“You’re the Model Minority until You’re Not”

http://professorshih.blogspot.com/2015/04/youre-model-minority-until-youre-not.html

Officer Liang’s controversy led to conversations about the model minority narrative/ Asian American history in relation to the Black Community. The discourse in this article confronts “positive stereotypes.”

Quotes from article:

“My students sometimes aren’t sure how to feel about “positive” stereotypes of Asian Americans. What’s wrong with being known as educated, hard-working, and law-abiding? The problem with positive stereotypes is the same problem with negative ones: the dominant group gets to decide what they are. It decides who gets to be a part of the favored racial group and why. What this means is that you’re the model minority until you’re not. ”

“The history of Chinese Americans is a crash course on the social construction of race in America. Stereotypes come and go. From the beginning of significant Chinese immigration during the California gold rush to the present, Chinese Americans have been racialized as undesirable or desirable depending on circumstances at home and abroad. The Exclusion era, the World War 2 era, and the Korean War era all racialized Chinese Americans differently according to the historical needs of white supremacy. It took the Civil Rights Movement to shift the social meanings of Chinese Americans once again. Like negative stereotypes, the model minority stereotype is also a tool of white supremacy.”

“The model minority stereotype has always been less about praising Asian people than it has been about shaming black people.”