking out on the streets. Yesterday, I felt jumpier and more stressed as I went on a run, stopping maybe four times on the street to make sure that I was safe. Even before this tragedy, I was inclined to stay in more because of all the social media news on how AAPI, especially the elderly, were being attacked. It was clear that these vicious physical and verbal attacks against individuals mostly stemmed from prejudice and warped mindsets against China (ex. use of certain terms such as “Wuhan virus” by the previous administration). These violent acts need to stop now and there needs to be an increase in accountability for these perpetrators. It is not enough that social media posts are the ones looking for and identifying these individuals. We need more than empty promises in speeches given by individuals in power. As Dr. Hahm emphasizes, we are not invisible despite the barriers placed against us. We are integral members of society and now is the time to fight for our place and rights and fight against racial rhetorics.

I am also very appreciative of everyone’s responses here in the comment section. Thank you all for sharing your experiences and/or showing your support for this important conversation for the AAPI community.

Thank you so much for sharing this story, it’s so important to highlight the struggles that Asians and Asian Americans are facing particularly during this time. I’ve particularly felt anxious during this time and am extremely grateful that people like Dr. Hahm are investing their time and effort to expose the model minority stereotype and uplift the community. It’s extremely important for us as Asian Americans to be able to seek mental health support and receive culturally specific treatment.

A very important article that everyone should take time to read. It is time for the AAPI community to stop being ignored, and for resources to be allocated to decrease health disparities within the community.

Thank you so much for shedding light on these important issues regarding violence, stereotyping, and lack of awareness in regards to Asian-American discrimination and alienation in American society. It is incredibly frustrating that as a society, we appropriate Asian culture, including yoga, food, matcha, etc yet are unable to defend and protect Asian/Asian American lives and well-being. It is incredibly frustrating that the awful recent acts of violence against Asians/Asian Americans, including the shooting in Atlanta, is what has woken up America to the hardships and struggles of Asians/Asian Americans. On a more optimistic side, however, people are finally awake. They are demonstrating and spreading the word on social media and finally fighting for the lives of those they had once neglected. I hope this continues and action, not just words ensues.

Thank you Dr. Hahm for sharing. It is so important for us all to hear.

The racist attacks and murders of the six Asian women in Atlanta were horrifying. Unbelievably heartbreaking. My heart hurts for these women and their families: Xiaojie Tan; Daoyou Feng; Soon C. Park; Hyun J. Grant; Suncha Kim; and Yong A. Yue. Their murders are the result of a centuries long history of racism in our country, escalated by recent rise in anti-Asian rhetoric and discrimination.

I have had the privilege of working with Dr. Hahm this spring to work on AWARE 2.0. Especially in my own positionality as a white woman, with all of the privilege that entails, it has been an absolutely important experience for me. I have learned so much through this work- about the model minority myth, the impacts of racism in the context of COVID-19 on Asian American young women’s mental health, the lack of funding for interventions for people of Asian descent, etc.

As a white person, I can say that we white folks have a responsibility to call out and stop anti-Asian racism. The fight for racial justice is one that we white folks need to participate in, and this can happen in any field. For example- in the field of social work, we can ask: how is racism showing up in our field? Underfunding of interventions is one place: more resources from the National Mental Institute of Health need to be devoted to studying interventions like AWARE (invest money!!!). And we need to call out racism when we see it among our colleagues, clients, in our institutions and government.

I am proud to work with you and proud to know you Dr. Hahm, and I am so happy you are at the BUSSW. The program and your students are so much better for it.

In solidarity, Chloe

What is the ‘dilemma’ here?? A dilemma refers to a tough choice. The title of this article seems to play into the idea that Asians might want to uphold the MM myth, instead of busting it, because of its “positive aspects.” As a Chinese American woman, I’m tired of giving people the chance to continue this harmful myth.

Bias can be found on all sides and can come in many forms, sometimes overt and sometimes subtle – some Asian friends and family have told me I am “too white” and were critical of my choice to marry a white man. They call me “Oreo” as in brown on the outside and white on the inside. Funny? well, I never laugh.

And some white friends and extended family still think of me as “other”, as different from them, not just having different customs but truly different in a deep and fundamental way. I used to get a lot of “you speak such good English” but haven’t heard that in a long time, thankfully.

My mixed-race kids are always asked “where are you from?” (they always answer “Boston” – which I love). I believe that bias is a learned behavior and that makes me optimistic that unbiased behaviors can also be learned. Lots of work to be done, and I am glad these conversations are happening. Peace and love.

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What Is the Model Minority Myth?

Cynthia Vinney, PhD is an expert in media psychology and a published scholar whose work has been published in peer-reviewed psychology journals.

Ivy Kwong, LMFT, is a psychotherapist specializing in relationships, love and intimacy, trauma and codependency, and AAPI mental health.  

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• Implications
• Unlearning the Myth

The model minority myth is most often used in reference to Asian Americans, not Pacific Islanders, who have suffered and continue to struggle with negative stereotypes towards their community and the USA's colonization of the Hawaiian islands.

The model minority myth stereotypes all Asian Americans as intelligent, hard-working, and diligent and therefore more academically, socially, and economically successful than other minorities. It is a problematic and harmful belief that pits people of color against each other and drives a wedge between marginalized groups.

Despite its positive implications, the model minority myth only serves to perpetuate stereotypes and has a number of troubling consequences, including negatively impacting the mental health of Asian Americans and driving a racial wedge between marginalized populations.

This article will explore the implications of the model minority myth, summarize its history, and discuss its impacts on Asian Americans and other minority groups. Finally, it will recommend ways to avoid the pitfalls of the model minority myth.

History: Where Does the Model Minority Myth Come From?

Asian Americans weren’t always viewed through the lens of the model minority myth, but they have always encountered racism and discrimination in the United States.

In the 1850s when a significant number of Chinese immigrants first started arriving in America to escape economic instability and lack of food and opportunities due to wars, they were exploited for cheap labor and given the most dangerous work while being discriminated against, attacked, and even murdered during the Rock Springs Massacre in Rock Springs, Wyoming where 150 White miners attacked their Chinese coworkers and killed 28, wounded 15, and forced hundreds of others to flee, leaving their homes and possessions behind.

Common stereotypes the Asian American community had—and continue—to endure over the course of American history include:

• Dirty and "full of filth and disease"
• Lazy and uneducated
• Inferior and "marginal members of the human race"
• Illiterate and undesirable
• Exotic, hypersexual, and submissive

Due to White Americans’ racism, stereotypes about, and suspicion of Asian Americans, laws were passed limiting Asian immigration and naturalization.

The Effect of the Japanese Attack on Pearl Harbor

Racism, hatred, and suspicion of Asian Americans were targeted toward Japanese Americans when Japan attacked Pearl Harbor in 1941, leading the U.S. government to incarcerate thousands of innocent Japanese Americans. Half of these Japanese Americans were children and forced into internment camps surrounded by barbed wire and armed guards for up to four years.

The U.S. Eventually Changes Its Attitude Toward the Asian Community

As the U.S. began lifting exclusions on Asian immigration for strategic and political purposes, rampant discrimination and racism against Asian American continued.

Who Coined the Term 'Model Minority?'

In a 1966 New York Times article titled "Success Story, Japanese-American Style," White sociologist William Petersen first used the term “model minority” while praising Japanese Americans for "enduring the most discrimination and worst injustices" and achieving great success in America "by their own almost totally unaided effort." Petersen attributed this success to strong work ethic, family values, and respect for authority and he wrote about the lack of these same traits in African-Americans.

Petersen argued these cultural values prevented Asian Americans from becoming a "problem minority," implying other people of color were problematic. This racist article saturated with damaging stereotypes puts Whites at the top of a hierarchy and people of color beneath them, fighting for closeness to proximity in a system of white supremacy. This article drove a racial wedge between Asian and Black Americans that are in a continued process of healing for both communities to repair to this day.

Implications of the Model Minority Myth

The model minority myth is an example of a positive stereotype, a stereotype that attributes desirable traits to a group. Although it may be a positive stereotype, its impact is harmful towards the mental health of the diverse Asian American community and in relation to other communities of color.

Assuming Asian Americans are smart, successful, law-abiding, and hard-working may seem like a good thing because these are traits many of us would like to have. However, the reality is that this positive stereotype can lead to problems both for Asian Americans, who face unfair expectations because of the model minority myth and for other racial minorities who face unfavorable comparisons to Asian Americans.

What the Model Minority Myth Assumes

Implicit in the model minority myth are two assumptions:

• It proposes that Asian Americans are more successful than other minorities : This suggestion elevates Asian Americans in a hierarchical system that puts whiteness at the top while negatively stereotyping other minorities.
• It implies that Asian Americans’ success is based on their own efforts : This suggests that if someone works hard enough, anyone can be successful in America, and by extension, it's the individual's fault if they haven't managed to achieve success. This belief does not consider the impact of systemic oppression and inequality and systemic and structural racism.

The Model Minority Myth Ignores Diversity Within the AAPI Community

The assumptions listed above disregard the vast diversity within the Asian American community, a population that traces its roots to over 50 countries, and the unique history of different Asian ethnicities in the United States. The model minority myth also limits Asian Americans to being perpetual foreigners, is harmful to the struggle for racial justice, and minimizes or outright ignores racism against Asian Americans which is especially concerning assumption at a time when there is a surge in hate crimes against Asian Americans .

Impact of the Model Minority Myth

While the idea of the model minority took hold over 50 years ago, it's only recently that the consequences of this stereotype are becoming better understood. Some of the impacts are discussed below.

Encouraging Intergroup Rivalry

From the moment Asian Americans were held up as the model minority, their success was contrasted to that of African Americans .

Studies have shown that even today, the model minority myth is used to negatively compare other racial minorities to Asian Americans. The myth has resulted in increased positive perceptions and expectations of Asian Americans while degrading Black Americans. This is highly problematic and can lead to bias, conflict, suspicion, and harm between the two groups that are pitted against each other by white supremacy.

A Justification for Social Inequality

The model minority myth has also been used to justify social inequality. If, as the myth suggests, Asian Americans were able to succeed with minimal help and without fighting for their civil rights, that means the individual is to blame for not attaining success regardless of their race or ethnicity. This is used as evidence to deny or downplay the impact of racism and discrimination on people of color in the United States and perpetuates anti-Blackness.

The idea that success is achieved through individual effort perpetuates the notion that America is a meritocracy. This has been used as an excuse to ignore the impacts of racism and systemic oppression and deny social services and assistance to racial minorities and marginalized groups of all kinds.

Asian Americans Are, Consequently, Treated as a Monolith

The model minority myth has led to the assumption that Asian Americans are a monolith. In other words, people assume that all Asian are the same. It's believed that all Asians are successful and well-off, a notion that ignores the notable disparities in income, employment rates, and educational attainment among Asian Americans.

For example, while it's been shown that Asian Americans as a whole are more likely to be college-educated than other racial minorities, the data tells a different story if it’s separated by Asian subgroups, revealing that while 70% of Indian Americans have a bachelor’s degree or higher, only 26% of Vietnamese Americans, 18% of Hmong and Laotian Americans, and 16% of Cambodian Americans do.

The stereotype and expectation of Asian American success has resulted in increased depression and suicide amongst Asian American youth and failure for Asian American communities in need to receive acknowledgement, support, and resources, including help to counteract institutional racism at school, work, and public services.

Moreover, the idea that Asian Americans are a monolith has led to a lack of research investigating the individual differences within this diverse population. This may contribute to poorer health outcomes for Asian Americans as healthcare professionals overgeneralize, adhere to stereotypes, and maintain unconscious biases about Asian American patients.

Negative Effects on Asian Americans’ Mental Health

The model minority myth can also lead to mental health challenges because it places unrealistic expectations on Asian Americans to live up to the stereotype.

For instance, one study showed that when Asian Americans internalize the model minority myth it can lead to increased depression , anxiety , and suicidality.

Similarly, another study demonstrated that the model minority myth can lead to imposter feelings and psychological distress when Asian Americans struggle with concerns that they can't fulfill the stereotype. These feelings can be further enhanced by interpersonal shame .

High Suicide Rate Among Asian Americans

Suicide was the leading cause of death for Asian American young adults between the ages of 20 and 24, especially Asian American women . In addition, across all racial groups, Asian Americans have the highest suicide rate among women 65 and older. It’s an issue that can at least partially be attributed to the pressures of the model minority myth, in particular, the unbearable stress created by the myth and the tendency to blame oneself when one doesn’t succeed.

If you are having suicidal thoughts, contact the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 988 for support and assistance from a trained counselor. If you or a loved one are in immediate danger, call 911.

For more mental health resources, see our National Helpline Database .

Lower Likelihood of Asian Americans to Seek Help

Even though the high expectations created by the model minority myth can lead to mental health issues for Asian Americans, this population is the least likely of all racial groups to seek out mental health services .

Ironically, the model minority myth often plays a role in preventing Asian Americans from getting the help they need. One study found that internalizing the model minority myth predicted less favorable attitudes to help-seeking in Asian American college students. As a result, Asian Americans tend to have more severe symptoms if they finally do go to see a mental health professional.

How You Can Unlearn the Model Minority Myth Stereotype

Although the model minority myth continues to stereotype Asian Americans and harm the fight for racial equality, there are things that can be done to resist and dismantle this stereotype:

• Be mindful of what you assume about Asian Americans and notice when stereotypes or assumptions arise about a member or members of this group.
• Reflect on the source of your impulse. Question, be curious about, and challenge your assumptions and expectations. It's possible you may have internalized this stereotype and you can be intentional about shifting it. This applies to both non-Asians and Asian Americans who may have internalized this stereotype about themselves as well.
• Practice recognizing and releasing stereotypes so that you can get to know the unique qualities, culture, experiences, and needs of the individual.
• Take time to learn more about the history of Asian Americans and writing by Asian American writers who share the traumatic impact of racism and the model minority myth through their stories and lived experiences.
• Diversify your social media feeds to include Asian American content creators.

A Word From Verywell

While it may be uncomfortable to acknowledge your own internalized stereotypes or racism, it is a courageous and necessary step in unlearning and perpetuating harmful stereotypes about the Asian American community and other communities of color. With discomfort comes growth and understanding.

If you belong to the Asian American community, know you are deserving of advocacy, acknowledgment of your true lived experience, systemic change, and mental health support. If you are having a difficult time dealing with racism or racial trauma, consider seeing support with a mental health professional .

In your search for a therapist, it is important to ensure that they are culturally sensitive to be able to understand, serve, and respond to the unique challenges the Asian American community face. Finding a therapist who has this knowledge and experience can relieve much of the emotional labor that a client would endure having to explain what it's like to live in the United States as an Asian American. May we all continue to learn, unlearn, heal, grow, and thrive, together.

Blakemore E. The Asian American ‘model minority’ myth masks a history of discrimination .  National Geographic . 2021.

Pettersen W. Success Story, Japanese-American Style . The New York Times . January 9, 1966.

Kim D. Too Well-Off to Seek Help?: The Model Minority Myth of Asian Americans .  Anxiety & Depression Association of America . 2021.

Yoo HC, Burrola KS, Steger MF. A preliminary report on a new measure: Internalization of the Model Minority Myth Measure (IM-4) and its psychological correlates among Asian American college students .  J Couns Psychol . 2010;57(1):114-127. doi:10.1037/a0017871

Chao MM, Chiu C, Chan W, Mendoza-Denton R, Kwok C. The model minority as a shared reality and its implication for interracial perceptions .  Asian Am J Psychol . 2013;4(2):84-92. doi:10.1037/a0028769

Yi SS, Kwon SC, Sacks R, Trinh-Shevrin C. Commentary: Persistence and Health-Related Consequences of the Model Minority Stereotype for Asian Americans .  Ethn Dis . 2016;26(1):133-138. doi:10.18865/ed.26.1.133

National Center for Education Statistics. Indicator 27 snapshot: attainment of a bachelor’s or higher degree for racial/ethnic subgroups . 

Ðoàn LN, Takata Y, Sakuma KK, Irvin VL. Trends in Clinical Research Including Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander Participants Funded by the US National Institutes of Health, 1992 to 2018 .  JAMA Netw Open . 2019;2(7). doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2019.7432

Atkin AL, Yoo HC, Jager J, Yeh CJ. Internalization of the model minority myth, school racial composition, and psychological distress among Asian American adolescents .  Asian Am J Psychol . 2018;9(2):108-116. doi:10.1037/aap0000096

Wei M, Liu S, Ko SY, Wang C, Du Y. Impostor Feelings and Psychological Distress Among Asian Americans: Interpersonal Shame and Self-Compassion .  Couns Psychol . 2020;48(3):432-458. doi:10.1177/0011000019891992

Shih KY, Chang T, Chen S. Impacts of the Model Minority Myth on Asian American Individuals and Families: Social Justice and Critical Race Feminist Perspectives .  J Fam Theory Rev . 2019;11(3):412-428. doi:10.1111/jftr.12342

Kim PY, Lee D. Internalized model minority myth, Asian values, and help-seeking attitudes among Asian American students .  Cultural Diversity and Ethnic Minority Psychology . 2014;20(1):98-106. doi:10.1037/a0033351

By Cynthia Vinney, PhD Cynthia Vinney, PhD is an expert in media psychology and a published scholar whose work has been published in peer-reviewed psychology journals.

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'Model Minority' Myth Again Used As A Racial Wedge Between Asians And Blacks

The perception of universal success among Asian-Americans is being wielded to downplay racism's role in the persistent struggles of other minority groups, especially black Americans. Chelsea Beck/NPR hide caption

The perception of universal success among Asian-Americans is being wielded to downplay racism's role in the persistent struggles of other minority groups, especially black Americans.

A piece from New York Magazine's Andrew Sullivan over the weekend ended with an old, well-worn trope: Asian-Americans, with their "solid two-parent family structures," are a shining example of how to overcome discrimination. An essay that began by imagining why Democrats feel sorry for Hillary Clinton — and then detoured to President Trump's policies — drifted to this troubling ending:

"Today, Asian-Americans are among the most prosperous, well-educated, and successful ethnic groups in America. What gives? It couldn't possibly be that they maintained solid two-parent family structures, had social networks that looked after one another, placed enormous emphasis on education and hard work, and thereby turned false, negative stereotypes into true, positive ones, could it? It couldn't be that all whites are not racists or that the American dream still lives?"

Sullivan's piece, rife with generalizations about a group as vastly diverse as Asian-Americans, rightfully raised hackles. Not only inaccurate, his piece spreads the idea that Asian-Americans as a group are monolithic, even though parsing data by ethnicity reveals a host of disparities; for example, Bhutanese-Americans have far higher rates of poverty than other Asian populations, like Japanese-Americans. And at the root of Sullivan's pernicious argument is the idea that black failure and Asian success cannot be explained by inequities and racism, and that they are one and the same; this allows a segment of white America to avoid any responsibility for addressing racism or the damage it continues to inflict.

"Sullivan's comments showcase a classic and tenacious conservative strategy," Janelle Wong, the director of Asian American Studies at the University of Maryland, College Park, said in an email. This strategy, she said, involves "1) ignoring the role that selective recruitment of highly educated Asian immigrants has played in Asian American success followed by 2) making a flawed comparison between Asian Americans and other groups, particularly Black Americans, to argue that racism, including more than two centuries of black enslavement, can be overcome by hard work and strong family values."

"It's like the Energizer Bunny," said Ellen D. Wu, an Asian-American studies professor at Indiana University and the author of The Color of Success . Much of Wu's work focuses on dispelling the "model minority" myth, and she's been tasked repeatedly with publicly refuting arguments like Sullivan's, which, she said, are incessant. "The thing about the Sullivan piece is that it's such an old-fashioned rendering. It's very retro in the kinds of points he made."

Since the end of World War II, many white people have used Asian-Americans and their perceived collective success as a racial wedge. The effect? Minimizing the role racism plays in the persistent struggles of other racial/ethnic minority groups — especially black Americans.

On Twitter, people took Sullivan's "old-fashioned rendering" to task.

4. Importantly: Elevating Asian Americans as "deserving" and "hardworking" was a tactic to denigrate African Americans — Jeff Guo (@_jeffguo) April 15, 2017

"During World War II, the media created the idea that the Japanese were rising up out of the ashes [after being held in incarceration camps] and proving that they had the right cultural stuff," said Claire Jean Kim, a professor at the University of California, Irvine. "And it was immediately a reflection on black people: Now why weren't black people making it, but Asians were?"

These arguments falsely conflate anti-Asian racism with anti-black racism, according to Kim. "Racism that Asian-Americans have experienced is not what black people have experienced," Kim said. "Sullivan is right that Asians have faced various forms of discrimination, but never the systematic dehumanization that black people have faced during slavery and continue to face today." Asians have been barred from entering the U.S. and gaining citizenship and have been sent to incarceration camps, Kim pointed out, but all that is different than the segregation, police brutality and discrimination that African-Americans have endured.

Many scholars have argued that some Asians only started to "make it" when the discrimination against them lessened — and only when it was politically convenient. Amid worries that the Chinese exclusion laws from the late 1800s would hurt an allyship with China in the war against imperial Japan, the Magnuson Act was signed in 1943, allowing 105 Chinese immigrants into the U.S. each year. As Wu wrote in 2014 in the Los Angeles Times , the Citizens Committee to Repeal Chinese Exclusion "strategically recast Chinese in its promotional materials as 'law-abiding, peace-loving, courteous people living quietly among us'" instead of the "'yellow peril' coolie hordes." In 1965, the National Immigration Act replaced the national-origins quota system with one that gave preference to immigrants with U.S. family relationships and certain skills.

In 1966, William Petersen, a sociologist at the University of California, Berkeley, helped popularize comparisons between Japanese-Americans and African-Americans. His New York Times story, headlined, "Success Story, Japanese-American Style," is regarded as one of the most influential pieces written about Asian-Americans. It solidified a prevailing stereotype of Asians as industrious and rule-abiding that would stand in direct contrast to African-Americans, who were still struggling against bigotry, poverty and a history rooted in slavery. In the opening paragraphs, Petersen quickly puts African-Americans and Japanese-Americans at odds:

"Asked which of the country's ethnic minorities has been subjected to the most discrimination and the worst injustices, very few persons would even think of answering: 'The Japanese Americans,' ... Yet, if the question refers to persons alive today, that may well be the correct reply. Like the Negroes, the Japanese have been the object of color prejudice .... When new opportunities, even equal opportunities, are opened up, the minority's reaction to them is likely to be negative — either self-defeating apathy or a hatred so all-consuming as to be self-destructive. For the well-meaning programs and countless scholarly studies now focused on the Negro, we barely know how to repair the damage that the slave traders started. The history of Japanese Americans, however, challenges every such generalization about ethnic minorities."

But as history shows, Asian-Americans were afforded better jobs not simply because of educational attainment, but in part because they were treated better.

"More education will help close racial wage gaps somewhat, but it will not resolve problems of denied opportunity," reporter Jeff Guo wrote last fall in the Washington Post . "Asian Americans — some of them at least — have made tremendous progress in the United States. But the greatest thing that ever happened to them wasn't that they studied hard, or that they benefited from tiger moms or Confucian values . It's that other Americans started treating them with a little more respect."

At the heart of arguments of racial advancement is the concept of "racial resentment," which is different than "racism," Slate's Jamelle Bouie recently wrote in his analysis of the Sullivan article. "Racial resentment" refers to a "moral feeling that blacks violate such traditional American values as individualism and self reliance," as defined by political scientists Donald Kinder and David Sears.

And, Bouie points out, "racial resentment" is simply a tool that people use to absolve themselves from dealing with the complexities of racism:

"In fact, racial resentment reflects a tension between the egalitarian self-image of most white Americans and that anti-black affect. The 'racist,' after all, is a figure of stigma. Few people want to be one, even as they're inclined to believe the measurable disadvantages blacks face are caused by something other than structural racism. Framing blacks as deficient and pathological rather than inferior offers a path out for those caught in that mental maze."

Petersen's, and now Sullivan's, arguments have resurfaced regularly throughout the last century. And they'll likely keep resurfacing, as long as people keep seeking ways to forgo responsibility for racism — and to escape that "mental maze." As the writer Frank Chin said of Asian-Americans in 1974 : "Whites love us because we're not black."

Sometimes it's instructive to look at past rebuttals to tired arguments — after all, they hold up much better in the light of history.

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Asian Americans Are Still Caught in the Trap of the ‘Model Minority’ Stereotype. And It Creates Inequality for All

T he face of Tou Thao haunts me. The Hmong-American police officer stood with his back turned to Derek Chauvin, his partner, as Chauvin knelt on George Floyd’s neck for 8 minutes and 46 seconds and murdered him.

In the video that I saw, Tou Thao is in the foreground and Chauvin is partly visible in the background, George Floyd’s head pressed to the ground. Bystanders beg Tou Thao to do something, because George Floyd was not moving, and as he himself said, he could not breathe.

The face of Tou Thao is like mine and not like mine, although the face of George Floyd is like mine and not like mine too. Racism makes us focus on the differences in our faces rather than our similarities, and in the alchemical experiment of the U.S., racial difference mixes with labor exploitation to produce an explosive mix of profit and atrocity. In response to endemic American racism, those of us who have been racially stigmatized cohere around our racial difference. We take what white people hate about us, and we convert stigmata into pride, community and power. So it is that Tou Thao and I are “Asian Americans,” because we are both “Asian,” which is better than being an “Oriental” or a “gook.” If being an Oriental gets us mocked and being a gook can get us killed, being an Asian American might save us. Our strength in numbers, in solidarity across our many differences of language, ethnicity, culture, religion, national ancestry and more, is the basis of being Asian American.

But in another reality, Tou Thao is Hmong and I am Vietnamese. He was a police officer and I am a professor. Does our being Asian bring us together across these ethnic and class divides? Does our being Southeast Asian, both our communities brought here by an American war in our countries, mean we see the world in the same way? Did Tou Thao experience the anti-Asian racism that makes us all Asian, whether we want to be or not?

Let me go back in time to a time being repeated today. Even if I no longer remember how old I was when I saw these words, I have never forgotten them: Another American driven out of business by the Vietnamese. Perhaps I was 12 or 13. It was the early 1980s, and someone had written them on a sign in a store window not far from my parents’ store. The sign confused me, for while I had been born in Vietnam, I had grown up in Pennsylvania and California, and had absorbed all kinds of Americana: the Mayflower and the Pilgrims; cowboys and Indians; Audie Murphy and John Wayne; George Washington and Betsy Ross; the Pledge of Allegiance; the Declaration of Independence; the guarantee of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness; all the fantasy and folklore of the American Dream.

Part of that dream was being against communism and for capitalism, which suited my parents perfectly. They had been born poor to rural families, and without much formal schooling and using only their ingenuity and hard work, had become successful merchants. They fled communist Vietnam in 1975, after losing all of their property and most of their fortune. What they carried with them–including some gold and money sewn into the hems of their clothes–they used to buy a house next to the freeway in San Jose and to open the second Vietnamese grocery store there, in 1978. In a burst of optimism and nostalgia, they named their store the New Saigon.

I am now older than my parents were when they had to begin their lives anew in this country, with only a little English. What they did looms in my memory as a nearly unimaginable feat. In the age of coronavirus, I am uncertain how to sew a mask and worry about shopping for groceries. Survivors of war, my parents fought to live again as aliens in a strange land, learning to read mortgage documents in another language, enrolling my brother and me in school, taking driver’s-license examinations. But there was no manual telling them how to buy a store that was not advertised as for sale. They called strangers and navigated bureaucracy in order to find the owners and persuade them to sell, all while suffering from the trauma of having lost their country and leaving almost all their relatives behind. By the time my parents bought the store, my mother’s mother had died in Vietnam. The news nearly broke her.

Somehow the person who wrote this sign saw people like my mother and my father as less than human, as an enemy. This is why I am not surprised by the rising tide of anti-Asian racism in this country. Sickened, yes, to hear of a woman splashed with acid on her doorstep; a man and his son slashed by a knife-wielding assailant at a Sam’s Club; numerous people being called the “Chinese virus” or the “chink virus” or told to go to China, even if they are not of Chinese descent; people being spat on for being Asian; people afraid to leave their homes, not only because of the pandemic but also out of fear of being verbally or physically assaulted, or just looked at askance. Cataloging these incidents, the poet and essayist Cathy Park Hong wrote, “We don’t have coronavirus. We are coronavirus.”

Looking back, I can remember the low-level racism of my youth, the stupid jokes told by my Catholic-school classmates, like “Is your last name Nam?” and “Did you carry an AK-47 in the war?” as well as more obscene ones. I wonder: Did Tou Thao hear these kinds of jokes in Minnesota? What did he think of Fong Lee, Hmong American, 19 years old, shot eight times, four in the back, by Minneapolis police officer Jason Andersen in 2006? Andersen was acquitted by an all-white jury.

Confronted with anti-Asian racism from white people, the Hmong who came to the U.S. as refugees in the 1970s and 1980s were often resettled in diverse urban areas, some in dominantly Black communities where they also confronted racism. “Stories abounded within our community of battery, robberies and intimidations by our Black neighbors,” Yia Vue wrote recently. “Hmong people live side by side with their African-American neighbors in poorer sections of town, with generations of misunderstanding and stereotypes still strongly entrenched on both sides.” Yet when Fong Lee was killed, Black activists rallied to his cause. “They were the loudest voices for us,” Lee’s sister Shoua said. “They didn’t ask to show up. They just showed up.”

Unlike the engineers and doctors who mostly came from Hong Kong, Taiwan, China and India–the model minority in the American imagination–many Hmong refugees arrived from a rural life in Laos devastated by war. Traumatized, they were resettled into the midst of poverty and a complicated history of racial oppression of which they had little awareness. Even the Hmong who condemn Tou Thao and argue for solidarity with Black Lives Matter insist that they should not be seen through the lens of the model-minority experience, should not be subject to liberal Asian-American guilt and hand-wringing over Tou Thao as a symbol of complicity. Christian minister Ashley Gaozong Bauer, of Hmong descent, writes, “We’ve had to share in the collective shame of the model minority, but when have Asian Americans shared in the pain and suffering of the Hmong refugee narrative and threats of deportation?”

Like the Hmong, the Vietnamese like myself suffered from war, and some are threatened by deportation now. Unlike many of the Hmong, a good number of Vietnamese refugees became, deliberately or otherwise, a part of the model minority, including myself. The low-level racism I experienced happened in elite environments. By the time I entered my mostly white, exclusive, private high school, the message was clear to me and the few of us who were of Asian descent. Most of us gathered every day in a corner of the campus and called ourselves, with a laugh, or maybe a wince, “the Asian invasion.” But if that was a joke we made at our own expense, it was also a prophecy, for when I returned to campus a couple of years ago to give a lecture on race to the assembled student body, some 1,600 young men, I realized that if we had not quite taken over, there were many more of us almost 30 years later. No longer the threat of the Asian invasion, we were, instead, the model minority: the desirable classmate, the favored neighbor, the nonthreatening kind of person of color.

Or were we? A couple of Asian-American students talked to me afterward and said they still felt it. The vibe. The feeling of being foreign, especially if they were, or were perceived to be, Muslim, or brown, or Middle Eastern. The vibe. Racism is not just the physical assault. I have never been physically assaulted because of my appearance. But I had been assaulted by the racism of the airwaves, the ching-chong jokes of radio shock jocks, the villainous or comical japs and chinks and gooks of American war movies and comedies. Like many Asian Americans, I learned to feel a sense of shame over the things that supposedly made us foreign: our food, our language, our haircuts, our fashion, our smell, our parents.

What made these sentiments worse, Hong argues, was that we told ourselves these were “minor feelings.” How could we have anything valid to feel or say about race when we, as a model minority, were supposedly accepted by American society? At the same time, anti-Asian sentiment remained a reservoir of major feeling from which Americans could always draw in a time of crisis. Asian Americans still do not wield enough political power, or have enough cultural presence, to make many of our fellow Americans hesitate in deploying a racist idea. Our unimportance and our historical status as the perpetual foreigner in the U.S. is one reason the President and many others feel they can call COVID-19 the “Chinese virus” or the “kung flu.”

The basis of anti-Asian racism is that Asians belong in Asia, no matter how many generations we have actually lived in non-Asian countries, or what we might have done to prove our belonging to non-Asian countries if we were not born there. Pointing the finger at Asians in Asia, or Asians in non-Asian countries, has been a tried and true method of racism for a long time; in the U.S., it dates from the 19th century.

It was then that the U.S. imported thousands of Chinese workers to build the transcontinental railroad. When their usefulness was over, American politicians, journalists and business leaders demonized them racially to appease white workers who felt threatened by Chinese competition. The result was white mobs lynching Chinese migrants, driving them en masse out of towns and burning down Chinatowns. The climax of anti-Chinese feeling was the passage of the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act, the first racially discriminatory immigration law in American history, which would turn Chinese entering the U.S. into the nation’s first illegal immigrant population. The Immigration and Naturalization Service was created, policing Chinese immigration and identifying Chinese who had come into the U.S. as “paper sons,” who claimed a fictive relation to the Chinese who had already managed to come into the country. As the political scientist Janelle Wong tells me, while “European immigrants were confronted with widespread hostility, they never faced the kind of legal racial restrictions on immigration and naturalization that Asian Americans experienced.”

American history has been marked by the cycle of big businesses relying on cheap Asian labor, which threatened the white working class, whose fears were stoked by race-baiting politicians and media, leading to catastrophic events like the Chinese Exclusion Act and the internment of Japanese Americans in 1942. The person who wrote that sign I remember seeing as a child, blaming the Vietnamese for destroying American businesses, was simply telling a story about the yellow peril that was always available for fearful Americans.

The reality was that downtown San Jose in the 1970s and 1980s was shabby, a run-down place where almost no one wanted to open new businesses, except for Vietnamese refugees. Today, Americans rely on China and other Asian countries for cheap commodities that help Americans live the American Dream, then turn around and blame the Chinese for the loss of American jobs or the rise of American vulnerability to economic competition.

It is easier to blame a foreign country or a minority, or even politicians who negotiate trade agreements, than to identify the real power: corporations and economic elites who shift jobs, maximize profit at the expense of workers and care nothing for working Americans. To acknowledge this reality is far too disturbing for many Americans, who resort to blaming Asians as a simpler answer. Asian Americans have not forgotten this anti-Asian history, and yet many have hoped that it was behind them. The slur of the “Chinese virus” has revealed how fragile our acceptance and inclusion was.

In the face of renewed attacks on our American belonging, the former presidential candidate Andrew Yang offered this solution: “We Asian Americans need to embrace and show our Americanness in ways we never have before … We should show without a shadow of a doubt that we are Americans who will do our part for our country in this time of need.” Many Asian Americans took offense at his call, which seemed to apologize for our Asian-American existence. Yang’s critics pointed out that Asian Americans have literally wrapped themselves in the American flag in times of anti-Asian crisis; have donated to white neighbors and fellow citizens in emergencies; and died for this country fighting in its wars. And is there anything more American than joining the police? Did Tou Thao think he was proving his belonging by becoming a cop?

None of these efforts have prevented the stubborn persistence of anti-Asian racism. Calling for more sacrifices simply reiterates the sense that Asian Americans are not American and must constantly prove an Americanness that should not need to be proven. Japanese Americans had to prove their Americanness during World War II by fighting against Germans and Japanese while their families were incarcerated, but German and Italian Americans never had to prove their Americanness to the same extent. German and Italian Americans were selectively imprisoned for suspected or actual disloyalty, while Japanese Americans were incarcerated en masse, their race marking them as un-American.

Asian Americans are caught between the perception that we are inevitably foreign and the temptation that we can be allied with white people in a country built on white supremacy. As a result, anti-Black (and anti-brown and anti-Native) racism runs deep in Asian-American communities. Immigrants and refugees, including Asian ones, know that we usually have to start low on the ladder of American success. But no matter how low down we are, we know that America allows us to stand on the shoulders of Black, brown and Native people. Throughout Asian-American history, Asian immigrants and their descendants have been offered the opportunity by both Black people and white people to choose sides in the Black-white racial divide, and we have far too often chosen the white side. Asian Americans, while actively critical of anti-Asian racism, have not always stood up against anti-Black racism. Frequently, we have gone along with the status quo and affiliated with white people.

And yet there have been vocal Asian Americans who have called for solidarity with Black people and other people of color, from the activist Yuri Kochiyama, who cradled a dying Malcolm X, to the activist Grace Lee Boggs, who settled in Detroit and engaged in serious, radical organizing and theorizing with her Black husband James Boggs. Kochiyama and Lee Boggs were far from the only Asian Americans who argued that Asian Americans should not stand alone or stand only for themselves. The very term Asian American, coined in the 1960s by Yuji Ichioka and Emma Gee and adopted by college student activists, was brought to national consciousness by a movement that was about more than just defending Asian Americans against racism and promoting an Asian-American identity.

Asian-American activists saw their movement as also being antiwar, anti-imperialism and anticapitalism. Taking inspiration from the 1955 Bandung Conference, a gathering of nonaligned African and Asian nations, and from Mao, they located themselves in an international struggle against colonialism with other colonized peoples. Mao also inspired radical African Americans, and the late 1960s in the U.S. was a moment when radical activists of all backgrounds saw themselves as part of a Third World movement that linked the uprisings of racial minorities with a global rebellion against capitalism, racism, colonialism and war.

The legacy of the Third World and Asian-American movements continues today among Asian-American activists and scholars, who have long argued that Asian Americans, because of their history of experiencing racism and labor exploitation, offer a radical potential for contesting the worst aspects of American society. But the more than 22 million Asian Americans, over 6% of the American population, have many different national and ethnic origins and ancestries and times of immigration or settlement. As a result, we often have divergent political viewpoints. Today’s Asian Americans are being offered two paths: the radical future imagined by the Asian-American movement, and the consumer model symbolized by drinking boba tea and listening to K-pop. While Asian Americans increasingly trend Democratic, we are far from all being radical.

What usually unifies Asian Americans and enrages us is anti-Asian racism and murder, beginning with the anti-Chinese violence and virulence of the 19th century and continuing through incidents like a white gunman killing five Vietnamese and Cambodian refugee children in a Stockton, Calif., school in 1989, and another white gunman killing six members of a Sikh gurdwara in Wisconsin in 2012. The murder of Vincent Chin, killed in 1982 by white Detroit autoworkers who mistook him for Japanese, remains a rallying cry. As do the Los Angeles riots, or uprisings, of 1992, when much of Koreatown was burned down by mostly Black and brown looters while the LAPD watched. Korean-American merchants suffered about half of the economic damage. Two Asian Americans were killed in the violence.

All of this is cause for mourning, remembrance and outrage, but so is something else: the 61 other people who died were not Asian, and the majority of them were Black or brown. Most of the more than 12,000 people who were arrested were also Black or brown. In short, Korean Americans suffered economic losses, as well as emotional and psychic damage, that would continue for years afterward. But they had property to lose, and they did not pay the price of their tenuous Americanness through the same loss of life or liberty as experienced by their Black and brown customers and neighbors.

Many Korean Americans were angry because they felt the city’s law-enforcement and political leadership had sacrificed them by preventing the unrest from reaching the whiter parts of the city, making Korean Americans bear the brunt of the long-simmering rage of Black and brown Angelenos over poverty, segregation and abusive police treatment. In the aftermath, Koreatown was rebuilt, although not all of the shopkeepers recovered their livelihoods. Some of the money that rebuilt Koreatown came, ironically, from South Korea, which had enjoyed a decades-long transformation into an economic powerhouse. South Korean capital, and eventually South Korean pop culture, especially cinema and K-pop, became cooler and more fashionable than the Korean immigrants who had left South Korea for the American Dream. Even if economic struggle still defined a good deal of Korean immigrant life, it was overshadowed by the overall American perception of Asian-American success, and by the new factor of Asian capital and competition.

This is what it means to be a model minority: to be invisible in most circumstances because we are doing what we are supposed to be doing, like my parents, until we become hypervisible because we are doing what we do too well, like the Korean shopkeepers. Then the model minority becomes the Asian invasion, and the Asian-American model minority, which had served to prove the success of capitalism, bears the blame when capitalism fails.

Not to say that we bear the brunt of capitalism. Situated in the middle of America’s fraught racial relations, we receive, on the whole, more benefits from American capitalism than Black, brown or Indigenous peoples, even if many of us also experience poverty and marginalization. While some of us do die from police abuse, it does not happen on the same scale as that directed against Black, brown or Indigenous peoples. While we do experience segregation and racism and hostility, we are also more likely to live in integrated neighborhoods than Black or Indigenous people. To the extent that we experience advantage because of our race, we are also complicit in holding up a system that disadvantages Black, brown and Indigenous people because of their race.

Given our tenuous place in American society, no wonder so many Asian Americans might want to prove their Americanness, or to dream of acceptance by a white-dominated society, or condemn Tou Thao as not one of “us.” But when Asian Americans speak of their vast collective, with origins from East to West Asia and South to Southeast Asia, who is the “we” that we use? The elite multiculturalism of colored faces in high places is a genteel politics of representation that focuses on assimilation. So long excluded from American life, marked as inassimilable aliens and perpetual foreigners, asked where we come from and complimented on our English, Asian immigrants and their descendants have sought passionately to make this country our own. But from the perspective of many Black, brown and Indigenous people, this country was built on their enslavement, their dispossession, their erasure, their forced migration, their imprisonment, their segregation, their abuse, their exploited labor and their colonization.

For many if not all Black, brown and Indigenous people, the American Dream is a farce as much as a tragedy. Multiculturalism may make us feel good, but it will not save the American Dream; reparations, economic redistribution, and defunding or abolishing the police might.

If Hmong experiences fit more closely with the failure of the American Dream, what does it mean for some Asian Americans to still want their piece of it? If we claim America, then we must claim all of America, its hope and its hypocrisy, its profit and its pain, its liberty and its losses, its imperfect union and its ongoing segregation.

To be Asian American is therefore paradoxical, for being Asian American is both necessary and insufficient. Being Asian American is necessary, the name and identity giving us something to organize around, allowing us to have more than “minor feelings.” I vividly remember becoming an Asian American in my sophomore year, when I transferred to UC Berkeley, stepped foot on the campus and was immediately struck by intellectual and political lightning. Through my Asian-American studies courses and my fellow student activists of the Asian American Political Alliance, I was no longer a faceless part of an “Asian invasion.” I was an Asian American. I had a face, a voice, a name, a movement, a history, a consciousness, a rage. That rage is a major feeling, compelling me to refuse a submissive politics of apology, which an uncritical acceptance of the American Dream demands.

But the rage that is at the heart of the Asian-American movement–a righteous rage, a wrath for justice, acknowledgment, redemption–has not been able to overcome the transformation of the movement into a diluted if empowering identity. In its most diluted form, Asian-American identity is also open to anti-Black racism, the acceptance of colonization, and the fueling of America’s perpetual-motion war machine, which Americans from across the Democratic and Republican parties accept as a part of the U.S.

My presence here in this country, and that of my parents, and a majority of Vietnamese and Hmong, is due to the so-called Vietnam War in Southeast Asia that the U.S. helped to wage. The war in Laos was called “the Secret War” because the CIA conducted it and kept it secret from the American people. In Laos, the Hmong were a stateless minority without a country to call their own, and CIA advisers promised the Hmong that if they fought along with them, the U.S. would take care of the Hmong in both victory and defeat, perhaps even helping them gain their own homeland. About 58,000 Hmong who fought with the Americans lost their lives, fighting communists and rescuing downed American pilots flying secret bombing missions over Laos. When the war ended, the CIA abandoned most of its Hmong allies, taking only a small number out of the country to Thailand. The ones who remained behind suffered persecution at the hands of their communist enemies.

This is why Tou Thao’s face haunts me. Not just because we may look alike in some superficial way as Asian Americans, but because he and I are here because of this American history of war. The war was a tragedy for us, as it was for the Black Americans who were sent to “guarantee liberties in Southeast Asia which they had not found in southwest Georgia and East Harlem,” as Martin Luther King Jr. argued passionately in his 1967 speech “Beyond Vietnam.” In this radical speech, he condemns not just racism but capitalism, militarism, American imperialism and the American war machine, “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today.” In another speech, he demands that we question our “whole society,” which means “ultimately coming to see that the problem of racism, the problem of economic exploitation and the problem of war are all tied together.”

Little has changed. The U.S. is still a country built on war and for war. This is why “Vietnam,” meaning the Vietnam War, continues to haunt this country, stuck in a forever war. And this is why Tou Thao’s face haunts me. It is the face of someone who shares some of my history and has done the thing I fear to do when faced with injustice–nothing. Addressing Tou Thao, the poet Mai Der Vang, also Hmong, wrote in her poem “In the Year of Permutations”: “Go live with yourself after what you didn’t do.” Thao was “complicit in adding to the/ perpetration of power on a neck … Never truly to be accepted/ always a pawn.” While the life of a Hmong-American police officer descended from refugees is different from that of a stereotypical model-minority Chinese-American engineer or a Vietnamese-American writer like me, the moral choices remain the same. Solidarity or complicity. Rise against abusive power or stand with our back turned to the abuse of power. If we as Asian Americans choose the latter, we are indeed the model minority, and we deserve both its privileges and its perils.

Our challenge is to be both Asian American and to imagine a world beyond it, one in which being Asian American isn’t necessary. This is not a problem of assimilation or multiculturalism. This is a contradiction, inherited from the fundamental contradiction that ties the American body politic together, its aspiration toward equality for all, bound with its need to exploit the land and racially marked people, beginning from the very origins of American society and its conquest of Indigenous nations and importation of African slaves. The U.S. is an example of a successful project of colonization, only we do not call colonization by that name here. Instead, we call successful colonization “the American Dream.” This is why, as Mai Der Vang says, “the American Dream will not save us.”

“Asian Americans” should not exist in a land where everyone is equal, but because of racism’s persistence, and capitalism’s need for cheap, racialized labor, “Asian Americans” do indeed exist. The end of Asian Americans only happens with the end of racism and capitalism. Faced with this problem, Asian Americans can be a model of apology, trying to prove an Americanness that cannot be proved. Or we can be a model of justice and demand greater economic and social equality for us and for all Americans.

If we are dissatisfied with our country’s failures and limitations, revealed to us in stark clarity during the time of coronavirus, then now is our time to change our country for the better. If you think America is in trouble, blame shareholders, not immigrants; look at CEOs, not foreigners; resent corporations, not minorities; yell at politicians of both parties, not the weak, who have little in the way of power or wealth to share. Many Americans of all backgrounds understand this better now than they did in 1992. Then, angry protesters burned down Koreatown. Now, they peacefully surround the White House.

Demanding that the powerful and the wealthy share their power and their wealth is what will make America great. Until then, race will continue to divide us. To locate Tou Thao in the middle of a Black-Hmong divide, or a Black-Asian divide, as if race were the only problem and the only answer, obscures a fatal statistic: the national poverty rate was 15.1% in 2015, while the rate for African Americans was about 24.1% and for Hmong Americans 28.3%.

The problem is race, and class, and war–a country almost always at war overseas that then pits its poor of all races and its exploited minorities against each other in a domestic war over scarce resources. So long as this crossbred system of white supremacy and capitalist exploitation remains in place, there will always be someone who will write that sign: Another American Driven Out of Business by [fill in the blank], because racism always offers the temptation to blame the weak rather than the powerful. The people who write these signs are engaging in the most dangerous kind of identity politics, the nationalist American kind, which, from the origins of this country, has been white and propertied. The police were created to defend the white, the propertied and their allies, and continue to do so. Black people know this all too well, many descended from people who were property.

My parents, as newcomers to America, learned this lesson most intimately. When they opened the New Saigon, they told me not to call the police if there was trouble. In Vietnam, the police were not to be trusted. The police were corrupt. But a few years later, when an armed (white) gunman burst into our house and pointed a gun in all our faces, and after my mother dashed by him and into the street and saved our lives, I called the police. The police officers who came were white and Latino. They were gentle and respectful with us. We owned property. We were the victims. And yet our status as people with property, as refugees fulfilling the American Dream, as good neighbors for white people, is always fragile, so long as that sign can always be hung.

But the people who would hang that sign misunderstand a basic fact of American life: America is built on the business of driving other businesses out of business. This is the life cycle of capitalism, one in which an (Asian) American Dream that is multicultural, transpacific and corporate fits perfectly well. My parents, natural capitalists, succeeded at this life cycle until they, in turn, were driven out of business. The city of San Jose, which had neglected downtown when my parents arrived, changed its approach with the rise of Silicon Valley. Realizing that downtown should reflect the image of a modern tech metropolis, the city used eminent domain to force my parents to sell their store. Across from where the New Saigon once stood now looms the brand-new city hall, which was supposed to face a brand-new symphony hall.

I love the idea that a symphony could have sprung from the refugee roots of the New Saigon, where my parents shed not only sweat but blood, having once been shot there on Christmas Eve. But for many years, all that stood on my parents’ property was a dismal parking lot. Eventually the city sold the property for many millions of dollars, and now a tower of expensive condominiums is being built on the site of my parents’ struggle for the American Dream. The symphony was never heard. This, too, is America.

So is this: the mother of Fong Lee, Youa Vang Lee, marching with Hmong 4 Black Lives on the Minnesota state capitol in the wake of George Floyd’s killing. “I have to be there,” she said. She spoke in Hmong, but her feelings could be understood without translation.

“The same happened to my son.”

Nguyen is a Pulitzer Prize–winning novelist and a University Professor at the University of Southern California

Correction, June 29, 2020

The original version of this story misstated the spelling of the last name of the police officer who killed Fong Lee. It is Andersen, not Anderson.

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The Truth Behind Indian American Exceptionalism

Many of us are unaware of the special circumstances that eased our entry into American life—and of the bonds we share with other nonwhite groups.

This article was published online on December 19, 2020.

I n 1978 , several years after leaving India and coming to Texas, my parents decided to move out of our middle-class neighborhood in southwest Houston. Our new home, a few miles away, was a custom-designed contemporary structure on a one-acre lot in the exclusive Piney Point Village, population 3,419, a community that vies for the title of “richest city in Texas.” We had a swimming pool and a three-car garage, where my dad, an immaculately tailored allergist, parked his silver Cadillac and my mom parked her ivory Mercedes. We had, quite clearly, arrived.

Like countless other immigrants, my parents had come to the United States, in 1969, with little cash in hand. Within a few years, my devout Hindu mother, orphaned at an early age, had switched from a sari to tennis skirts and was competing at Houston’s swankiest clubs. My father, who hadn’t owned a pair of shoes until he was 10, was buying season tickets to the Houston Symphony, where he promptly fell asleep during every performance.

Our world was filled with Indian doctors and engineers. We never stopped to ask why their entrance into American society had been so rapid. We simply accepted that their success was a combination of immigrant pluck and the right values: Indians were family-oriented, education-oriented, and work-oriented.

There was a term for our place in the country’s racial order: model minority . The concept is generally traced to a 1966 article in The New York Times Magazine by the sociologist William Petersen, which focused on Japanese Americans; the basic idea was extended to other Asian Americans. Of course, the notion of “model minorities” comes with a flip side—“problem minorities.” The terminology took on life at a time of intense social unrest: race riots across the country, the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., the emergence of Richard Nixon’s racially charged “southern strategy.” Many Americans were losing what faith they may have had in the possibility of racial equality.

Today, it’s easy to take for granted the measures of Indian American success: the ubiquity of the “Dr. Patel” stereotype; the kids who, year in and year out, dominate the Scripps National Spelling Bee; a vice president–elect, Kamala Harris, whose mother was Indian; and, most notably, the median annual household income , which is among the highest of any group. Nikki Haley, Donald Trump’s former ambassador to the United Nations, whose parents arrived in the U.S. in the late ’60s, summed up one prevailing view this way: “Mostly we’re just good at being Americans.”

Read: Kamala Harris and the ‘other 1 percent’

What is forgotten is that before Indian Americans became a model minority, we were regarded as a problem minority. Also forgotten is the extent to which the U.S. engineered the conditions that allowed certain nonwhite groups to thrive.

This is a reality to which Indian Americans themselves often seem blind. From the comfortable perspective of university towns and tech hubs and white-dominated suburbs, Indian Americans do not see what they have in common with other nonwhite Americans—as if life in a bubble were truly possible, and as if the idea of common interest with other groups were unseemly.

In the late 1800s and early 1900s, after the Exclusion Act halted most immigration from China, North American employers in need of laborers turned to India, among other places. As Erika Lee notes in her 2015 book, The Making of Asian America , leaflets blanketed the Punjabi countryside promising “opportunities of fortune-making”—typically a wage of $2 a day if a man was strong. As their numbers grew, Indian immigrants, primarily working as farm laborers or lumberjacks, came to be considered “the least desirable of all races.” Nativists warned of a “tide of turbans.” The immigrants were overwhelmingly men, and were legally prevented from bringing over a wife or children. Subject to anti-miscegenation laws, the unmarried frequently found spouses in the Hispanic or Black communities.

In 1920, a court in Oregon granted citizenship to a man named Bhagat Singh Thind, an Indian immigrant who had served in the U.S. Army during the First World War. A naturalization examiner objected, and the issue made its way to the U.S. Supreme Court . Citing immigration and naturalization law of the time, the Court in 1923 ruled that Thind was not white in “the understanding of the common man” and denied him citizenship. In 1924, the U.S. passed the draconian Johnson-Reed Act , the last of a series of laws that effectively closed the door to immigrants from Asian countries.

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Vaishno Das Bagai, the son of a wealthy landowner in Peshawar, had arrived on Angel Island, in San Francisco Bay, in 1915 with his wife, their three sons, and $25,000 in gold. He became a naturalized citizen in 1921. But the revocation of his citizenship, in 1923, led to the liquidation of his property, including the store he owned. In 1928, despondent, he took his own life. “I came to America thinking, dreaming, and hoping to make this land my home,” he wrote in a farewell letter addressed to “the world at large,” which was published in the San Francisco Examiner . “Now what am I?”

Attitudes began to change during the Second World War. The U.S. began—selectively—to scrub exclusionary laws in a bid to build wartime alliances in Asia and to counter propaganda by Germany and Japan, which took aim at America’s grim racial history. Naturalization rights were extended to Chinese immigrants in 1943 and to immigrants from India and the Philippines in 1946. Japanese Americans were of course an exception—their loyalty questioned, they were rounded up during the war and interned in detention camps.

The nature of anti-Asian racism in the U.S. was always different from that of racism directed at Black Americans, which was much older than the nation. In sheer numerical terms, the Asian and Pacific Islander population was small—in 1940, it was one‑50th the size of the Black population. African Americans would fight for decades more to end legal segregation and secure voting rights, even as doors were thrown open for Asians.

As one nation after another shed its colonial overlord—the Philippines in 1946, India and Pakistan in 1947, Indonesia in 1949—the U.S. was in the delicate position of trying to expand its sphere of influence without perpetuating imperial optics. In her book Cold War Civil Rights: Race and the Image of American Democracy (2011), the legal historian Mary Dudziak framed the issue pointedly:

How could American democracy be a beacon during the Cold War, and a model for those struggling against Soviet oppression, if the United States itself practiced brutal discrimination against minorities within its own borders?

The career of Dalip Singh Saund can be understood against this backdrop. Saund, a Democrat from California, was the first Indian American elected to Congress . In 1956, he narrowly defeated the Republican candidate, Jacqueline Cochran Odlum, a pioneering pilot and the first woman to break the sound barrier. She found it hard to believe that she had lost to “a Hindu,” and never ran for office again. Saund was in fact Sikh. He had arrived in the U.S. in 1920, at the height of anti-Asian sentiment, and received a doctorate in mathematics, but had gone on to become a successful farmer (and a justice of the peace). Early on, he wore a turban, but at some point he stopped. The images we have of him in later years show a dashing man in dark suits. In one photo, he flashes a rakish smile while greeting then-Senator John F. Kennedy. He represented a new kind of mid-century American.

Saund’s election was a big enough deal that a CBS television crew shadowed him on his first day in office. The House Foreign Affairs Committee sent Saund on an international tour to Japan, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Vietnam, Indonesia, Thailand, Singapore, and the Philippines. Saund said he wished to “present myself as a living example of American democracy in practice.” He and the committee hoped to counter, as Saund put it, “the Communist lie that racial prejudice against Asians is rampant in America.”

In 1959, Saund sat for a TV interview at WCKT, in Miami. The host introduced him, breathlessly, as “probably the most unforgettable character I have ever met. The son of parents in faraway India who could neither read nor write, Judge Saund sits now with dignity and works with skill in the Congress of the United States.” The interviewer seemed to be saying, See how far you have come. See how far we have brought you . But Saund more than held his own.

In 1965, Congress made sweeping changes to U.S. immigration law. Part of the impetus was greater equity, but there was also pressure, in a Cold War context, from dozens of newly independent nations in Asia and Africa. The U.S. did away with the admittance formula that had heavily favored immigrants from Western Europe. The new legislation also prioritized family reunification and professional skills, and Asian immigrants ultimately leveraged both to their advantage. When the legislation was passed, no one anticipated how radically it would alter the country’s demographics.

Nor did my parents understand the extent to which their own lives and fortunes would be transformed when they arrived in this country. They had fled a slow, lumbering economy, one derided by Western skeptics for its “Hindu rate of growth.” My father’s decision to move to the U.S. with my mother was at once an act of economic necessity and a sign of his intense ambition. The image of his sobbing parents and younger siblings upon their departure for the airport has stayed with him to this day. “It was like a death in the family,” he recalled in his self-published memoir, My Mother Called Me Unni: A Doctor’s Tale of Migration .

This scene played out in thousands of families as many of India’s best and brightest left for the U.S. From 1966 to 1977, according to the historian Vijay Prashad, about 20,000 scientists immigrated from India to the United States, along with 40,000 engineers and 25,000 physicians. The majority spoke English and came from upper-caste communities (as my parents did). The composition of the diaspora was representative of only a narrow slice of India: people who had the social capital and intellectual means to succeed far from home, and who had the resources to make the journey in the first place.

The result was an intense form of social engineering, but one that went largely unacknowledged. Immigrants from India, armed with degrees, arrived after the height of the civil-rights movement, and benefited from a struggle that they had not participated in or even witnessed. They made their way not only to cities but to suburbs, and broadly speaking were accepted more easily than other nonwhite groups have been.

I don’t recall hearing the name Dalip Singh Saund until I was in my 30s, well after I’d left Houston. Nor had I heard of Vaishno Das Bagai or Bhagat Singh Thind. These names were absent from my childhood. It was as if the entire history that preceded my family’s arrival, the messy parts, had been snipped off. The year 1965, when the Immigration and Nationality Act was amended, was our Year Zero.

My parents arrived in this country in the waning days of 1969. They first settled in Washington, D.C., then moved to Connecticut, and finally put down roots in Texas. In a recent text thread with my two sisters, they recalled the excitement of moving into the Piney Point home—the trees, the serenity. “But I didn’t perceive it at the time as moving up in the world,” Kala wrote. Subconsciously, though, we understood the new rules. We began to demand brand-name clothes—Izod and Polo—something my mother told us, years later, that she regretted giving in to.

In his memoir, my father recounted what he saw as my mother’s evolution, and her awkwardness.

For a girl who grew up without parents, in a laid-back Kerala village with only one street, a big river, and three temples scattered across clusters of ancestral homes, Devi tried her very best to be Americanized. Exchanging her favorite sarees, she made attempts to dress in evening gowns and mink coats and leather boots. From her preciously nourished, long, braided hairstyles with tucked-in jasmine garlands she half-heartedly learned to put up her hair on the top or to the fancy of the stylists.

I called Mom and asked her what she had felt about her adjustments back then. “That’s all Dad’s fancies, you know. I had to go along with it. To have peace. And I thought, These are the things you have to do .” As kids, we had been proud of our mother the tennis star, the woman who taught herself to ride a bike in her 30s. I hadn’t considered the strain placed upon her—by her kids, by her husband, by the world beyond our home—as she attempted to fit herself and her family into this new place.

In many ways, my sisters and I had an exalted childhood. We traveled abroad, to Paris, Lucerne, Venice, and Tokyo, with frequent visits to see our relatives in India. Even as a young brown man, I felt secure. My parents never had to give me “the talk” that many Black teenagers receive. At the same time, I knew better than to expose my family life, even something as simple as the food in our refrigerator, to the judgment of the white world. Some people in that world, I realized, thought we were going to hell, that our food stank, that our customs were freakish.

Recently I looked up the current census data for Piney Point: The city is 85 percent white and 12 percent Asian. The Black population, however, stands at 0.6 percent—virtually nonexistent, as it has been for decades. The historian Uzma Quraishi, who has studied the residential patterns of middle-class Indian and Pakistani immigrants in the Houston area in the 1970s and ’80s, found that they track almost identically with those of white residents who left the central urban area for more affluent neighborhoods on the outskirts, ostensibly so their kids could attend “good schools” but also to distance themselves from Black residents. She calls this process “brown flight.” Those of us with roots in the Indian subcontinent had it drilled into us from an early age that “divide and rule” had been the most potent tool of the colonial power. As immigrants, had we become complicit in this same strategy?

During the pandemic this spring, my parents were stuck in Kerala and watched, bewildered, as America seemed to implode, and not just from disease and economic distress. Police killings of unarmed Black Americans inspired national outrage and protest; a backlash led by armed white counterprotesters was quick in coming. I communicated with them by email and WhatsApp. On one occasion, I asked Dad what had prompted him and Mom to move to Piney Point, back in the ’70s. “Perhaps,” he ventured in reply, “the American dream.”

That “perhaps” reflected the fact that many years had passed and memories were foggy. But I think it also reflected something else: that the American narrative is not nearly as neat and linear in his mind as it had appeared when he arrived here, months after the U.S. had put a man on the moon. The American dream doesn’t mean what it once did to a newcomer.

Read: Trump is scaring Indian Americans into finding their political voice

In 2017, just a few weeks into the Trump presidency, Srinivas Kuchibhotla , an Indian-born engineer, was killed at a bar in a Kansas City suburb. The killer had shouted: “Get out of my country.” Not long after, I found myself on an email thread with my dad and a few of his good friends, or “uncles,” as we refer to them, all retired Indian American doctors around the age of 80. They understood that the position of Indian Americans was in many ways privileged, and that threats were sporadic. But they were worried. “The more noise we make, these racists will be awakened, who may never have heard of Hindus and their customs,” wrote one. “Fighting them alone may get us under six feet.” The only thing to do, he said, was lie low. Despite all their success, and nearly 50 years of living in the U.S., the uncles were reacting as if their Americanness remained tentative and conditional.

Like most of their Indian-immigrant peers, the uncles came from historically advantaged communities. This had helped them emerge from India’s ferocious academic system victorious, allowed them to leap across continents and flourish professionally, and enabled them to isolate themselves in America’s best and whitest neighborhoods.

It did not, however, prepare them for a fight—or for the realization that they were not in this alone.

This article appears in the January/February 2021 print edition with the headline “The Making of a Model Minority.”

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Asians in higher education: Research review of the “model minority” myth

2015 study published in the Review of Educational Research that examines 112 studies on Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders in higher education, with a focus on the "model minority" myth.

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In late 2015, students at college campuses across the U.S. staged protests and called for changes to end systemic racism at their schools and elsewhere. Many protests emphasized the oppression of minorities within higher education, with some of the outcry being prompted by the University of Missouri’s handling of racist incidents targeting black students on its campus in fall 2015.  Meanwhile, around the same time, racial tensions rose at Yale University after the school’s Intercultural Affairs Committee sent an e-mail to students asking them to avoid Halloween costumes that may offend students of color – costumes that, for example, involve turbans, blackface or feathered headdresses.

Days before the first campus protests at the University of Missouri, a columnist at The New York Times , Nicholas Kristof, raised the ire of Asian students, educators and others with statements he made in a column titled “The Asian Advantage.” In it, Kristof explores some of the reasons why he thinks Asian students generally tend to do better in school than other groups of racial and ethnic minorities. He asks the question: Does the success of Asian-Americans suggest that the age of discrimination is behind us? His piece prompted an immediate response from an attorney and a journalism professor, who sharply criticized Kristof in a column they co-wrote for Salon magazine. They said he “naively reinforces the tired and long debunked noxious notion of the model minority.”

The “model minority” stereotype has long plagued Asian communities in the United States. To mark the 50 th anniversary of the term in 2016, the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center launched a social media campaign to call attention to the ways it hurts Asian Americans and limits how others see and understand them. The phrase “model minority” is believed to have been first used by sociologist William Petersen in a Jan. 9, 1966 New York Times Magazine article , “Success story: Japanese American style.” In the article, Petersen praised Japanese Americans for the “generally affluent and, for the most part, highly Americanized” lives he said they were leading two decades after their World War II evacuation to internment camps. Contemporary scholars and others stress that while Asian Americans tend to be portrayed as highly educated with successful careers, some groups within the Asian community face serious problems in the U.S. For example, a 2015 White House report indicates that 1 out of 3 Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders has limited English proficiency. While 30 percent of Asians aged 25 and older have bachelor’s degrees, only 10 percent of Native Hawaiian and other Pacific Islanders do. One statistic that might be surprising to many people is that nearly half of Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders – a group that often is categorized together and referred to by the acronym AAPI — do not go to highly selective four-year universities. In fact, 47.3 percent attend community colleges .

A 2015 study published in the Review of Educational Research offers a review of the research that exists on AAPIs in higher education, with a focus on how the model minority stereotype is addressed in academic scholarship. Eight researchers from Loyola University Chicago and the University of California, Los Angeles analyzed 112 academic articles and other works published between 2000 and 2013.

Some of the findings outlined in their study, titled “A Critical Review of the Model Minority Myth in Selected Literature on Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders in Higher Education,” include:

• Most of the reviewed texts – more than 63 percent – make at least some reference to the model minority myth. But much of this scholarship fails to offer a complete definition of the phrase or discuss the racist implications of the concept.
• About one-quarter of the texts make no mention of the model minority myth.
• About 10 percent of the texts discuss the stereotype in terms of its “historical, White supremacist purpose.” Publications in this category examine the term as a tool to perpetuate white supremacy and create divisions among minority groups.
• The texts vary considerably in how they define “model minority myth.” For example, one study simply describes it as “the notion that Asian Americans achieve universal and unparalleled academic and occupational success.” Other studies offer a range of descriptors related to broad concepts such as work ethic, family values, social introversion, studiousness, seriousness, submissive obedience and adaptiveness. Some of the scholarship uses model minority myth as a catch-all term representing practically all racial or cultural stereotypes about AAPIs.
• Texts that discuss the stereotype tend to also raise concerns about how it has caused higher education administrators to neglect the educational needs and interests of this particular student group. These students are overlooked because they are seen, as one research study put it, as “’problem-free’ high achievers.”

The authors conclude that the research on AAPIs in higher education is anemic and that the lack of research on Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders specifically is “appalling.” They suggest that future researchers make efforts to look at the lived experiences of the individual groups who fall under the umbrella term “Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders.” Scholars also should be more intentional in their use of panethnic terms and labels. The authors of this study stress the need for more research that does not include a discussion of the model minority stereotype simply because it is common. “For more than 30 years, the dominant narrative in AAPI higher education research has focused on demonstrating how AAPIs are not a model minority — a task of arguing who AAPIs are not,” the authors state. “We challenge the next era of scholarship on Asian American and Pacific Islanders in higher education to confidently illustrate who these diverse peoples and communities are.”

Related Research: A 2015 study published in Social Psychology Quarterly, “Exceptional Outgroup Stereotypes and White Racial Inequity Attitudes toward Asian Americans,” examines the perception of Asian Americans as superior to other minority groups. A 2014 study published in The Journal of Higher Education , “Interest Convergence or Divergence?: A Critical Race Analysis of Asian Americans, Meritocracy, and Critical Mass in the Affirmative Action Debate,” explores the issue of Asian Americans and affirmative action policy.

Keywords: racism, race, model minority, Asian, Pacific Islanders, higher education, racial stereotype

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Essay Prize-Winning Psychology Major Examines "Model Minority"

Four years ago, Mia Nguyen ’21 and Dominican took a chance on each other. The result has been transformative for Mia, who recently won a national prize for her essay examining the impact of the “model minority” myth on Vietnamese American youth. The essay , which won the Fordham University Center for Ethics Education’s Ethics and Social Justice Essay Prize, is both personal and powerful, inspired by Mia’s lived experience as a Vietnamese American student and informed by her senior thesis research examining intergenerational trauma and cultural dissonance among Vietnamese American youth. Her research was the perfect way to dig deep into issues that had shaped her own life. “I saw how mental health stigma significantly impacts minority populations and I wanted to provide a safe space for those like me,” says Mia, a psychology major . “I have always been drawn to serving others, building interpersonal relationships, and learning. My goal in life is to make an impact in the world by making an impact in the lives of individuals.” Growing up in Elk Grove, just outside Sacramento, Mia was a driven student who struggled with mental health challenges in high school that set her back academically. “Because the student that I appeared to be on paper didn't show much promise, I had a hard time finding schools that would take a chance on me when applying to college,” she says. DOMINICAN UNDERGRADUATE MAJORS AND PROGRAMS Dominican’s holistic admissions selection process looks at the whole student – seeking students who will thrive in and engage with a challenging and inclusive undergraduate program. Dominican provided Mia with the support, structure, and experiences that allowed her to excel as a student, researcher, and community advocate. “I couldn't have asked for a better education than the one I got at Dominican. Dominican took a chance on me and I'd like to think it was worth it,” Mia says. “I wouldn't be the person that I am without the support and mentorship I got at Dominican.” Mia notes that growing up in a primarily Caucasian community, she frequently heard statements from people assuming that she was academically intelligent solely due to her ethnicity. The comments, she notes, never felt right. But, it wasn’t until Mia became invested in community relationships and social justice as a Dominican student that she learned more about this negative feeling. While minoring in Community Action and Social Change (CASC), she learned about the impact of seemingly positive stereotypes.  “I did not think much about these comments at the time simply because, in my head, it was supposed to be a compliment and it reinforced what my parents wanted and expected from me,” Mia notes. “It couldn’t be a bad thing for people to think or assume that I was good in school or that I was smart.” Mia had selected psychology in the School of Liberal Arts and Education as her major, inspired by her desire to promote mental health and to help others. She quickly found other interests and talents, adding minors in CASC, Leadership, Spanish, and Cognitive and Experimental Sciences. Mia started working with the Marin Department of Health & Human Services BRIDGE program as a first-year student to fulfill the hours required for a Service-Learning course. She was drawn to the assignment of providing community and mental health resources to the Vietnamese senior population, eventually working with BRIDGE all four years.  “Spending time with the seniors gave me pieces of home that I believe made my transition to college a bit easier as well,” she says. “This experience formed a lot of my undergraduate experience. It was how I spent the majority of my time outside of class and it provided me with opportunities to advance my career as well.”  As part of her CASC minor, Mia has to complete a research project with her community partner. Her initial plan was to draw on her work with the seniors in order to conduct humanizing research that would empower and share the voices of the community. “I had built meaningful relationships that provided me with insight into my future profession,” she says. “I grew up rejecting my roots and I never would have thought that doing research within my own community would have led me to better understand my roots, why I felt the need to assimilate, and how this impacted my upbringing and relationships with others.” However, when work moved online this past year due to the pandemic, Mia turned her attention to conducting remote research with a younger demographic more accustomed to Zoom interviews and Internet surveys. She restructured her focus to examine intergenerational trauma – the effects of traumatic events passed down across generations – and intergenerational cultural dissonance among Vietnamese American youth. “My research was originally inspired by my desire to create space and awareness for the Vietnamese senior community in Marin County, but as I worked to redesign my project my motivation shifted to wanting to provide the Vietnamese youth population with the space to express their unique struggles while also creating more awareness for the Vietnamese community as a whole.”  After expanding the scope of her project, Mia applied for and was awarded a National Collegiate Honors Council Portz Fellowship, which funded the expanded project. Mia’s goal was to  identify the  unique needs of Vietnamese American youth in order to improve culturally-relevant mental health resources. “This research is very personal for me as a Vietnamese American. In conducting the interviews and analyzing the findings, both myself and the interviewees found commonalities that brought us closer,” she says. “Many participants stated that without these interviews, they wouldn't have had the space to have ever discussed these issues. Many of them felt alone in their experiences  just as I did —and it was rewarding to know that I was able to provide individuals with the space to have these discussions.” Mia credits her faculty mentors in the psychology department for developing her skills as a student, researcher, and leader. Her freshman year, Mia started working as a research assistant with Dr. Afshin Gharib. Working with Dr. Gharib helped Mia develop both skills and interest in research, as well as a desire to pursue a Ph.D. During her sophomore year, Mia worked with Dr. Gharib on a research project looking at the effectiveness of humane education programs for children run at various humane societies around the United States, including Marin Humane, the San Diego Humane Society, and the Oregon Humane Society. She presented her findings at the 2019 NCUR conference and was accepted to present at the (later cancelled) 2020 NCUR conference. She also worked with Dr. Gharib on a second study looking at judgements of personality based on either brief or long exposure, presenting her findings from that project at the 2019 Western Psychological Association (WPA) conference.  Within the Psychology Department, Mia also took on leadership roles, including serving as vice president and then president of the Psychology Club and representing Dominican in both the WPA and Psi Chi International Honor Society in Psychology. Dr. Veronica Fruiht taught Mia to write an APA style paper, collaborated with Mia on her senior thesis, which they hope to publish within the next year, and also helped Mia with the quantitative analysis of her project with the Vietnamese youth population. She enjoyed watching Mia develop as a researcher and a student leader.  “This year Mia was instrumental in helping the department stay in touch with students, organizing virtual events for student members to keep them connected during this difficult year, including game nights, self-care nights, and just social check-ins on Zoom,” Fruiht says. Now, with graduation behind her Mia plans to spend the next eight months working as a teacher's assistant in Spain. When she returns to the U.S. she plans to apply to clinical Ph.D. programs. “Being a global citizen is really important to me and I hope to continue to soothe my adventurous soul by exploring the world a bit more before settling down.”

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Asian Americans as the Model Minority

For more than 100 years, from roughly the 1850’s until after World War II, Asians in America were deemed foreign, unwanted, and uncivilized.  Asians were termed the “yellow peril” and were thought to be a menace to Western society.  They were the targets of racial attacks and discriminatory laws because of their image as a threat.  However, starting in the 1960s, this negative view drastically changed to one of admiration as Asian success stories started becoming more and more prevalent throughout American society.  Since then and to this day, it is believed that Asian Americans have overcome past prejudices and are now doing well in society.  Because of this, Asian Americans are termed the “model minority” and serve as an example to other minority groups.  However, this assumption, a form of discreet discrimination, is incorrect and has many negative consequences not only for the Asian American community, but for all other minority groups as well.  The model minority label ultimately puts all minority groups at a disadvantage, pulls minority groups apart, and provokes discriminating, racist beliefs.

Ever since I was a young child, I have always been exposed to some form of this discreet discrimination.  Throughout my years in school, there have always been high expectations for me because of my race.  I have always gotten comments like, “Oh, you must be smart, you’re Asian,” or “Wait, you bombed your math exam?  But you’re Asian!”  At first, because I was young, I did not fully understand what my being Asian had to do with anything.  However, as I got older, I began to understand exactly why there were so many high expectations of me.  Because I am Asian, I get stamped with all of the labels that come with being Asian, such as being a part of the model minority.  As a part of the model minority, it is assumed that I, as well as every other Asian American student, should be hard-working with a successful future.  However, those assumptions were, and still are, incorrect.  Not all Asian students are brilliant and overachieving.  I would feel inadequate when asked, “How did you bomb that math exam?  You’re Asian.  Are you not as smart as the other Asians?”  But why was I being publicly accused of being “not smart enough” when students of other races were not?  Why did I have to live up to higher standards than my peers of other races? Because of this, I felt distanced from other non-Asian minority groups.  I felt as if no other minority group could understand what I had to go through; I had to be extremely intelligent and there was no other choice.  If I did not fall under this stereotype, I was publicly humiliated.  However, I have realized now that other minority groups also face many negative stereotypes as well as a result of the model minority label.  The model minority label creates many negative stereotypes, which pulls minority groups apart and puts them at a disadvantage.

On the surface, this issue may seem like a battle between Asian Americans and other minority groups.  However, underneath the surface, there is a much bigger issue at hand.  As a result of incorrect assumptions, minority groups in America are being pulled farther apart instead of coming together and identifying with one another’s problems.  Because Asian Americans are the model minority, many Americans believe that non-Asian minority groups suffer consequences as a result of their own shortcomings. This belief creates negative feelings towards Asian Americans and non-Asian minority groups start to feel as if they cannot identify with the Asian American community as a minority.  However, what many fail to recognize is that the Asian American community is just as negatively impacted by such a label as non-Asian American groups.  Many Asian American students and families are still struggling but are overlooked and remain invisible because of the model minority label. 

Jean Wing, manager of Research and Best Practices for the New School Development Group of the Oakland Unified School District, designed a study in order to analyze the invisibility of Asian American students by documenting the actual experiences and achievement of Asian American students from Berkeley High School.  Wing argues that Asian American students face difficulties and failures that go unnoticed because of the widespread acceptance of Asians as the model minority.  From her findings, Wing states that each of her case studies faced different academic challenges that go unrecognized and unsupported because they are “masked by a general perception that Asians are the model students, they do not experience failure, and their success comes easy to them”(466).  This commonly-held belief is a form of discreet discrimination and has negative implications not only for Asian Americans, but other minority races as well.  The success story of Asian Americans is often pitted against African American and Latino demands for equality.  Wing declares, “The model minority stereotype fosters discord among people of color rather than unity in struggle against racism and for greater equity for all people” (481).  The model minority myth segregates minority groups and reinforces racist ideas in a country that should have overcome racial obstacles from the past.

Another study investigating the different types of races and ethnicities participating in gifted education programs today in the U.S. also shows how racism is promoted by the model minority label.  Yoon Yoon, a doctoral candidate in gifted education at Purdue University, and Marcia Gentry, director of the Gifted Education Resource Institute at Purdue University, argue that equal representation of students by race and ethnicity is one of the major issues concerning gifted education programs.  Yoon reports that on the national level, White and Asian American students have been consistently overrepresented in gifted programs, whereas American Indian, Alaska Native, Hispanic, and African American students have been and continue to be underrepresented (128).   This underrepresentation of minority students other than Asian Americans in gifted programs can be argued as racism.  The logic underlying this argument is, “If Asian Americans can be successful in gifted programs, then other minority groups should be able to as well.”  This idea provokes racist thoughts because it is then believed that other minority groups are not in gifted programs simply because they are lazy or not as intelligent.  However, it is not fair or accurate to assume that those underrepresented in gifted programs are lazy and unintelligent because there are many other social implications for these observations that often get overlooked. 

The model minority label also creates stereotypes for Asian and non-Asian minority groups, which plays a part in fueling discrimination in the U.S.  These negative stereotypes have been shown to negatively impact both Asian and non-Asian students’ test scores.  Non-Asian minority groups face stereotype threats with academic testing, which causes them to underperform.  Sapna Cheryan and Galen Bodenhausen, from Northwestern University, investigated these negative effects of stereotypes on intellectual performance.  They found that for non-Asian minority groups, negative stereotypes undermine performance by “creating concern on the part of the stereotyped group that their performance might serve to confirm the negative expectations other people hold about their group” (399).  This concern, termed “stereotype threat,” hinders academic performance by adding the burden of worrying about confirming the low performance expectations of others (Cheryan 399).  The low performance expectation that causes non-Asian students to underperform on testing is due partly to the Asian American model minority label.  Because non-Asian minorities are compared to a high-performing minority group, a feeling of inferiority may arise, hindering academic performance. 

In addition to the underperformance of non-Asian minority groups because of the model minority label, Cheryan and Bodenhausen show that Asian students are negatively impacted by such a title as well.  The model minority label pressures Asian American students to succeed and overachieve, which may cause them to underperform on exams because of “choking” under high expectations.  When exposed to a supposedly positive stereotype such as the model minority, a positive performance is anticipated by an external audience, causing an individual to experience apprehension about meeting those high expectations, which can lead to a phenomenon known as “choking under pressure” (Cheryan 399).  Just as fear of confirming a negative stereotype can undermine performance, so fear of confirming a positive stereotype can undermine performance.  Although Asian Americans are labeled the model minority, this stereotype can be limiting.  The model minority label generates a racial stereotype which puts both Asian and non Asian students at a disadvantage because of stereotype threat, causing them to underperform on academic testing.

Not only does the model minority label undermine academic performance for Asian students, but it can also lead to more serious consequences.  The pressure to succeed and overachieve often times becomes overwhelming and may even result in suicide, especially among young Asian American females between the ages of 15 and 24, who hold the highest suicide rates in the nation (Le).  The Chicago Tribune describes a study conducted by Joel Wong, an assistant professor of counseling and educational psychology at Indiana University, about the top reasons why Asians consider committing suicide.  Wong’s internet survey of 1,377 Asian American students revealed that 48 percent cited family problems as being the reason behind suicidal thoughts, with 43 percent citing academic problems, and 25 percent stating financial problems.  This study shows that model minority expectations can produce expectations of success that can be overwhelming to many Asian Americans. 

Another example of the negative effects of stereotypes generated by the model minority label was investigated by Francis Dalisay and Alexis Tan, both a part of the Edward R. Murrow College of Communication at Washington State University.  Dalisay and Tan were interested in the effects of exposure to information reinforcing the Asian American model minority stereotype on views of Asian Americans and African Americans.  Dalisay and Tan found that experimental participants were more likely to positively evaluate Asian Americans and negatively evaluate African Americans when exposed to the model minority stereotype.  Dalisay states that the “favorable images of some social groups, such as Asian Americans, could breed unfavorable judgments regarding other groups, such as African Americans” (7).  Because the model minority stereotype is widely accepted by many Americans, negative stereotypes are generated towards other minority groups such as African Americans and Latinos, reinforcing racist ideas.

The generation of negative stereotypes of non-Asian minority groups can also make these groups feel isolated and alienated.  This feeling of alienation may lead to discriminatory feelings between minority groups.  Such separation of minority groups is evident at many college campuses today in America.  One specific example is at Berkeley University in California.  In the state of California, Proposition 209 was passed in 1996, which eliminates racial preferences in public institutions.  As a result of Proposition 9 and its strict meritocracy, the rise of Asian students at the University of California, Berkeley campus has greatly increased at the expense of underrepresented blacks and Hispanics.  Timothy Egan, a journalist for the New York Times, reports that Asian American enrollment is at an all-time high at elite colleges and universities, making other minority groups at these universities feel isolated and alone.  Egan states, “The diminishing number of African-Americans on campus is a consistent topic of discussion among black students and they feel isolated, without a sense of community” (24).  Amilia Staley, an African American law student interviewed by Egan, says, “You really do feel like you stand out…I’m almost always the only black person in my class” (24).  Staley also states that she does not identify with the Asian community as a minority.  It is unfortunate that Staley feels this way because Asian Americans are a minority; they make up less than 5% of the national population.  All minority groups have experienced some feelings of alienation in America and should be able to come together to cope with this issue, but instead are being pulled away from one another because of racial stereotypes generated by the model minority label.

In defense of non-Asian minority groups, the idea of pure meritocracy is challenged in Egan’s article by Eric Liu, author of ''The Accidental Asian: Notes of a Native Speaker'' and a domestic policy adviser to former President Bill Clinton, who argues that that the high Asian makeup of elite campuses reflects a post-racial age where merit prevails.  Liu insists that until all students from impoverished urban settings have equal access to advanced placement classes that have proved to be a ticket to the best colleges, then the idea of pure meritocracy is ridiculous (24).  Liu then claims that with Proposition 209, the State of California is trying to measure in a fair way the results of an already unfair system.  Because many Asian American students on the Berkeley campus have parents with college educations, they have easier access to resources that better prepare them for a college education, unlike other minority students who come from poor families with little access to good schools.  Such a system of pure meritocracy is unfair and eliminates diversity from college campuses by isolating and alienating non-Asian minority groups.  As a result of the model minority label, Asian Americans are held at a high standard and are overpopulating elite college campuses, eliminating any chances of diversification and further separating minority groups.

By labeling Asian Americans as the model minority, there are many negative consequences for all minority groups in the U.S.  The model minority label generates negative stereotypes for Asian and non-Asians that put these groups at a disadvantage.  Not only are negative stereotypes generated, but minority groups begin feeling alienated and isolated, which ultimately separates these groups from one another.  This separation of minority groups promotes and fuels more negative stereotypes as well as discrimination and racist beliefs.  

Bibliography

Cheryan, Sapna, and Galen V. Bodenhausen. "When Positive Stereotypes Threaten Intellectual Performance: The Psychological Hazards of 'Model Minority' Status."  Psychological Science  (Wiley-Blackwell) 11.5 (2000): 399.Academic Search Premier. EBSCO. Web. 2 May 2010. 

Chou, Chih-Chieh. "Critique on the notion of model minority: an alternative racism to Asian American?."  Asian Ethnicity  9.3 (2008): 219-229. Academic Search Premier. EBSCO. Web. 12 Mar. 2010.

Dalisay, Francis, and Alexis Tan. "ASSIMILATION AND CONTRAST EFFECTS IN THE PRIMING OF ASIAN AMERICAN AND AFRICAN AMERICAN STEREOTYPES THROUGH TV EXPOSURE."  Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly  86.1 (2009): 7-22. Academic Search Premier. EBSCO. Web. 14 Apr. 2010.

Graham, Judith. “Asian American Suicide Sparks Concern.”  Chicago Tribune . 02 April, 2009. <http://newsblogs.chicagotribune.com/triage/2009/04/asian-american-suicides-spark-concern.html> (Mar. 20, 2010)

JOHNSON, BRIAN D., and SARA BETSINGER. "PUNISHING THE “MODEL MINORITY”: ASIAN-AMERICAN CRIMINAL SENTENCING OUTCOMES IN FEDERAL DISTRICT COURTS."  Criminology  47.4 (2009): 1045-1090. Academic Search Premier. EBSCO. Web. 13 Apr. 2010.

Le, C.N. 2010. "The Model Minority Image"  Asian-Nation: The Landscape of Asian America . <http://www.asian-nation.org/affirmative-action.shtml> (Mar. 11, 2010)

Sakamoto, Arthur, Kimberly A. Goyette, and Kim ChangHwan. "Socioeconomic Attainments of Americans."  Annual Review of Sociology  35.1 (2009): 255-276. Academic Search Premier. EBSCO. Web. 15 Apr. 2010.

So Yoon, Yoon, and Marcia Gentry. "Racial and Ethnic Representation in Gifted Programs."  Gifted Child Quarterly  53.2 (2009): 121-136. Academic Search Premier. EBSCO. Web. 13 Apr. 2010.

Timothy, Egan. "Little Asia On the Hill."  New York Times  07 Jan. 2007: 24. Academic Search Premier. EBSCO. Web. 21 Apr. 2010.

Weathers, Vaunne M., and Donald M. Truxillo. "Whites' and Asian Americans' Perceptions of Asian Americans as Targets of Affirmative Action."  Journal of Applied Social Psychology  38.11 (2008): 2737-2758. Academic Search Premier. EBSCO. Web. 10 Mar. 2010.

Wing, Jean. "Beyond Black and White: The Model Minority Myth and the Invisibility of Asian American Students."  Urban Review  39.4 (2007): 455-487. Academic Search Premier. EBSCO. Web. 10 Mar. 2010.

Wong, Paul, et al. "ASIAN AMERICAN AS A MODEL MINORITY: SELF-PERCEPTIONS 

AND PERCEPTIONS BY OTHER RACIAL GROUPS."  Sociological Perspectives  41.1 (1998): 95-118. Academic Search Premier. EBSCO. Web. 14 Apr. 2010.

Articles copyright © 2024 the original authors. No part of the contents of this Web journal may be reproduced or transmitted in any form without permission from the author or the Academic Writing Program of the University of Maryland. The views expressed in these essays do not represent the views of the Academic Writing Program or the University of Maryland.

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Analysis of minority-serving institutions demonstrates layered processes to build students' capacities

by New York University

The model minority myth paints a picture of Asian Americans as a monolithic group with unparalleled success in academics. A new NYU study unpacks this myth, exploring the needs of Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander students and how higher education institutions support these populations.

In 2007, Congress established a federal designation for higher education institutions that enroll at least 10% of undergraduate Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander (AA&NHPI) students, and who enroll a significant proportion of students from low socioeconomic backgrounds.

This designation as an Asian American and Native American Pacific Islander Serving Institution (AANAPISI) was among one of the newest categories of minority-serving institutions that receive funding to advance educational equity and support for ethnic and racial minorities.

In a two-site case study, Mike Hoa Nguyen, assistant professor of education at NYU Steinhardt, collected data from interviews, internal and public university documents, and observations of activities, courses, and meetings to determine the process in which AANAPISI programs expand students' capacities through culturally relevant coursework, mentorship, research, and civic engagement. His findings are published in The Review of Higher Education .

"AANAPISIs demonstrate a federal commitment to supporting the unique educational needs of AA&NHPI students, which are too often obscured by the model minority myth," said Nguyen.

"This myth dangerously asserts that Asian American students, and Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander students by association, are universally successful and unparalleled in their academic achievements. AANAPISIs play a major role in addressing this problem, and in doing so, provide critical resources to uplift the students they serve. This study documents the process in which these colleges and universities engage in this important work."

Nguyen's study centered on a large, public community college on the West Coast and a large, urban, regional public university on the East Coast. Nguyen's findings related to the experiences of students in these programs.

He uncovered a five-tiered process that the two institutions use to build opportunities for learning, practice, and engagement:

AA&NHPI focused coursework

At both institutions, courses focused on these populations are offered through the institutions' Asian American Studies programs, where students are exposed to concepts connected to their racial and ethnic identities. One student shared her experience with a course, Asian Women in the United States, "Through my experience with I learned…for the first time, issues that affected my community. Specifically, me as an Asian American woman, specifically Vietnamese American…"

Teaching and mentoring

Students who had previously taken AA&NHPI coursework provided tutoring and mentoring to support new students with classwork, programs, books, and scholarship applications. According to one mentor, "Cambodian Americans fall through the cracks, we're just not in higher ed…It's not a supportive space for us…[the AANAPISI faculty] understand…from their own community work, from being on campus, and [from] teaching for so long that…when they find students who fit these demographics it makes sense for them to mentor them."

Advanced AA&NHPI focused coursework

After serving as mentors, students often take more advanced courses focused on theoretical, historical, and contemporary issues regarding the AA&NHPI experience to continue their academics while gaining tools to make larger contributions toward their communities.

Academic and research development

Students who complete advanced coursework are provided opportunities to engage in academic projects and research with faculty and staff, presenting research at conferences or publishing in peer-reviewed journals.

Professional and community experience

The final step in the process offers opportunities for students to engage in community-based projects, internships, and employment with partner organizations, government offices, or other schools. A student shared that his research experience led to the creation of a Vietnamese American organizing and training program.

"[Researchers] found out that Vietnamese Americans in [the neighborhood] don't participate in civics or politics…they basically feel disenfranchised, like their vote doesn't matter…So, the research showed that there needs to be an organization to help push and provide opportunities to talk about politics in a Vietnamese American progressive context…"

"AANAPISIs are the backbone for AA&NHPI students in higher education. These institutions account for 6% of all colleges and universities, yet enroll over 40% of all AA&NHPI undergraduates," said Nguyen.

"This study offers new understandings of the critical role that AANAPISIs play to expand educational opportunity and enrich learning experiences—which can be adopted beyond AANAPISIs and for other students—as well as inform the work of policymakers as they seek new solutions to refine and regulate the administration of minority-serving institutions."

Provided by New York University

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Guest Essay

How Michigan Ended Minority Rule

By Ari Berman

Mr. Berman is the national voting rights correspondent at Mother Jones and the author of “Minority Rule: The Right-Wing Attack on the Will of the People — and the Fight to Resist It.”

On April 8, one day before the Arizona Supreme Court reinstated a ban on abortion from 1864, Donald Trump said the issue of abortion rights should be left to the states and “whatever they decide must be the law of the land.”

Mr. Trump’s statement — and the outcry over the Arizona decision — reinforced how state-level policy on issues like abortion can have major national ramifications. Though states’ rights have long been a rallying cry for conservatives opposed to the federal government’s policies on issues like civil rights and abortion, today the states offer Democrats the best opportunity to protect democracy and expand key rights.

For years Democrats have prioritized federal elections over state ones, but they should look to the states as the most effective avenue for progressive reform, especially since state power is very likely to only increase even as the federal system is stacked against Democrats. The Electoral College and the Senate are biased toward whiter, more rural, and more conservative areas while the Supreme Court is a product of those two skewed institutions.

The Supreme Court’s conservative majority, in striking down federal abortion and voting rights, has delegated a tremendous amount of authority to the states and unexpectedly given progressive reformers a new opening to protect such rights at the state level. Since the overturning of Roe v. Wade, for example, seven states have voted directly on abortion, and in all seven states — red and blue alike — abortion rights advocates have won.

Michigan is one promising national model for how state-level activists can retake the power of their state governments. This notion would have been laughable a decade ago. After Republicans took control of the state following the 2010 election, Michigan was a bastion of minority rule. Over the course of the decade, Republicans routinely received a minority of votes for the State Legislature but won a majority of seats thanks to extreme partisan gerrymandering that allowed them to “ cram ALL of the Dem garbage, ” in the words of one G.O.P. staff member, into as few seats as possible.

It was the failure of Michigan’s broken political institutions that led to an unlikely movement for reform. Two days after the 2016 election, dismayed by the Michigan government’s detachment from voters, Katie Fahey, a 27-year-old political novice from the Grand Rapids area, posted on Facebook before leaving for work: “I’d like to take on gerrymandering in Michigan. If you’re interested in doing this as well, please let me know.” She added a smiley face emoji for a millennial touch.

Ms. Fahey founded a group, Voters Not Politicians, to put an initiative on the ballot calling for an independent citizens commission, instead of the State Legislature, to draw new political districts. Within 110 days 428,000 signatures had been collected with the help of more than 4,000 volunteers, many recruited through social media, and no paid staff members; a rare feat in Michigan history.

In 2018, 61 percent of voters approved their ballot initiative. The same year, the state chapters of the A.C.L.U., League of Women Voters and N.A.A.C.P. spearheaded another ballot initiative, which was passed by 67 percent of voters, that greatly expanded voter access in the state through policies like automatic and Election Day registration and no-excuse absentee voting.

Four years later, the two coalitions came together again, to pass a third ballot initiative, expanding early voting and combating election subversion after Mr. Trump’s 2020 attempt to overturn the presidential vote in the state; the new law requires election results be certified with no interference from partisans. Voters also approved ballot initiatives legalizing recreational marijuana in 2018 and enshrining the right to “reproductive freedom” in the state Constitution in 2022.

These pro-democracy measures transformed Michigan politics: In 2022, Democrats flipped control of the Legislature for the first time in 40 years after the distribution of seats finally followed the popular vote totals under new maps drawn by the citizens redistricting commission. The state set a record for voter turnout in a midterm, with the highest participation rate among young voters in the country. With the help of Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, a Democrat, Michigan became a blueprint for how a state can shift from minority rule to majority rule.

Direct democracy, a crucial tool used in Michigan to expand democratic rights, is not a panacea. Only roughly half the states offer ballot initiatives, and even in those that do, lawmakers frequently try to undermine them, by making it harder to get such initiatives on the ballot through onerous signature requirements and other red tape or by raising the bar needed to approve them, from simple majorities to supermajorities.

From 2010 to 2022, state-level Republicans introduced 255 bills seeking to restrict the ballot initiative process. “You put very sexy things like abortion and marijuana on the ballot, and a lot of young people come out and vote,” the former Republican senator Rick Santorum complained in November 2023 after Ohio voters rejected an attempt to undercut the initiative process.

Still, state constitutions were specifically designed to be a majoritarian counterweight to the countermajoritarian features of America’s national political institutions. States like Michigan, Ohio and Arizona that allow citizen-led ballot initiatives offer a pathway toward expanding democracy that is currently foreclosed on the federal level, barring a huge national movement for systemic reform.

State constitutions empower popular majorities in ways that the federal Constitution does not. Unlike the U.S. Constitution, the Michigan Constitution can be amended by voters through a simple majority vote and has been rewritten three times through state constitutional conventions since its drafting in 1835, most recently in 1963. That constitution reflected the values of the civil rights movement, including protections against racial discrimination and safeguarding civil and political rights.

Of course, the fact that state institutions are more responsive to popular majorities than the federal Constitution, which was designed in part to limit democratic participation, means they can swing in both directions. In recent years, some states, like Michigan and Wisconsin, have shifted to the left, while others, such as North Carolina, have moved right. Pitched partisan battles are being waged over previously obscure and relatively apolitical institutions, like state supreme courts, as the stakes have grown.

Republicans currently control state legislatures in 28 states, and while Democrats have little chance of winning in some of the reddest areas, the Michigan model is a potential testing ground for other purple states like Arizona, Georgia, New Hampshire and Wisconsin, where Republicans hold majorities in the legislature despite President Biden carrying the state in 2020.

The protection of key rights at the state level has major implications for 2024. Organizing around important state-level democracy issues — rolling back gerrymandering, expanding ballot access and combating election subversion, passing state constitutional amendments — could also aid Democrats nationally. These efforts would engage more voters and remind them that they have a voice in the political process, and when state governments become more responsive to the will of the people, voters come to see that there’s a real point to voting and will be more willing to turn out in presidential elections, too.

This can benefit Democratic candidates by boosting turnout among the disaffected liberals who stopped participating in their local elections, convinced that their vote wouldn’t make a difference because Republicans had so rigged the system. Restoring legitimacy to the democratic process is one of the fundamental lessons Michigan has to offer.

Ari Berman is the national voting rights correspondent at Mother Jones and the author of “Minority Rule: The Right-Wing Attack on the Will of the People — and the Fight to Resist It.”

The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips . And here’s our email: [email protected] .

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