Maria Wu Cen
ENG 2150, Dr. Blankenship
22 April 2016
Paper 2: Narrative Argument
Dear Dr. Blankenship and Writer’s Group:
The title of my paper is The Idealized Model Minority. The audience I’m writing to is Asian and Non- Asian American students, so students in general. This makes a difference in how I’m approaching my paper because I’m only focusing on education and students. My purpose is to raise the problem about the term “model minority” and how it plays a role in Asian American students. My thesis is racial stereotypes, such as that of the model minority, should not be perpetuated because although they appear to be positive stereotypes, they have many harmful effects on individuals. I support it in the following ways: I talk about my story and my background. I use a few outside sources to connect my argument with supporting details.
The hardest part of this project has been organizing and getting my thesis straight. Good writing does not come easy. My supporting details and examples/research are going well. My supporting details and examples/research are going well. My thesis is on point. I tried my best to fix up my organization by having transitional sentences. I believe my story was well-told as well.
The changes I made to my final draft after feedback are (in detail): I re- organized some part of my paper. I re-read my paper a few times and fix grammar issues. I changed the title of my paper because I thought it will emphasize or show my argument a bit better. I expanded on what a model minority is. I added a nice and juicy conclusion. I re-structure some of my sentences.
The Idealized Model Minority
I have heard many racial and stereotypical comments such as “Asians are good at math,” or “Chinese people are smart” as I was growing up. As a child, I never really understood where those ideas came from, but as I grew older and learned more about the problems in our society, I became aware of how social issues affect groups and individuals in our communities. Stereotypes that people hear and unconsciously absorb have a great influence on people’s attitudes towards education, on how they view themselves, and on their perspectives of the world. I noticed, through my own personal experiences, that people are raised to believe certain things about other races or ethnic groups. These general “facts” about racial groups of people are not necessarily true for all members of that group, and these stereotypes can hurt people in many ways. Racial stereotypes, such as that of the model minority, should not be perpetuated because although they appear to be positive stereotypes, they have many harmful effects on individuals.
The idea of the model minority was established by white elites in the 1960s (latimes.com). A model minority is a group whose members achieve more success than members of other groups. Whether or not that is true does not matter; it is the perceived success of the overall group that makes said group a “model minority.” “Asian” is a category that encompasses many different and diverse groups of people, but that one category is exalted by the model minority stereotype. A “typical” Asian, according to the stereotypes associated with this model minority, is someone who is studious, hard-working, bright, and talented, and greatly values education. In the United States, this stereotype highlights Asian-American success and misrepresents it as a proof of equal opportunity, when it is actually a burden on the Asian-American community. Non-Asian Americans today may use the model minority as an example of how there is equality for Asians in the U.S., and then avoid all conversation about the disadvantaged position Asians and Asian-Americans are put in. People may say, “Hey, it’s fair. Look at how well Asian-Americans are doing. There’s no inequality. You’re just seeing things that aren’t there.” But what they do not see is that Asians Americans work hard because they know they are put at disadvantage in America.
The reason why Asian Americans are considered economically successful is because in Asian culture, people are more stringent when it comes to spending and try to save money. They save even more money if they are immigrants who do not possess the things they did have back in their home country. For example, my parents have clothes they have worn for over ten years. My family would not be considered “dirt poor” and if my parents wanted to, they could afford to spend their entire paycheck on clothes and they would still be left with a good balance in their bank accounts. The reason they do not do that, is that they are saving up their money for their children–my siblings and me. They saved the money so that I could go to prep school and learn what they could not teach me at home.
Before understanding the harmful effects of model minority stereotype, I will talk about how I first realized how much that stereotype permeates my life. It may not matter what race I am, but my history and my background matters a great deal to who I am as a person. Behind every person is a unique story, and my story begins from my parents.
My parents migrated to America in the 1980s, hoping for a better future for my siblings and me. In China, they could have had less demanding jobs than they do here in the U.S., and they could have stayed in their home country, where all their friends were. However, they chose to come to America to build a better future for their children, and they sacrificed themselves by working low income jobs in sweatshops and laundry stores. My parents did not know English when they first arrived in the U.S., so they could not help their children with homework.
As a child, I only spoke Cantonese at home. My family and I loved to watch TVB dramas from Hong Kong, and so the characters in those dramas only spoke in Cantonese. Seeing as I was not raised in a setting that gave me exposure to English on a daily basis, my proficiency in English was not as strong as it should have been. When I was little, I was taught the importance of education. To explain, if I got below 80% on a test, it was a disgrace to my family. My mother would tell her friends and relatives, and this motivated me to care more about my grades and study harder. English was usually my weak point, and it still is one of my main weaknesses today especially in academic English. On report cards, my lowest grade was usually English. I was not at all confident in mastering the language, and this also affected my performance in other classes. In non-humanities related subjects such as science and math, there were sometimes written problems that we had to solve, and if I did not understand what a written problem was saying, I would get it wrong.
In other words, because of my parents’ limited proficiency in English, math was the only subject my mother could help me with. In kindergarten, when I was doing addition and subtraction, my mother would teach me to use my thumb to represent the number ten, and I would use my other fingers for the unit digit. For example, for the math problem “17+18,” the sum of the unit digits would be 15 so I carry the 1 over, and the answer is 35. She said that since we only have 10 fingers, when you try to add 7+5, you just give 3 to the 7 and put your thumb up. The thumb counts as 10 and you use your other 2 fingers, so the sum would be 12. The math made sense because after 10 fingers, there was nothing you could do but make a substitute for it.
Although my mother taught me math, I have to be honest and say that I did not like math as a child. I did not understand geometry at all. I did not grasp the concept of shapes and I wondered why a three sided thing was called a triangle. Later, I realized that I just had to accept it for what it was without questioning it. Once I got to middle school however, I began to love math, and I continued with my math education in high school and was accepted into the Math major. If I had not started from basic math again, I would not have understood math, and I definitely would not have loved math as I do now. Asians are not naturally good at math and are not the only group of people who excel in that subject. And so the model minority stereotype is proven wrong here because as an Asian-American, I was terrible at math, but over time I have learned to become better at it. Because my mother was not too confident in her English language ability, math literacy became something that she focused on as she raised me.
Aside from my parents not having sufficient English to help me with academic English, so we focused on math and I learned through trial and error, thinking back to elementary school I can see how the differences in allocating resources in education affecting the outcomes of different racial groups. At first, I went to P.S. 94, a large public school in Brooklyn where its student body was primarily made up of Hispanics and Chinese. There were usually fights during lunch, and we did not get a recess even though we had a backyard with basketball courts. We did not even have proper utilities, or supplies such as computers. Moreover, I remember that the carpet children had to sit on was filthy.
However, when I transferred to a mostly white school, the academic environment was completely different. I was able to use a laptop during my second week as a transfer student. For me, the transfer had both good and bad effects. At P.S. 94, I was not told how to use Microsoft Word and other applications on the computer, or taught how to do research, so I was struggling to learn all these new skills after transferring. Cleanliness was also dealt with differently at my new school. At lunchtime, the lunch tables were cleaned not by cafeteria workers, but by students at the school. This predominately white school “hired” student monitors to clean off the tables, and the students would get ice cream as a reward for their hard work.
This relates to Savage Inequalities, in which Jonathan Kozol compares two public schools in New York City and shows how there is a big difference between schools even within the same city. For example, students in a certain school in District 10 do not have basic access to white boards or other classroom materials. On top of that, there are broken windows and mold on the ceilings. On the other side of the world (Manhattan) is P.S. 24. Students in this school have more classroom space and fewer students in classes compared to the first school. It has been proven in scientific studies that the fewer the students in a class, the quicker and more easily they learn material.
Going back to my own experience in learning in two different schools, I realized the academic standards were substantially different. I learned Geometry in math, and it was nothing like what I learned at my old school (P.S. 94). I felt pressured because I was completely lost in class and did not even know where to begin. As a Chinese person, I was supposed to act in accordance to the stereotypes associated with being an Asian American. I was supposed to be intelligent when it came to academics. I was expected to be good at math. I was presumed to be like all the stereotypes associated with being a life member of this model minority. And yet, at the time, I did not meet those expectations because even when I was trying my best in math, I still failed, and my grades were not up to par.
Because of my struggles in school and the fact that my parents could not help me with my studies, my mother decided to have me go to a prep school with teachers to tutor me in math and English. I fell in love with my beloved teacher, Nancy Zeng. She understood the level that I was on and the pace I learned best with. Ms. Zeng started to teach me from the very basics. I then learn about shapes, the measures of angles, and later moved on to solving algebraic word problems. I have to say that without her, I would not have gotten a full score in my fifth grade math state test exam. I also got a “best in math” award. However, there was a disparity in the distribution of rewards: I received a piece of paper to acknowledge my hard work, but the boy who also got the “best in math” award received a trophy. This could be an issue of gender inequality, but that is a different topic so I will leave it at that.
In middle school, my friends would tell me “You’re Chinese, so you are definitely good at math,” or “You got this, you don’t even need to study for math because you’re Chinese.” I always told them that that meant nothing. If I did not study and review my notes, then I would not have made any progress, unless I had photographic memory (which I do not have). Secondly, I was not born to be good at math since I had to struggle with math in elementary school. I did not hear about the stereotype that Asians are good at math until middle school, and it was then that I realized I was a member of the model minority, though I did not know there was a term for it at the time.
Scientific research has also show how model minority stereotypes affect individual behavior. In “The Development of Math—Race Stereotypes: ‘They Say Chinese People Are the Best at Math’” Dario Cvencek explains how the author author conducted research studies and participated in observations of elementary school students and adolescents. The studies show that stereotypes are stronger when one learns them in adolescence rather than in elementary school. According to Cvencek, “Children are sensitive to academic stereotypes as early as second grade, but their awareness of stereotypes increases by early adolescence” (630). The stereotype in my case is that “Asian people are good at math,” and that affects the learning of all students, regardless of whether or not they are Asian. The article shows that once a student is exposed to stereotypes about a culture or identity, whether it be related to their own group or to other groups, these stereotypes become embedded in their thinking. In the study, some non-Asian students said they felt that Asians are superior in math and that it makes them less confident in themselves, and that lack of confidence led to a drop in their math scores (635). At the same time, even though the stereotype that “Asians are good at math” is viewed as a positive stereotype, this stereotype can have negative effects. Some students felt pressured because they have to live up to this kind of stereotype.
The model minority stereotype also denies some people opportunities even when they are qualified for it, because they are expected to be even better than members of other groups. The standards are raised for members of the model minority. I am not naturally bright even though my academic performance is considered good. The U.S. education system does not measure how intelligent you are; it only measures if we know how to take tests or not. In his “The Model Minority Is Losing Patience,” The Economist discusses the disadvantages that Asian-Americans have in the educational system. Asian Americans have to score higher on SATs and other areas. In fact, even if they achieve that, they can still not be accepted into the top colleges. An exemplary example is Michael Wang, who was mentioned in the article. He made many outstanding achievements, but he still got rejected by six out of seven Ivy League colleges. Mr. Wang stated, “I saw people less qualified than me get better offers. At first I was just angry.” This situation is caused by the expectations that Americans have labelled Asian Americans as the model minority. Americans expect more from Asian Americans students, so Asian American students have to work harder. According to The Economist, parents of Asian American students even want their children to have a full package and be a well rounded person. The parents would send them to prep schools, instrumental schools, ballet schools, and much more. However, in the very end, they get rejected by Ivy League colleges. The result of this problem is that a group of Asian American filed lawsuits against universities such as Harvard. Asian American are being discriminated against, and there needs to be a change.
I have to admit that the stereotypes I learned as a child did influence me to work hard and to be good at math because that was the only subject that I could talk about with my parents. When I came home from school, my mother would ask “how was school today?” I would just respond with “good.” If I talked to her about science, English, or music, then we would not have been able to communicate because she never encountered or learned those subjects in her life. The only school subject that we could hold a conversation in, was math. Since my parents could only help me in math, they expected me to be good at that subject, and that was something I just accepted. The more I worked on something and the more I practiced it, the better I got at it. For other subjects such as science, I would not get any outside help from parents; I could only ask my teacher for help.
I do not know when or how the correlation between Asian Americans and their ability to excel in school came about to having the name “model minority” attached to them, but according to Xueqin Jiang, who is a columnist for the New York Times Chinese website, stated “It’s ironic that just as the world is appreciating the strengths of China’s education system, Chinese are waking up to its weaknesses. These are two sides of the same coin: Chinese schools are very good at preparing their students for standardized tests. For that reason, they fail to prepare them for higher education and the knowledge economy.” This might be the reason why people have such expectations of Asian Americans. However, non-Asian students in the United States should realize that these Asian Americans have grown up in America, and so they also have American culture embedded in them. You cannot assume that Asian American students are just born to be good in science and math, or in general, school.
In summary, though the concept of a model minority may have been created with a good intention to showcase Asian-Americans as a good example for other minority groups to follow, and to demonstrate that American society provides equal opportunities for all minority groups to succeed, my experiences have informed me that individual differences matter and the allocation of resources has a significant impact on one’s academic success. The model minority does not prove true for all Asians, and we should all stop our thinking from becoming clouded by stereotypes, whether they be “positive” or negative.
Works Cited
Cvencek, Dario; Nasir Na’ilah S.; O’Connor, Kathleen; Wischnia Sarah; Meltzoff,
Andrew N. “The Development of Math—Race Stereotypes: ‘They Say Chinese People
Are the Best at Math’”. Journal of Research on Adolescence 25 (2014): 630-637. Print.
Jiang, Xue Qin. “The Test Chinese Schools Still Fail: High Scores for Shanghai’s 15-Years-Olds
are Actually a Sign of Weakness?” The Wall Street Journal, 2010. Web. 13 Apr. 2016.
Kozol, Jonathan. Savage Inequalities: Children in America’s Schools. New York: Random
House Inc., 1991. Print.
“The Model Minority Is Losing Patience.” The Economist. The Economist Newspaper, 2015.
Web. 14 Apr. 2016.
Wu, Ellen D. “Asian Americans and The ‘Model Minority’ Myth.” Latimes.com. Los Angeles
Times, 2014. Web. 20 Apr. 2016.