the model minority myth

Guriaking has a great post up discussing the class politics and history of the model minority myth in response to  the Wall Street Journal bandwagon that’s cropped up in the past few weeks:

“I’m not really going to talk about the WSJ article further in this post. I’m going to use it as a jumping point to talk about the model minority myth, which I view as incredibly dangerous in the ways it serves to reinforce destructive hierarchies, both in the states and abroad. As the Atlantic article stated, it divides “communities of color while obscuring the realities of the Asian-American experience.”

One of those realities is that while the second wave of Asian immigration might have led to predominantly skilled professionals coming to the states, in both the first and third waves, it was non-professional Asians that formed a significant portion of those migrating.

Another of those realities is that the idea of Asians as the model minority did not emerge until the second wave of Asian immigration, after the Immigration Reform Act of 1965. This, along with the seven point preference system that was gradually put in place, tried to ensure that only a trickle of Asian immigrants would be let into the country, and that they would mainly comprise of the skilled, professional class. (Globalization made the need for slave, sweatshop labor in the states less pressing; slave, sweatshop labor overseas more than compensated for it.) The two main articles that began the model minority myth were “Success Japanese-American Style”, written for the New York Times Magazine, and “Success Story of One Minority Group in the US” (focusing on Chinese Americans), written for the US News and World Report. Both articles were written by white men, and were published in 1966, as a response to the Civil Rights movement. They were meant to prove, implicitly and explicitly, that there was no institutionalized discrimination, that the American Dream could be had by people of all races and nationalities.

Another of those realities is that the third, current wave of Asian immigration has brought a substantial number of undocumented immigrants from Asia to the states, as well as domesticworkers, as well as refugees from Bhutan, Burma, and certain other Southeast Asian countries who were forced to relocate as a direct or indirect result of American intervention in Vietnam. A high percentage of these Asian American families currently live below the poverty line.

Another of those realities is that even the highly-skilled middle-class immigrants that come from Asia, because of racism and other inequalities, sometimes end up in working-class jobs in the states. That the statistics that are supposed to prove the model minority myth have been deliberately, systematically distorted.

Another of those realities is that this population of lower-income Asian Americans is the most ignored economic subset of the Asian American population, in popular American media as well as popular Asian media, while being the most at risk among the Asian population in the states, while bearing the brunt of racism and classism and xenophobia of Western society (and, it should be noted, sometimes their own).[1]

The major concerns a lot of lower-income Asian Americans have are not, as this post notes, parents that make them spend hours mastering Western musical instruments, but having enough money for the essentials. The major obstacle they face is not the glass ceiling, but finding work at all, and the work they do find being limited to minimum-wage unskilled labor – that is, if they are lucky enough to be documented. (And this is true even in Silicon Valley, because while there might be a few Asian American men and women earning millions heading some of these start-ups, and English-speaking workers earning a decent wage in the front office, in the back, where they are doing the painstaking mind-numbing manual labor, it is usually working-class Asian and Latino immigrant women. And we are not talking about an insignificant part of the workforce here, we are talking about, at one point in time, 70% of all the electronic manufacturing jobs in Silicon Valley, and that is not even getting into the other domestic unskilled manual labor minimum-wage jobs that are required in every city. There are a lot of reasons that I am appalled when people portray California as some type of poc utopia; this paragraph doesn’t even begin to cover it.)

This is not even getting into issues such as domestic violence, which because of the entrenchment of the model minority myth is rarely ever addressed in Asian American communities, or tensions between other racial groups arising from the model minority myth, or the way incidences of racism towards Asian Americans are ignored and trivialized, or the ways the pressure to live up to this model minority myth lead to high rates of depression and suicide, etcetcetc.

What it all boils down to, in the end, is often this. As an Asian American, you can either be a model minority – i.e., be almost as good as a privileged white person, be almost deserving of the American part of that identity – or you can be invisible, or you can be mocked/condescended to/despised.[2]

One of the consequences of the first option (of being almost able to pass for white, of being almost deserving of the American part of the AsAm identity) is that you also become a weapon against less assimilated minority communities and people, a misleading statistical point that the privileged majority can use to deny that there is such a thing as global hierarchies, such a thing as institutionalized racism and American xenophobia, at the same time that they are decrying the laziness and backwardness and dangerousness of certain groups and communities (some of which you are still a part of). In other words, you become a weapon that the privileged majority uses against yourself.”

Julianne Hing also has a post up entitled, “Tiger Mothers” Are Driven by U.S. Inequity, Not Chinese Culture”.

 Other bloggers have articulated the class dimensions of it by pointing to the  class privilege involved in the lifestyle portrayed in the article.

          As others have noted, the unwarranted level of controversy and bandwagon effect surrounding the article (and its author, as she’s apparently gotten death threats) is mind-numbingly intertwined with the nationalistic hype around the “rising Asian giants” narrative that operates in lieu of actual economic analysis about poverty and wealth divides within societies as well as global north/south divides. Others have also pointed out the obvious in terms of the Wall Street Journal being what it is, as a conservative, mainstream source that grabbed attention quite effectively by selectively editing and reviving a long-critiqued cliché. As a personal tidbit, I recently gained and lost a last-minute gig for BBC radio weighing in on the whole bandwagon that has arisen from the publishing (and apparent selective editing) of this article, as the studio cabs couldn’t arrive on time and my computer was in for repairs. Sitting at home and listening to how the radio segment played out was pretty infuriating, as it predictably wound up being a stage for particular racial/nationalistic anxieties to play out. One white mother argued that America is more humane to students who don’t get all As than China, while a cantankerous older white man rehashed the whole, “The Chinese are getting ahead! Time to discipine these little slacker punks at home!” argument. And of course, the concept of Asian American or diasporic Asian populations existing didn’t enter the picture.  The WSJ reinforced simplistic conceptions of “culture” as monolithic, static and mutually exclusive by reviving the cliche of “East versus West”.       

we can share our endorphins

The phrase “blogging effort” is a perfect one. Blogging takes so much out of you and is a second job.

You can’t blog if you don’t care. You can’t blog if you don’t care enough. You can’t write if you don’t feel and let that feeling run through your fingers and spread. Ernest Hemingway wasn’t lying about writing being a hemorrhage of the soul.

My first job — the one that pays my bills, permits me to take care of myself, and allows me to care for my mom — takes a lot out of me. But right now, it is not giving me the positive energy that blogging used to give me. I feel disconnected and recycled right now, even though I know I am in a place where I am needed. But others’ needs aren’t enough.

A wise woman once wrote that the best gift you can give to yourself, as a principle of self-care, is to hold yourself accountable to someone else. Anyone else. Another way of saying it is your word is your bond. To thine own self be true. Same principle, different words.

Although I have no desire to succeed in this world because of how corrupt and plain ridiculous it is, I do care about the people it tramples and suppresses to continue its rampant inequality and debasement. And I write. If I can’t write about me, can’t write poetry, can’t write fiction, can’t write ANYTHING at given points, I have to look inside and hold myself accountable to those people by writing about them, to them, and with them.

Compassion is a good skill to have; but it takes practice and constant vigilance.

Tunisian Revolution Links Roundup

Hello again, I have been remiss for a lengthy period of time as a co-blogger. I think years, actually. Feel free to respond, critique, etc (unless you have a taste for trolling). Perhaps I should reintroduce myself; to oversimplify, I identify as a woman of color blogger based in the US and an earnest dork.

Muslimah Media Watch: Women in Tunisia’s Revolution via la_vie_noire

“Yes, social networks had a huge role to play, as did bloggers and sites such as Nawwat. However, to suggest that social media “caused” the revolution, is ridiculous to say the least, and to call this the first Wikileaks revolution is to suggest the Tunisians were not informed of what was going on in their own country and needed to be told that the Trabelsi clan was corrupt. It also ignores the role of pan-Arab satellite TV, which was at least as important as the internet, as was recognized when activists acknowledged Al Jazeera for its part in presenting the story as a people’s struggle, rather than dismissing it as “unrest” over unemployment.

In focusing on the new media and its part in the uprising, the English-language media has diverted attention away from the people in the street, other than as an undifferentiated mass of angry Arab men. With so many deaths, and the revolt starting in more conservative regions, perhaps there were initially few women on the street. The lack of attention to the role of women may partly be because Tunisia’s revolution focused on issues, with little attention paid to the importance of circulating images of “liberated” women to get the West on its side. In Lebanon’s Cedar Revolution, activists consciously created a particular image of liberal secular youth in revolt, a campaign one blogger extended to Tunisia recently, in a compilation of “Tunisia’s revolution babes.” Obviously, Tunisia’s revolution babes do not include older women or the hijabis, who were excluded from public spaces during the regime and had one more cause to celebrate the fall of Ben Ali.”

New York Times Finally Deigns to Cover Tunisia

“…apologists for U.S. militarism – the neocons still flourishing in both places, special forces addicts – argued in Ben Ali’s defense. Theirs is not particularly convincing logic but it has carried the day for nearly a decade now: that Ben Ali is/was a faithful ally in the war on terrorism, that he has cooperated with the U.S. in numerous (mostly insidious) ways in violation of international law, has cooperated with U.S. attempts to establish AFRICOM, etc. And as strategic support for U.S. military plans in the region trump human rights concern every time, the Obama Administration should ‘hold the line’ in Ben Ali’s defense.

Nor was the issue resolved by the way. U.S. foreign policy might think in terms of military pre-emption to neutralize potential long term competitors, be they Iran or China, but diplomatically in the case of Tunisia, Washington is trailing, not shaping events. Indeed what stands out in all this is how helpless both Washington and Paris have been to coax the crisis in Tunisia in one direction or another. And it was only when, in reality, there was virtually nothing left of Ben Ali’s regime, nothing left to support, only after those remaining fragile threads on which his legitimacy rested had frayed and then snapped – that administration hawks had to concede defeat.

And so Defense unshackled State which suggested that the New York Times shift gears and get on the Tunisia story, but even then there were ‘stipulations’, ‘parameters’…

• Ok to go heavy on the economic crisis, ‘democratic deficiency’ and the corruption of the Ben Ali/Trabelsi families but…
• If possible, ‘go light’ on how Tunisia is an IMF/World Bank structural adjustment utter failure and not the “success story”, or “African lion” it has so often been portrayed.
• Go even lighter, if possible avoid mentioning/exploring the implication of US-Tunisian security arrangements.”

 What’s Happening in Tunisia: Islamism vs. Secularism via colorblue

“Some of the statements Times journalists have recently made have been stunningly inaccurate. Here’s part of it:

Tunisia is far different from most neighboring Arab countries. There is little Islamist fervor there, it has a large middle class, and under Mr. Ben Ali and his predecessor, Habib Bourguiba, it has invested heavily in education. Not only are women not required to cover their heads, they enjoy a spectrum of civil rights, including free contraception, that are well beyond those in most countries in the region.

For a list of the Arab countries that do not mandate that women cover their heads, how’s this?: Mauritania, Morocco, Algeria, Libya, Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Oman, Yemen, and Bahrain. That’s 15 countries, including the most populous, Egypt.”

The Tunisian Revolution: Initial Reflections: ”The revolution begins at the point when an act of someone burning himself appears as an act that anyone can identify with, rather than as an expression of personal pathology or insanity.” 

Good grief, here’s an example of some of the mess that is passing for journalism in the US.