The Racial Triangulation of Asian Americans

“For over three decades, scholars in Asian American studies have generated powerful critiques of the model minority myth, pointing out that it exaggerates Asian American prosperity, homogenizes this extremely diverse population, and obscures discriminatory treatment against it.”

This quote was extremely significant to me because I’ve seen the negative effects stated of the model minority myth in my own personal life (South Asian) and my friends’ (East Asian). The model minority myth clearly hurts Asians as people decide to disregard the fact that the bamboo ceiling still exists. To add on, the myth has pitted Asians against other minorities, specifically the black community. It has created an ideology that “black people are lazy and not hardworking, therefore they are unsuccessful” that ripples through our older family members. Pitting two minorities against each other reminded me of the paper on NYC graffiti as the poor communities believed that one was better than the other. The working class was divided and the group of young writers of color were stereotyped as “thugs” and “vandals” in order for the working class community to believe that there was a hierarchy. Similarly, dividing minorities into Asian, Black, and Latino communities and pitting them against each other has created a sense of a hierarchy as well. This hurts all communities involved as they would work better together to create political change, but they don’t support each other because of the belief that systemic racism doesn’t exist and that it’s just up to the individual to work hard to succeed. It’s also interesting that when Asian-Americans are published for their accomplishments they aren’t written off as just “American” but (for example) “Indian-American”. The CEO of Google is known as an “Indian-American business executive” even though his nationality is American. It shows that even though Asians are successful, they still aren’t considered to be “full” Americans.