'Model Minority' Myth Sets Unfair Expectations
By Kristine Yen
Opinions Writer

Why is racism constantly being discussed on this campus? What, exactly, is the point of groups like PDAC, SCRAP, Ujima, CLSA, and AAMP? After all, as one of my classmates asserted to me confidently last semester, “talking about racial issues only aggravates the problem.” In fact, he and a fellow Caucasian male agreed that racism really doesn’t affect us anymore, especially not on Pomona’s lovely and wonderfully politically correct campus.

I must admit that this classmate had a point, because if we don’t raise awareness of racial inequality, most victims of it remain silent, or even unaware that the structure of society can be different. Until I went through a series of workshops for Asian American Mentor Program (AAMP) training, I had never been fully aware of how subtle and powerful the racism within the structure of American society was. Before I was educated, I was unable to identify the oppressive power I felt subject to in certain situations as exactly what it was: oppression. I’m not going to claim that I have been spit on, beaten, or even ignored on our campus. However, wearing my Chinese American identity plainly on my face has had its obvious repercussions.

While most Pomona students were enjoying their last few weeks of summer vacations, various groups such as RHS, the sponsors, and AAMP mentors returned early for their respective training experiences. During that week and a half, the groups joined together for discussions of racism, racial identity, and other social inequality issues that exist on our campus and in our society. “Model minority” was a term born in the 1960s to describe Asian Americans. Asian Americans were an archetypal minority community, one that other minority groups were supposed to model themselves after. Asian Americans were seen as hardworking, gifted in math and natural sciences, economically successful, and most importantly, submissive and willing to bear the lashes of racism and work to prove themselves to the white community.

Why, you might ask, would this be negative? Shouldn’t I, as a Chinese American woman, be glowing at the success of my racial group? Shouldn’t we be grateful that generations of quiet struggle and diligence have earned us recognition by the white majority? As one of the sponsors confessed, it is difficult to rid ourselves of these stereotypes of Asian Americans because so many of them seem to be positive. First, I would like to stress that there is no such thing as a one hundred percent positive or true stereotype. By virtue of being a stereotype, this idea attempts to generalize the characteristics of a few members of a group to the entire group. Even if this stereotype is of a “positive” characteristic it still harms at least some members of the group. For example, the stereotype that all Asian Americans study hard and achieve good SAT scores paved the way for quotas and biased rejections from colleges by establishing the image of the Asian American student as a nerd, a flat student who lacks extracurricular interests.

The ramifications of the model minority myth have been a plague upon the Asian American community. Young Asian American students experience expectations from their math and science teachers that students of other races don’t need to face. The existence of this math and science stereotype gives Asian Americans two options in their academic career: to either prolong the stereotype by being successful, or to disappoint the stereotype and be an anomaly to his or her teachers, parents, fellow students, etc. While white students have the luxury of deciding their academic and extracurricular interests, Asian American students are pressured to either perform well in math or to struggle to prove themselves in other areas of study. As a Chinese American, I need to prove myself to humanities teachers or editors to earn the basic respect that white students enjoy automatically.

Asians face resentment from both the white community and other minority communities because of their perceived affluence, even though in 1998 Asian Americans had the lowest per capita income of any ethnic group (C.N. Le 2000). Moreover, Asian Americans are comprised of many ethnicities and backgrounds that cannot be generalized. I have yet to meet a student who can name all of the countries in Asia. Asians Americans are an easy target of racial jokes since they have a reputation for not rebelling or crying out against injustice. Which student on campus can honestly say that they have never heard anyone speak in “Chinese”, ‘ching chong chang’ or other gibberish? September 13’s hypnotism show at the SCC open house included a stint where a hypnotized student was speaking such “Chinese.” Because of their supposedly subdued nature, Asian Americans bear the brunt of racial jokes more so than other groups who are stereotyped to be more outspoken and actively defensive. More critically, Asian Americans make up the fastest growing number of victims of hate crimes, also due to their perceived weakness and vulnerability.

Education and increasing awareness about racial identity and social injustices will “aggravate” the issues, but only by bringing to the light the injustices that already exist.