Asian Americans are often stereotyped as studious, successful, smart — a model minority who excel in education and accomplish the “American Dream.” Despite its positive overtones this stereotype is damaging for Asian Americans and other students of color. The model minority myth
pits students of color against each other and ignores the reality of systemic racism that Asian Americans continue to encounter. In response, USC Pacific Asia Museum has partnered with the USC Asian Pacific American Student Assembly (APASA), to collect stories from Asian and Pacific American students that deal with this stereotype everyday. Below are individual stories, told anonymously, to help debunk, the model minority
myth. In partnership with: USC Asian Pacific American Student Assembly I just learned recently that a white man created the term “model minority” to describe Japanese Americans as a way of pitting them against Black Americans. Japanese Americans were terrified
that they would be put in concentration camps again and thus went through life as quietly as they could. My ancestors had to go through hell and then pretend it didn’t happen. Now Asian Americans have to deal with this term unfairly and act a certain way (studious, quiet, smart, nerdy) or else they’re looked down upon. This term and its history must be publicized so that people can be educated that its purpose is to divide POC and pit us against each other when we should be banding together and
uniting to fight our oppression. The model minority myth invalidated my feelings of otherness. In high school I did the stereotypical “Asian” things I thought I was supposed to do–play violin in orchestra, take as many AP classes as possible even at the expense of my mental health, and replace friends with columns of A’s on my report card. I thought my deteriorating mental
health and overall feelings of unhappiness were normal and even expected, because as an Asian American person I wasn’t entitled to have problems. Up until now I couldn’t even consider myself a person of color because my heritage seemed so marginalized that I should just be grateful for my “privilege” and gaslight my own experiences with racism. The model minority myth taught me how to code switch from elementary school onward–act white enough that I wouldn’t make my white classmates
uncomfortable, and tokenize my Asian-ness when it was deemed socially acceptable. I learned self-hatred through the model minority myth. I couldn’t understand why all my effort to be the perfect student in school ultimately couldn’t stop my neighbor from calling my parents “Chinese virus” at the first opportunity for socially acceptable racism. Since coming to USC I’ve been able to begin embracing my culture through support from APASS and other empowered Asian American students, but I wish I had
been able to recognize earlier that my self-hatred didn’t stem directly from myself, but rather the white supremacist society that taught me that my “privilege” could and should simultaneously oppress me as well.
East Asian-American identity.
What groups are minorities?There are seven key minority groupings: Latinos (including Puerto Ricans), African Americans, Asian Pacific Americans, Arab and other Middle Eastern Americans, Native Americans, Native Hawai'ians, and Inuit and Alaska Natives. In most cases, these groupings include several distinct subgroups.
What are the four major minority groups?The growth of the African American, Hispanic, Asian, and American Indian populations is profoundly changing the racial and ethnic makeup of the country's schools, workplaces, and neighborhoods, and it is creating a new multiracial and multicultural heritage in the United States.
Who is considered a minority?A minority in the territory of a State means it is not the majority. Objectively, that means that an ethnic, religious or linguistic group makes up less than half the population of a country.
What is the one defining feature of a minority group?Sociologist Louis Wirth (1945) defined a minority group as “any group of people who, because of their physical or cultural characteristics, are singled out from the others in the society in which they live for differential and unequal treatment, and who therefore regard themselves as objects of collective ...
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