A model minority is a term that characterizes a group of successful, nonthreatening, all around kind and hardworking people, such as Asian Americans. In the article, model minority groups were considered to be engineers or doctors who mostly came from Honk Kong, Taiwan, China, and India. From the outside, model minority groups appear to be desirable classmates, favored neighbors, and nonthreatening people of color, the author notes how they struggle internally with their identities. Even though people were considered the model minority, they still felt shame over their overall appearance and lifestyles. They were ashamed of their food, language, haircuts, fashion, smell, parents. Every person and every race have all of these aspects part of their lives, so people shouldn’t feel ashamed of who they are, but because of the way they are treated in their everyday lives, they do feel shame and embarrassment.

The author alludes to the fact that model minorities serve American society, not the minority groups themselves. Races and individuals who experience being in the category of model minority do not gain much, if not anything at all, from being categorized. Instead, it elicits insecurities about who they are versus what society wants them to be. They have to live up to the perfection society has cultivated the group to be. This can be dangerous because the Asian Americans will put pressure on themselves to live up to standard American society has created the model minority to be.

The author writes that “the end of Asian Americans only happens with the end of racism and capitalism” because both racism and capitalism are always present together in America. In capitalism, there is a need for cheap labor which leads to the exploitation of Asian Americans. In the same instance, it is the Asian Americans that are blamed for taking the jobs of other Americans when in reality, it is easier to blame minority groups than accept responsibility that it is American corporations that are taking away jobs.

One sentence that stood out to me was, “Japanese Americans had to prove their Americanness during World War II by fighting against Germans and Japanese while their families were incarcerated, but German and Italian Americans never had to prove their Americanness to the same extent.” This quote hit close to home because I come from German descent. I’ve never heard stories about from my grandparents the struggles their ancestors faced when immigrating to America, and they never talked about if they struggled with feeling accepted in America. Even though at some point my family immigrated to America just like most other families, it is true that as Germans, my ancestors weren’t expected to go to terrible lengths to prove their worthiness and loyalty to America. It saddens me that this is the reality of many families and minority groups. It is unfair that others had to struggle hundreds of times more than my family did because of their race.