Model Minority - Tumblr Posts

model minority be like: ah yes you are well educated, polite, and you have a higher median income than most white people like

NO

i'm Viet & Viet people are on the lower end of Asian Americans.

my health insurance expires in a month, I qualified for free lunch, and I do poorly in school because of possible ADHD.

fuck that shit. it's just made so white people can push inferiority onto black and latine people and ignore the struggle of asian people.

stupid stupid

The "Model Minority"

Asian Americans seem to have it good, don’t they? After all, they are all smart, get high 90s, and go on to succeed in life. Or is it the opposite? Asian Americans are dirty yellow people who eat weird animals and steal your jobs.

Which one is it? The truth is, it’s neither of these. Asian Americans are a minority in the grand old U. S. of A who are held up to double standards impossible to achieve. They are hated. They are held superior to other minorities. And it is a problem.

Americans may choose to forget, but racism against Asians has been around since the 1850s, when Chinese immigrants were employed as cheap wage workers in gold mines, and given only half or less the wage they should have normally earned. Regardless of how little they were being paid, raucous shouts of “they’re stealing our jobs!” sounded in the depression of 1876. Does it sound similar to the slogans of today? For over 100 years, this dehumanising behaviour continued, from internment camps to violating boundaries in “pat downs” for immigrants. And not just towards the Chinese and Japanese. South Asians, Filipinos, Pacific Islanders, they were all subjected to the same disgusting treatment.

However, in the 1960s, there was a turning point. During the upheaval of the civil rights movement, the government pitted Asian Americans against Black Americans, pointing out how the Asian Americans were a “model minority” due to their docile behaviour and work ethic. Newspapers praised them, stating, “At a time when Americans are awash in worry over the plight of racial minorities — one such minority, the nation’s 300,000 Chinese Americans, is winning wealth and respect by dint of its own hard work … Still being taught in Chinatown is the old idea that people should depend on their own efforts — not a welfare check—in order to reach America’s ‘promised land.’”

By viewing Asian Americans as “more superior” than Black Americans, the harmful stereotype of successful Asians swimming in money and with kids that go to Harvard was born, along with causing a rift between the minorities.

But that’s all in the past, one can say. It’s different now. Really?

Modern films and books still portray stereotypes of Asian characters. The Chinese girl with striped bangs. The immigrant mom who will disown her daughter if she doesn’t get into Yale or Harvard by 18. The sexy Japanese girl who wears a kimono and provides sexual relief to the white protagonist. These tropes are all still alive and kicking, even in such “progressive” times. We must actively work to dismantle them.

The first way is to run films that include Asian Americans (or any BIPOC character, for that matter!) through the Luna Test, which was invented by Joshua Luna, a Filipino comic artist. The Luna test consists of 8 qualities, all targeting common racist tropes found in entertainment. If the film fails to meet any of these criteria, it contains content that portrays minorities in a harmful manner.

The second way is to include Asian, and Asian American history in history classes. After all, why only focus on the white history? There are always different points of views, and seeing the point of view of an Asian American during the second World War would certainly help students open their minds to actively dismantling racist stereotypes and to see the inequality that still continues in the world.

In order to create such a change, we must actively work towards educating teachers, film producers, and the world in general. If they can see what needs to be done, they can help teach our generation, and the next. Films that portray BIPOC characters in a positive manner are in dire need. If big studios like Sony or Warner Bros can’t give us that, it is up to independent film makers to rise up. To change the whole world, one must start with tiny actions like these that will create a domino effect until there are no more “model minorities” or harmful stereotypes.

SOURCES:

Starkey (2016), “Why We Must Talk About the Asian-American Story, Too”. The Undefeated.

Strochlich, (2020) “America’s Long History of Scapegoating its Asian Citizens” National Geographic.

ASIASOCIETY (2021) “Asian Americans Then and Now” Asia Society.

De Leon (2020), “The Long History of Racism Against Asian Americans in the US” PBS.

Luna, (2020) “Caste-ing Call”. Tumblr.

TVTropes (2021) “How Asiatic Can You Get?” TvTropes.