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Gwen Vang
Rodgers/Yonamine/Washington
Senior Inquiry
11 December 2015
Left in the Shadow of the Model Minority Myth
What is the number one thing that every immigrant family wishes to attain in the United
States? An education, a stable job, a big house, and a healthy family; the American Dream.
Families from different cultures and ethnicities choose to come to the United States because they
believe that America is a safe haven, a land of new opportunities. America was seen as a place
for them to earn money to send back home to their families and to secure a new prosperous
identity, both personal and national( The Asian American Dream). One group who has strongly
demonstrated that the American Dream can be attainable are the Asian-Americans. AsianAmerican graduates have the highest standardized test scores in the country and many of them
have been able to attain occupations in the medical and engineering fields. These positive
attributes have led society to believe that all Asian-Americans are independent, hardworking, and
ultimately the most highly successful minority group. Are all Asian-Americans equally and
successfully doing well? Whose voice is missing? Which Asian-Americans make up that
statistic? When the information is looked at a little deeper, the groups that make up a large
portion of the statistics are the Chinese-American, Japanese-American, Korean-American, and
Indian-American students. Southeast Asian students, such as the Cambodian, Hmong, Laotian,
and Vietnamese, have the lowest graduation rates and high dropout rates.
When the achievements of certain groups of the Asian-American population are over
glorified, it masks the struggles faced by the rest of the groups within this cluster. It dilutes the
diversity within this minority group and slowly turns them against one another. The idea of
youre better than them because you made it into our white society is what divides them. White

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society makes these groups feel power and privilege without actually giving it to them. This is
called the Model Minority myth. The myth is built upon the end result of their hard work and
perseverance; their initial struggles are dismissed because theyve proven that they have the
ability move up in society. Minorities have to work harder because they know that they initially
do not fit the norm, but they believe that with hard work theyll be able to be like the rest of
society.
Bill OReilly calls their success Asian Privilege (The Daily Show). His exact words
were, Asians make more money than whites. When challenged with the question, Which
Asians are you talking about? Where are they from? from the host, Jon Stewart, OReillys
response was, Asian-Americans, theyre from Asia. This was a part of the conversation as to
why Bill OReilly does not believe in white privilege. He argues that if there is white privilege,
there must be Asian privilege too, simply because of the fact that they can make more money.
White privilege is what allows him to say these things; it is because he bases his claims on an
individual level that he cannot see the system working with him.
What OReilly does not realize is that working hard does not earn privilege in the
American society. Working hard is what allows minorities to be able to obtain opportunities not
given to them because they do not belong to the most powerful dominant group in society, white
males. Privilege is only obtainable when you belong to the dominant group, which in this case,
the group Bill OReilly belongs to.
In addition, despite all of the proud notions of being able to be successful in this society,
in the end what is not explicitly stated is that Asian-Americans will always be the forever
foreigner (Lee, Unraveling the Model Minority Stereotype). It is a tattoo that becomes invisible
to the wearer, but it stands out to society like a sore thumb. An Asian-American can have all of

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the same materialistic things and success values as a white person, but they will always be
reminded, whether intentionally or unintentionally, that they do not belong in a society that is
catered towards the dominant group. The praise that this minority group is receiving for their
achievements is a contributor to the inability to see that they are being oppressed.
Nicholas Kristof, a columnist for The New York Times, believes that Asian immigrants
have started with one advantage; they are highly educated. What he fails to mention is that he
focused only on the Chinese-American, Japanese-American, Korean-American, and IndianAmerican students for this portion of his claim. Poverty is high in third world countries and
education is expensive, often it is only offered to boys.
He further supports his argument by insisting that the reason that Asian-American
students are, disproportionately, highly educated stems from the roots of Confucian emphasis on
education (Kristof, The Asian Advantage). 29.2 percent of the population in South Korea follows
the Christian faith and it was estimated in 2010 that approximately 9 million people in China
were followers of the Christian faith (PewResearch.org). Janelle Wong, professor of American
Studies at the University of Maryland, reminds us that in the mid-1800s when Asian immigrants
arrived as laborers in America, they were discriminated for their Confucian values; it was a
marker of racial and religious differences. White privilege reveals itself when society chooses
to show ignorance to a key part of its own history.
The message that is preached to Asian-American students is to stay in school and be
successful because thats how youll make it in this society. There is nothing wrong with being a
good student, but the students that are being told this message are students that are from higher
middle-class families within the featured groups that make up the statistics. The Southeast Asian
students that were mentioned earlier, a large portion of them come from low income families. It

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is common for them to be told to drop out to help support their families. It becomes a never
ending cycle of no progression for the other students. The odds are stacked higher against these
students because they face discrimination within their own group and white society standards.
Often it is hard for these students to share their experiences because they were taught to
keep to themselves and to not draw any unnecessary attention towards them. They are reluctant
because society has never asked them what they would like; instead society tries to fit them into
a box. Sometimes the box did not fit, but soon the student learns to form into the box through the
coaxing of white society standards.
Socialization plays a big role in how people interact with each other and how they react
to certain things. Asian-American students who become assimilated into white society and its
norms often lose touch with their original roots. They become blinded by the Model Minority
myth and adopt individualistic views on why members of their group cannot catch up in life with
them. The Model Minority myth is what fuels the pressure that Asian-American students feel
that they need to succeed in everything in order to be a part of the dominant and privileged
group. The myth is what the dominant group uses to control this minoritized group. Even though
one can earn a good job through good education and honesty, the reality is that everyone does not
start at the same place and others have it much harder. When the myth clumps all of the different
cultures and ethnicities within the Asian-American population, the rest of society is not getting
the true picture and it allows hatred and discrimination to grow. It is disheartening to see
members of the same minoritized group turn on each other because the myth separates them. Not
only does it create a problem within the same minoritized groups, too often the dominant group
puts Asian-Americans against other minoritized students and this causes hostility. This is also
another way that the dominant group controls their system, they make the minoritized groups

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stand against each other instead of standing in solidarity with each other. Systemic power is
strong and will need a larger force to break it apart.