The term “model minority” came about in the 1960s in newspaper and magazine accounts of perceived Japanese American and Chinese American socioeconomic success. High levels of educational achievement, low rates of mental disorder and criminality, and job mobility were used as factors to measure this success. Subsequently, it was extended to Asian Americans as a whole. Characteristics attributed to the model minority-of hard work, thrift, family cohesion, deference to authority were explained by pointing to an undifferentiated, essentialized notion of “Asian culture.” These Asian values, it was argued, while still alien, were highly compatible with Anglo-American values, especially the Protestant work ethic. How did Asians, who had historically been subject to immigration exclusion, political disenfranchisement, various forms of discrimination, and physical violence as the “yellow peril,” become the model minority, seemingly overnight? Turning to the domestic and international historical context at this time sheds light on the apparent shift. In the 1960s, African Americans were actively challenging institutional racism through the civil rights struggle. The figure of the Asian American model minority was constructed as a conservative backlash against these activists, who were deemed to be unruly and underachieving. African Americans were told that if Asian Americans could succeed, why couldn’t they? A U.S. News and World Report article in 1966 presented a progressive account of the history of Asians in the United States, the road “from hardship and discrimination to become a model of self-respect and achievement in today’s America.” Asian American “success” was used as evidence to support the claim that American liberalism could indeed function as a multiracial democracy. Therefore, if the system is not flawed, it was argued, the fault must somehow lie with the African Americans themselves. If African Americans “worked” as hard as the Asian Americans, then surely they could become model minorities as well. Indeed, as reported by U.S. News and World Report, “At a time when it is being propose that hundreds of billions be spent to uplift Negroes and other minorities, the nation’s 300,000 Chinese-Americans are moving ahead on their own-with no help from anyone else.” So the figure of the model minority was less about Asian Americans per se and more a lesson to be learned by African Americans and a deflection away from the focus on the problem of institutional racism and racial inequality. It attempted to sublate the contradictions of the U.S. nationstate. Such a deflection was necessary not only for domestic race relations, but for Cold War international geopolitical relations as well. In the Cold War battle against communist totalitarianism, the United States was very concerned about its international image and sought to counter and mitigate charges of racism.

Jodi Kim, Ends of Empire: Asian American Critique and the Cold War (via dangerousidea)

RWSWJ / RAWJ

(via theblacknonblackdivide)