Model Minority Problem

Posted on Wednesday, 14 December

@KING__ADROCK I was trying to say that it’s use now to explain Asian American success doesn’t truly show the prime motivation for that success, which is success measured on how close you can act or be white; based on how far away you can be from your ethnic heritage and accept whiteness, or assimilate, as the best framework for living. Like you said before, no one cares about the pho restaurant chefs and owners, but we’re ready to tell everyone about our doctor or engie family members, something historically presented as a successful, white career. It’s use now, I think, presents the model minority label as something inherent to the Asian American experience as if it is part of their own culture and thus further solidifies the racial hierarchy going down, which I think is problematic if we want to address the real issues of institutional racism. Furthermore, it’s divisional in the Asian American community because we see Asian Americans who live out the model minority ideology as good and representative of our community, and ignore those who don’t live that out and even demonize them and chastise them (ie why the term “fob” exists). 

On the flip side, it explains why people who divulge in their ethnic community or ethnic self are seen as deviants, problematic, racist. They aren’t acting as model minorities and thus are un-American, unpatriotic, and unnecessary (see: Arizona). As an example, using model minority in this sense would explain why people make fun of fake African-sounding Black names within the African American communities. They weren’t acting as model minorities, ie not naming their kids Steve, John, Matt, and instead elected to divulge in make African sounding names and it’s mostly seen as a joke.

I think all minorities can use the term model minority to better explain the definition of success through whiteness and/or European frameworks for living on an individual level, if not only to serve as a check to show how much power white society truly has over us. This better shows the push to assimilate, to be and look white, to define yourself through the lens of white success, to date white men/women, etc. It’s closely tied to the idea of hegemony, but I think the term model minority better explains your relation to yourself, to whiteness, and your ethnic community and how you define yourself, rather than a power structure acting on you to further support it’s form and function. While the idea of cultural hegemony only explains how white anglo-saxon thought has power over us as statement as fact, being or not being a model minority explains one’s own actions, one’s own perception and own interpretation of this fact and it’s effect on their body.

I didn’t get this anywhere, it’s just my own criticism of the term and use. Maybe someone else already wrote about this, I dunno.