What comes to mind when you think of an Asian American student? Probably a Chinese, Korean, or Japanese student with black hair and glasses enters your head. Is it someone who is not very athletic, is good at math, and earns A grades? Perhaps, it is someone who plays in the school orchestra, is a member of the Robotics Club, and works on some sort of scientific research. This stereotype forms because of the model minority myth, “a narrative in which Asian American children are whiz kids or musical geniuses” and “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” (Blackburn). Sociologist William Peterson coined the term ‘model minority’ in his 1966 New York Times article titled “Success Story Japanese American Style” (Lee 6). The model minority myth damages Asian Americans’ mental health and economic prosperity, and overlooks their diversity. Furthermore, it racially divides minorities in the U.S. by forgetting the discriminatory history, creating further racism, and putting a wedge among other minorities.
With their history overlooked by most Americans, Asian Americans have been in America since the mid-1800s and, despite racist regulations, played a vital role in the development of this country, taking jobs as miners, factory workers, railroad builders, and fishermen (“Asian”). 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” (qtd. in Nguyen). In 1876, Americans protested that Chinese immigrants were taking their jobs, and in 1882, Congress passed the Chinese Exclusion Act to restrict Chinese immigration for the next 60 years (“Asian”). By 1885, many young Japanese and some young Korean and Indian workers arrived on the West Coast and replaced the Chinese as cheap laborers. Anti-Japanese violence and legislation soon followed, and in 1907, the U.S. and Japan restricted Japanese immigration by an informal “Gentleman’s Agreement.” When South Asian Indian immigrants migrated to the West Coast to be farm laborers, they also faced violence and discrimination. In 1917, the “tide of the Turbans” was outlawed when Congress declared that India was part of the excluded Asian countries for immigration. Prejudice continued when Japan attacked Pearl Harbor during World War II, launching a national fear of national security, leading to the formation of Japanese internment camps and discrimination towards all Asian Americans in America. After WWII, the U.S. government forced Asian Americans to prove their loyalty, leading to the Asian American Movement. The movement fought for greater economic, political, and social equality.
As WWII challenged white supremacy, the Chinese immigrants in America suddenly were seen as a useful tool. A year after Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066 to incarcerate Japanese Americans, Congress repealed the Chinese Exclusion Act (De Leon). Repealing the Chinese Exclusion Act was not because people believed the act was wrong but because they needed unity against the Japanese and Axis powers. “A host of stakeholders” (Wu 2) decided that Asian Americans’ role in the U.S. would simply be “the model minority–a racial group distinct from the white majority, but lauded as well-assimilated upwardly mobile, politically nonthreatening, and definitively not-black.” Americans finally started treating Asians with respect primarily due to political reasons. The revived entrance of Chinese immigrants into America showed the world that America was a great, interracial, non-discriminatory superpower that was utterly different from the Axis powers. In the post-war era, discrimination against races was detrimental to America’s reputation on the world stage, so to win more allies during the Cold War, select Asian American success stories were emphasized and turned into propaganda (Guo). In contrast, less successful Asian American stories were diminished. “According to historian Ellen Wu, embracing Asian Americans “provided a powerful means for the United States to proclaim itself a racial democracy and thereby credentialed to assume the leadership of the free world” (qtd. in Guo). This is why Asians went from “reviled and underpaid laborer class in the first half of the twentieth century to earning wages in line with white workers in the second half” (Mcgrit). The United States rebranded Asian Americans as a hardworking and accomplished as a tactic to “denigrate African Americans”, and minimized the potential impact of the Civil Rights movement (Guo).
First, the model minority myth ignores the differences in economic status among various groups of Asian Americans, making false generalizations. For example, “As of 2016, the top 10th percentile of Asian Americans earns 10.7 times as much as the bottom 10th percentile, compared with 9.8 for black earners and 7.8 for both Hispanic and white earners. Indeed, in New York City, Asians experience the highest poverty rates of any immigrant group” (“The Model”). This is the largest income gap of any racial group despite having the highest median income of any racial group. Pay disparities also play into the large gaps in economic status. Research shows that “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” (Blackburn). From 21 cents above every dollar the average white man makes to 38 cents below, one could hardly call the diverse Asian community equal or even similar enough to be grouped under the same category. A New York Times article also plotted the “median household income and education according to country of origin, revealing Indian Americans to have the highest levels on both accounts. Meanwhile, Burmese, Hmong, Laotian, and Cambodian Americans lag behind other Asian Americans on these indicators” (“The Model”). If Asian Americans truly were the model minority, there would not be such significant ranges in income. Holding Asians up to this myth ignores and invalidates all the struggles and advocacy necessary for Asian Americans who do not fit within the model minority group.
The model minority myth also drives apart marginalized groups and even other members of the Asian community. Asian Americans are often seen as foreigners in America, yet the model minority myth falsely suggests that they can blend in with white people in a country that has a history of white supremacy. As a result of attempting to side with whites, “anti-Black (and anti-brown and anti-Native) racism runs deep in Asian-American communities. Immigrants and refugees…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…Asian Americans, while actively critical of anti-Asian racism, have not always stood up against anti-Black racism” (Nguyen). The model minority myth aids Asian Americans in blending in with white people in hopes of becoming American without too much commotion and hopes to receive less discrimination. This separation between marginalized groups slows the overall progress of all minorities advocating for equal rights and fighting back against racism. Divide between groups is not simply a problem between different races. It also exists among Asian Americans. According to Young Hun Pak, a Korean American student, “Korean parents distanced themselves from Southeast Asians because they believed that many Southeast Asians received public assistance and they did not want to be associated with people who might be perceived as welfare sponges…[Disidentification] has historically been practiced by Asian groups who did not want to suffer the consequences of being mistaken for the targeted Asian group” (qtd. in Lee 29). Japanese Americans have been put through different types of racisim and discrimination compared to Chinese Americans, whose history of discrimination is different from Vietnamese Americans. This varied discriminatory experience also caused the Asian community to be extremely separated from each other, without one specific common thing uniting them.
The model minority myth greatly harms Asian Americans’ mental health because it encourages silence among Asian Americans so they can better live up to the expected stereotype and makes it harder for non-Asians to notice any mental illnesses. The shooter from the 2007 Virginia Tech University shooting, Cho Seung-Hui, was viewed as unusually quiet. Despite many warning signs of a mental illness, people with authority who could take action mostly ignored him (Chou 2). As a child, he had trouble learning English, making it hard for him to adapt to his predominantly white environment. He was also an easy target at school and white students often teased him (Chou 3). Although Cho seems to have been an outcast, his parents’ success in business and his sister’s success as a Princeton graduate made his family seem like the very stereotypical Asian family who is living the American dream despite difficulties. Due to the model minority myth, an Asian family like Cho’s is deemed ‘normal’, by both non-Asians and Asians alike, making it much more difficult for community members to notice mental health red flags. The ‘model minority’ label heavily pressures Asian Americans to conform to the white-dominated culture by living up to their expectations. Similarly, Mei Mei, an Asian American student at Academic High school, says, “When you get bad grades, people look at you really strangely because you are sort of distorting the way they see an Asian. It makes you feel really awkward if you don’t fit the stereotype” (qtd. Lee 68). After exams, Mei Mei would announce that she had failed if she got anything below an A, as that is what she considers a failing grade. The model minority myth sets these expectations for “acceptable” behavior from Asian students so much that they feared not living up to these standards would mean they’re a failure and deemed “unacceptable”.
Additionally, the model minority myth pressures all Asian Americans to be smart and successful. People believe that “many Asian Americans, irrespective of their individual aptitude and social class origins, have it in their cultural DNA to become highly accomplished doctors, engineers, mathematicians, scientists, and business executives” (Bhatia). This quote ignores the work Asians put in due to pressure from the model minority myth. Shu Yuan Chang’s survey showed that “on arrival, 79 percent of survey participants entered with student visas, 8 percent came as immigrants, 6 percent as exchange scholars” (Hsu 218-9). Entering as students set a precedent to be hardworking since they had put in so much effort to study abroad. The large number of Asian students pouring into America also could have aided the credibility of the model minority myth. Even today, there is an ongoing flow of Asian students entering America with student visas, and “the drive for success is particularly strong among foreign-born Asian Americans” (“Chapter”). This further enforces the model minority myth and pressurizes students to live up to their expectations and prove their worth in staying in America after graduation. According to the economist and Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, “Asian knowledge workers and entrepreneurs are welcome to become Americans” (qtd. Hsu 247). To become an American citizen as an Asian immigrant, one is more likely to get approved if they are educated and already accomplished. The pressure doesn’t stop there. Asian American parents’ opinions of American parents differed based on education. Although “66% of Asian-American college graduates say [most American parents don’t put enough pressure on their children], compared with 50% of those with a high school diploma or less)” (“Chapter”), even parents who do not have a college degree agree that American parents do not pressure their children enough. The model minority myth plays a key role in Asian parents’ opinions because they feel the need for their children to also prove their worth to stay in America.
Although many may believe that the Asian community is shielded from racism by the model minority myth, it does not actually protect Asian Americans from racism. “Yang Zhenning held a prominent faculty position at Princeton’s Institute for Advanced Study,” but “despite his educational credentials and high status, Yang personally experienced discrimination” (Hsu 127). Despite this, many Asian Americans believe that the way to be respected in American society is to earn it through good grades and career success. “A look at the academic rankings for the class of 1989 and the class of 1990 reveals that the majority of students in the top ranks are white and Asian” (Lee 85). However the model minority myth, however, adds another layer to Asian students’ academics. Media, schools, and communities often only highlight Asian American students as academically successful people who win competitions, earn valedictorians, and attend Ivy League schools, but this excludes students who don’t do so well in school and are heavily impacted by the success of their peers. When Stacey Lee suggested to Ming, a struggling Asian American student, to attend tutoring sessions, “Ming shook his head and said that he would not even consider attending these sessions. Ming said it would be embarrassing to reveal his academic difficulties and that Asians did not talk about their problems” (Lee 70). These ideas did not only exist in underachieving students’ heads though. Jane, another student at Academic High, did not believe that there were Asian students who struggled with academics, and “she responded by insisting that Koreans were “still smarter than other kids.” She and her friends denied the fact that there were Koreans who were experiencing academic difficulties” (Lee 66). The model minority myth creates great disparities between overachieving and underachieving Asian students, even to the point where it promotes ignorance from overachieving students toward underachieving students.
Many Asian Americans cope with the model minority myth by attempting to establish a sense of community. Anti-Asian racism and murder usually unify the Asian American community which is mostly detached from each other. For example, “The murder of Vincent Chin, killed in 1982 by white Detroit autoworkers who mistook him for Japanese, remains a rallying cry.” (Nguyen). In the aftermath of Vincent Chin, the Asian community’s lawyers and community leaders bonded together and created American Citizens for Justice to protest Judge Charles Kaufman’s sentencing of Chin’s murderers. This motivated other Asian Americans to hold their own demonstrations and showed them that, they too, have the right to protest. “These protests resulted in the first federal civil rights trial for an Asian American” (Bates), a significant precedent that showed Asian Americans that if they fight for it, their voices can be heard too.
The disconnect among members of the Asian American community and lack of Asian cultural and political presence hinders Asian advocacy in America. Even to this day, “[Stacey J. Lee’s] research reveals that there is significant intragroup variability among Asian American students. Asian Americans do not see themselves as being the same; they do not share a common attitude regarding future opportunities or toward schooling” (Lee 64). This, in addition to the variety of cultures and appearances in Asian countries makes it harder for collective activism in the Asian American community. “Without a collective history of activism like that found in the black community, Asian professionals experiencing discrimination in education or the workplace often lack the cultural tools to advocate for themselves and suffer in silence” (qtd. in Mcgrit). Although change is slowly coming with more Asians standing up for themselves, “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” (Nguyen). Asian Americans’ lack of further activism and still being seen as foreigners is a reason for ongoing anti-Asian hate crimes and microaggressions. Not being proactive towards social injustice further supports the model minority myth of perfect Asians conforming to white society. Until Asian Americans can overcome their differences and unite together, perhaps even with other minorities, there will be no way to defeat racism and discrimination in America, as hard as one may try.
Although people may believe that the model minority is no longer a myth due to the academic success of Asian Americans, COVID-19 highlighted an entirely different story. When the United States shut down in 2020 due to the coronavirus pandemic, many politicians used racial terms and blamed the pandemic on China. Such remarks caused a surge of hate crimes and violence against all Asians. In March 2021, “on the same day that Stop AAPI Hate released a report recounting more than 3,700 incidents of anti-Asian hate, a gunman killed eight people in the Atlanta area, including six Asian and Asian American women. Not even a month later, another gunman attacked a FedEx facility with a staff that was 90% Sikh, killing four Sikh Americans and four others” (Hatcher). In addition to outright violence, Asian Americans consistently face microaggressions from the majority such as complimenting on accentless English or asking if there was an easier name that they could pronounce. Many Asian Americans would agree that “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…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” (Nguyen). Many Asian Americans still feel a sense of estrangement and the feeling of being foreign.
The model minority myth harms Asian Americans’ mental health and economic prosperity while also overlooking the diversity in various Asian American groups. Furthermore, it racially divides minorities in the U.S. by ignoring the discriminatory history, enabling further racism, and putting a wedge among all minorities. When I was in sixth grade, I begged to be placed in the pre-algebra math track because that was simply what most Asian Americans at my school took in sixth grade. In seventh grade, my Algebra 1 class of 30 students was approximately 30% Asian American. One day, we received back our unit test, and I had only received a B because I pushed myself too hard in sixth grade, hoping to fit in with the model minority myth of “all Asians are good at math.” Since everyone was sharing their scores, I, like Mei Mei from the example above, complained that I had failed the test. Everyone within earshot then proceeded to ask me if I was even Asian because I did not get an A. Other students joked about it, saying, “What do you call an A-sian who doesn’t get A’s? A ‘B-sian’”. I laughed along and pretended not to care, but inside I felt like I was not worthy enough to call myself Chinese yet not be good at math. Many Asian American students still believe that not living up to expectations would be their own fault, and it would disgrace their families. In the Joy Luck Club, child chess prodigy Waverly was worried about losing chess tournaments and disappointing her mother, to which her mother said, “Is shame you fall down nobody push you” (Tan 98).
Jincheng Zhao is a junior from Maryland, and she is passionate about advocacy, social justice, as well as psychology. She showcased her organization, Sex Education For All, at UCA’s Youth organization showcase this summer. In her spare time, she loves to read, travel, and hang out with her friends, but you can often find her rowing on the Potomac river. She wrote this article in hopes of bringing light to the consequences of the model minority myth and not just what seems to be beneficial.