Today our topic is model minority. And we’re going to explain a little bit more about what that means and where it came from. But before we go into the topic, we did want to address that. Obviously, there’s a lot of shit going on right now in society. And there’s a lot of racism, oppression, violence towards the black community being put under spotlight right now, unfortunately, because of the really horrendous treatment of George Floyd. And we’re certainly not tone deaf to what’s happening there. But the way that we wanted to approach this topic was through the lens of which categorization the Asian community has been placed within society by the white community, which is this model minority concept and how it is a different reflection of racism and is also a way in which society has kind of pit Asian collective races against the other minority races, including the black community.
Full Transcript (Note: Transcribed via AI, may contain errors)
Jesse Lin 1:18
So let’s get into it. What is the model minority? Let’s ask Wikipedia. So Wikipedia says a model minority is a minority demographic, whose members are perceived to achieve a higher degree of socio economic success than the population average, thus serving as a reference group to out groups further according to Wikipedia, the origin of model minority actually came about in a 1966, New York Times mag article about the Japanese. And the article basically detailed out how the Japanese have a really strong work ethic, really strong family bonds and those things led them to have a lower propensity to become a problem minority. A few other factors that they’re looking at Asian people were not a huge part of the minority population in the US at the time. They also mostly ran like successful businesses or there was the idea that they were somehow contributing economically to the country. We know Asian people tend to be less vocal about their problems and their issues. And we don’t necessarily see a lot of Asian people being super loud and vocal about their rights, historically speaking. And of course, there’s also the idea that the level of educational attainment of Asian minorities was equal to that of the white population. So we were on equal footing to be able to understand each other.
Angela Lin 2:43
The fact that this new york times article came out in 1966 is like a very interesting time for that to come out because it was only two years after the Civil Rights Act passed, and like we implicitly benefited from the very strong hard fought victory of the black community within the civil rights movement because it encompass all people of color, we were able to benefit from that dramatically and like earned a privilege to then like enter society at a point where we weren’t supposed to be discriminated against at least to the degree with which black people were prior when they were straight up like slaves and then segregated. So when you mentioned things like Asians are model minority because they have successful businesses like I remember I watched on Netflix, there’s a series called explained I forget which episode it was, but it was largely about kind of like racial disparity, and like a big reason why the black community continues to be behind is because there was like a law in place that made it so that black people couldn’t hold land so and that ripple effect continued on into like, the reason why black people continue to be poor and like stuck in underprivileged situations, so like I feel really bad and privileged that the idea of like successful businesses is attributed to the Asian community because we were able to be given that kind of opportunity, because we were not black.
Jesse Lin 4:22
Yeah. So one of the things that we wanted to talk about is that model minority is an offensive idea, but I think that a lot of people wouldn’t say that it’s a racist idea. And I want to explain to you guys why’s a racist idea. First of all, it’s a stereotype that you’re trying to box a group of people into. The second thing is it ties attainment a level of education or a level of economic success to a specific race. It also masks a lot of the troubles that the Asian community have been having, like not everybody comes here and is rich and successful already. A lot of Asian people who are coming here and struggling, they’re working really, really blue collar jobs, and they’re trying to make ends meet. The fourth thing is that it really gives control of how acceptable it is for us to exist to another group of people. And that’s obviously not what we want, like we want our own agency, our own definition of who we are. And then lastly, I think that it pits us against other people, we have something to gain or we have something to lose when in fact, we’re all basically below the people who have control of everything. We’re all the same in terms of the struggles, the needs, and what we have to gain from being completely equal.
Angela Lin 5:43
Right. Yeah, I think one of the most important things was talking about like the wanting to have agency and like control over our own selves. I think another reason it’s a racist concept is that inherently by calling us model minority You are still labeling us as minority first, right? Like that’s the way you see us is that we are already inherently separate from you. We’re not equal to you.
Jesse Lin 6:13
So when we’re talking about model minority, I think it’s really important first to examine actually how we’ve fed into the stereotype, or how we reinforce the stereotype, right? Because we’re reviewing the things that make up the model minority before those aren’t really bad things like yes, successful business. I would love to have that. Yes, educational attainment, I would love to have that and all those other things. I think there are a lot of reasons why we want to play into the fulfillment of the model minority concept. And the first is basically privilege. Angela and I grew up in a very well to do suburb, which at the time, I feel like growing up, it was mostly white people, a few Asian people, kind of like changed since then, but growing up we were like witness to the kind of privilege That the white majority had, and there’s a desire to have the same level of privilege, of course, why wouldn’t you want to be like that? Why wouldn’t you want to have doors open for you magically that other people can’t have open for them? So primarily, of course, we wanted to have access to that level of privilege. And so of course, we played into this role thinking that we would somehow attain that same level of privilege,
Angela Lin 7:23
But spoiler alert, we will never achieve. So playing into like, why would we want to fulfill the model minority. So beyond privilege, I think it also goes back to what you’re saying before, like the label in and of itself already classifies us as separate from the white majority. But I think in a way in trying to like have a good education, be successful in business and like kind of rise up we’re trying to build up our credentials and things that bring us validity as humans in a way that makes us feel like we’re erasing the part of us that makes us different from the white community. So like somehow the success that we’ve attained will help us erase the fact that when they look at us we’re still seeing for our quote unquote yellow skin I hate when people say Asians with yellow skin, but like that is what people look at us as right like that. Ideally, there’s this color blindness when when they see us because they’ve like recognized all of our accomplishments and therefore somehow able to achieve that equality with them. But again, we just will, we’re never going to do that. I think it’s just like this lofty goal and like aspiration, but it’s not something actually achievable because we were already put as this other category in and of itself by being labeled as model minority.
Jesse Lin 8:47
No, I mean, definitely make sense. Like you’re trying to surround yourself with the things that you think will defend you or guard you for being overtly perceived as the other. So of course, I think pursuing those things is a natural reaction to that kind of pressure.
Angela Lin 9:00
Yeah, I think another thing that ties really closely with that is like so we’re trying to attain this level of success and like you race the outward difference from us. And I think a big part of where we more stereotypically feed into model minority is where we choose to put our efforts in terms of the types of jobs that we go after, like, every Asian parent wants their child to become a doctor. Of course, the reason why the Asian community really values those types of jobs is not really because the model minority like I’m not going to attribute that to white people as we want to do that. It’s because our parents are immigrants that came from like an unstable environment. And they want to ensure that their children have economic stability, and having high wealth is a surefire way in their minds of like ensuring that security so that’s why they want us to have jobs like doctors, but to the point of like achieving this level of success and still not making you the equal of that White majority. I think a perfect case in point is right now during the COVID crisis, like I feel like there’s so much that happened within the last like three to four month timeframe that like it’s easy to forget all the things that have been happening. But don’t forget, we’re still in the middle of this pandemic. And like the COVID anti Asian racism, while not at the same degree as the George Floyd stuff was alive and well prior to this beat, and Asian doctors who are putting their lives on the line every day to treat COVID patients are still being harassed on the streets because they’re Asian, even when they’re in their scrubs on their way to the hospital to work there like 20 hour shifts to save some of those assholes lives like it does not shield you just because you have the status in society.
Jesse Lin 10:51
I mean, I’ve seen so many examples from not just Asian doctors, but also for talking about members of the black community. I’ve seen so many like tweets from people who are like I just got pulled over by the cops for no reason. These are people who you would call quote unquote passing or model minority. There are people who could blend into a fancy society mixer or dinner you might meet them at the Met Gala or whatever. But outside of those spaces, you’re minority-ness ethnicity becomes like the first thing that people associate and all the negative things associated with that what job you have, how rich you are, how famous you are, I don’t think any of those things matter in the face of this kind of racist reaction.
Angela Lin 11:34
Yeah, I’m reading this book right now called biased and it’s written by a Stanford professor who specializes in racial bias, and she’s an African American female. And one of the stories she tells in her book is at night before her Harvard graduation. The night before she and her friend had been doing some fundraiser, like really, you know, they’re model citizens. They’re doing good for the community and they were driving back to their apartment and they were stopped by police and like rough house essentially because they’re black she explained this experience being so crazy because she had been in this bubble and like she thought having this like Dr. title is like putting her in a different sphere. And it wasn’t in terms of the way that the police saw her. And yet Yeah, actually, when she was been put in jail, she and her friend were able to get bailed out immediately because they had the police call like someone high up at Stanford who vouch for them, like get them the fuck out of that jail right now, like you do not have the authority to like, please, yeah, unless you have other privileges that were given to you because of like a certain status you’ve gained within society. Like it’s really hard to break that initial gut reaction that people have when they look at you just based on the way you look at when you were born that way, which is insane.
One of the other reasons how Asians fulfill this model minority idea or keep it from being brought down is engagement with the community and I’m specifically talking about older Asians, like our parents age who immigrated here a while ago. I feel like generally speaking, they’re not as politically active in the US, especially like I mentioned parents our age. I’ve never heard my parents discuss anything US politics really No way. No way. And it’s crazy because my dad is a very political person. But the only politics he follows is Taiwanese politics. While it’s not directly related to the idea of model minority, it does prevent us from overturning that because we’re not being vocal and trying to put people into places of power that represent us more.
I do think it extends beyond just our parents generation, though, I think there is a trickle effect from like the way our parents brought us up into like our threshold or appetite for like being loud in the political sphere as well, and actually is a good segue into another piece, which is that our upbringing is a big part also in terms of the way that we present ourselves. The way that we are unconsciously contributing to that model minority categorization, which is like in general, Asian cultures are fairly polite and like we’re taught to be no fuss kind of people. And so one example I find really annoying, and I don’t want to like bash him as a whole human because to be fair, I haven’t like research all of his thoughts on every issue or anything like that. But like Andrew Yang is someone who people praised a lot during his presidential run because he thinks out of the box on a lot of issues, but like I was really turned off by him when the COVID crisis first broke out and all the anti Asian racism started happening we covered an op ed basically telling us to fulfill the model minority stereotype better to try to deter racism against us he didn’t obviously use those words to basically was like, Yeah, I know people are hurt right now because of all the racism like against us. This is our chance to like prove how good of citizens we are by being even better at providing help to the community. I’m like, Are you fucking kidding me right now?
Jesse Lin 15:09
For a political candidate? I think it was more tone deaf than I think people were expecting. Yeah, I will say on the other hand, if it if a person is going to get to that level where they’re threatening violence against the person that they don’t know, for reasons that are superficial, like race, that’s not a person I want to talk to. That’s not a person I want to convince because they’re not going to be so I mean, his op ed is fallacious in a sense, because those are the people he’s asking us to be more American to. Why would I go do that? I’m not going to talk to the KKK Red Dragon about why he should be nicer to me and how I’m super American like no. So that definitely also like rang true for me. Because I was like, Okay, I remember when I was like that, but now I know that I’m not going to waste my time and energy talking to someone who wants physical ill on me
Angela Lin 16:00
I think that’s fair. And there are definitely people like that, obviously, because there are all these cases of violence and like racist acts, yeah, happening out in the world. But I do think the majority of people have this like leeway gray area threshold where you could have a good conversation with them. But I agree with you that like the people who are literally harassing the Asian doctors on the street and like punching people in the face and all that shit, like those are not the people that are going to be persuaded by discussion and discourse. But I don’t want to feed into the narrative of like, it’s all just us versus them and everyone is either with us or like evil and against us. This episode, I feel like it’s the most heated we’ve ever had real. Okay, I do think we need to discuss the dark side of like, let’s go even darker side of this category, which is the fact that being placed into this model minority category has benefited us and given us a level of privilege above other minorities like the black community like little Latino community that we didn’t ask for. But like by being put into this bucket, we got those privileges and we need to recognize that and how that has affected kind of the way that we are viewed and how we interact with other minority communities. There are kind of a lot of different ways in which that privilege comes out. One of which is that in terms of where society accepts us as being allowed to be in there’s like people talk about like, quote unquote, white spaces, as opposed to black spaces and we as Asians because model minority is kind of ranked as like just below the white society. We are allowed into these white spaces
Jesse Lin 17:54
Put it more simply, I’ve never had the cops called on me for tailgating a lady into her apartment building and I’ve done that many times when I’m trying to visit people, you know, I’m like I was buzz buzz buzz no one picked up I follow somebody in the building. It’s never been a problem and obviously like the media brings up cases that are quite egregious for obvious reasons, but the fact that these cases exist at all is a problem. The fact that there was a man for watching in Central Park that got the cops called on him by that lady, that’s a problem like that should not happen
Angela Lin 18:24
Dude. I’m so ashamed of that incident because I only recently found out that that woman is a booth MBA alum and I’m okay so like, our whole MBA community is like real but that’s what is being represented as like our legacy and also that man because I read up on it more he’s a Harvard Graduate himself. It’s like okay, lady like you think you’re so much better than this man just because you see him as black and only black but like he’s just as if not more educated than you are and like he’s just asking you to abide by the rules. Everyone else is up abiding by this insane I think there’s also this like implicit privilege and bias that has been built into us by accepting the fact that we are categorized as model minority in terms of the way that we see our rank in society. And like this is not something I’m proud of, but it’s just like a fact. I think in terms like the way the Asian community sees ourselves. I think part of it is the way Asians from Asia like think about different races, but part of it is certainly our place within American society where there’s like we as Asians are above the other minority classes, like the model minority concept was built in a way that already pit us against each other without our consent for that to happen. But we bought into it ourselves. Like when I was growing up, my parents definitely didn’t talk about black people and Mexican people in like the same light as Asian people. So there’s like this unspoken ranking of like, how worthy and how valuable different minorities were. And certainly we were positioning ourselves at the top of that chain.
It’s so interesting just how pernicious that is like the fact that there’s a ranking in the minds of immigrant people, our parents who came here, maybe in the late 80s, early 90s. And they already have this structure built into their head that like white people obviously because they control everything, no choice, but then it’s us. And then it’s like everybody else. Like it’s crazy that that structure exists because they weren’t even in this country for that long.
I think there’s like a lot of bias that is already built into the way they operate. But I don’t want to give them a free pass I know a contributing factor to the reason why Asian people already think of black people and other minorities as like less than is any homogenous society that does not have a diverse range of people to be looking at every day is already implicitly going to be more racist than other societies like ours that are mixed because they don’t see these people all the time, they’re just only used to the same people who look like themselves, and then put them into a society like ours, where it’s like mixed amongst a lot of different people, they’re already bringing that mentality in and then like further stratifying the classes of people from there.
Jesse Lin 21:22
I think as part of the privileges that we get from the concept of model minority is that there are a lot of positive things associated with that stereotype that are assigned to us. So things like being smart or working successful or studious, and obviously these are better than some of the other stereotypes assigned to the latino or black communities who are, you know, often thought of as criminals or drug dealers or whatever but you’re successful and then people are thinking that you stole your spot. You’re an immigrant, you came here on H1-B. So there are like all these like small, like micro-aggressions that you have to deal with. way that are related to these positive characteristics.
Angela Lin 22:02
Yeah, I agree. I think that in general the Asian community more often than not deals with microaggression forms of racism as opposed to the blatant like, outright and violent way. So I agree with you, like, we we deal with these microaggressions all the time. But like, to the point of the privileges that we’ve gained, it’s not so bad to have to fight against this like idea that we’re successful and smart and blah, blah, blah, as starting at a basis where you are assumed as a criminal or like someone violent or whatever, and then having to build an uphill battle to overcome that stereotype to prove like, actually, you’re the Harvard graduate who’s like a law abiding citizen or whatever, you happen to be black. So I agree, they’re just like, lesser struggles that we also have to combat these like quote unquote, positive stereotypes, but like all in all, it is another one of the privileges that we have the model minority, that like, these are the worst types of stereotypes that are associated with us that we like stole your job because we are too smart and too hardworking.
Jesse Lin 23:10
There are like a few other things, other privileges as well. If we think about just all of the material things we have access to, I mean, we’re talking about jobs, Asian people get preference, I think for specific jobs and careers in hiring, like if you’re hiring an engineer or you’re hiring an analyst or you’re looking for like a diversity hire, I think those are all privileges that we get the benefit of
Angela Lin 23:34
But that are also like on the backs of the work that like African American people put in during the Civil Rights Movement continue to die for in modern society, right?
Jesse Lin 23:46
And then another important thing that has been a huge push overall is access to housing. I mean, it’s something really obvious I feel like a lot of people don’t really think about you know, of course I can find place to live if I have the money to pay for it, but for a lot of latin and black communities and families, that’s not true. Like they can get turned away by a landlord. Obviously, that’s not legal. But that doesn’t mean that that kind of discrimination isn’t happening. And we know that it is. But I can speak from personal experience. I’ve never been turned away from an apartment application because of my race, like I put the money in and we get a response. There’s all of these things that we don’t necessarily consider privileges access to things that are everyday necessities, in the sense to survive that we don’t have any any problems getting access to because of the idea of model minority.
Angela Lin 24:33
If anything, when you’re applying for an apartment and someone sees that you’re Asian, they’re like, oh, they’re probably they probably have a steady job and like are gonna be quiet. Yeah. Bring back that biased book that I am reading. She brought up that I think it was around the 60s there were housing laws all across the country that literally wrote into law, that you could not sell a house to a black person or you could not qualify for like the home loans or whatever that you needed, so that like motivated a lot of house sellers to not want to sell to African American people and therefore, like kind of coerced them into the ghettos actually. And like it’s had a ripple effect into modern society in terms like where African Americans are congregated within the community. And I told you about this the other day, but like she did the super interesting study where she basically showed two different test groups, the same house and the only difference being that in one of the test groups, they were shown in the living room a picture of this like well to do dressed up nicely African American family that was dining in the in the living room, implying that they were the previous owners of the house. And just because of that image alone, that group perceive that house as being valued at $20,000 less than the same house without that black family.
Jesse Lin 25:59
That’s crazy.
Angela Lin 26:00
Yeah. And they thought they immediately believed that that house must be situated in a worse, more dangerous community than the other house that had no humans presented there with no information to justify that
Jesse Lin 26:15
For those of you at home who want to look it up quickly, it’s called redlining, which is like literally at some point in the past, the government drew red lines around black communities or areas where it’s like high risk and said, this is where black people can live, this is where Asian people can live, and this is where white people can live – like it’s crazy.
Angela Lin 26:33
So case in point, we recognize our privilege. We know it’s fucked up.
Jesse Lin 26:45
Hey, guys, and welcome back to the closing segment of our podcast, the fortune cookie. So we wanted to kind of continue the conversation and discuss how the model minority concept is changing. So I’m gonna draw you guys a bad fortune first and we’re going to talk about how this concept of model minority is changing for the worse. Obviously, with all of the things that are happening around COVID-19 a lot of really just gross nonsensical stereotypes have come up about how Asians are dirty, they don’t have proper hygiene or they eat all kinds of like weird bush animals or stuff like that, which is completely not true and like obviously did not exist as part of the model minority stereotype. I think a something else that’s really true, especially for neighborhoods I’ve seen in New York, where it’s a traditionally let’s say, white upper class neighborhood or like very homogenous. A lot of Chinese people are moving here to the US. They’re buying. They’re buying houses together and moving in together. And there’s this idea that, you know, somehow Chinese people have all this money and they’re coming here and they’re like taking over our neighborhoods and like ruining the neighborhood, or they’re taking all jobs or whatever. And again, this is like kind of what I said about like the positive stereotypes turning negative now they’re mad about the success they’re mad about the fact that we have money, they’re mad about the fact that we can get jobs
Angela Lin 28:17
Right one of the main reasons they called us model minority was because we were highly educated and able to have successful businesses and now you’re pissed that we became so successful that we have more privilege than you do sometimes and being able to like pay all cash for properties and things like that.
Jesse Lin 28:34
Yeah, what’s up with that?
Angela Lin 28:38
It’s existed forever, but I think like people have come out with feeling like they have more liberty to voice their opinions about these things since Trump was elected frankly, which is like they’re a broader societal fear of like this foreignness and like the foreign invasion, so like, you may be Third generation Asian American, but like you’re just out in society at a store or whatever, and you’re talking in your Asian language and people will like get really pissed at you and like, maybe call you out, maybe harass you because you’re not speaking in English because they’re seeing you as like foreign danger, foreign invasion. And again, it’s just like it’s only based on how you appear. Alright, so there are some not so fun progressions of racist stereotypes around us. But fortune cookie, as you know, is supposed to be a sweet treat. So we did want to then segue this into how these labels on the Asian community may be changing also for the better. So I think one of them most prominent ways as happening right now is that we as Asians are starting to recognize our privileges. And the Asian community is starting to get loud and are speaking out against these injustices. This is progress in a lot of ways, because prior to this, like you said, our community has largely like abstained from, from participating in the political sphere. And this is just the time that we’ve recognized like, we cannot stay silent here because any injustice against you is an injustice against everyone in the community.
Jesse Lin 30:23
Yeah. And I love what I’m seeing because I think people are contributing the ways that they feel comfortable and, and you’re turning some of these attributes of model minority into ways that can help other people. If you have a high paying job donating to organizations that can help out the situation. If you’re a lawyer, you have expertise becoming a legal observer. I think it’s really great that people are pulling these things that are, you know, that traditionally fuel this structure in this box and using it to help other people
Angela Lin 30:55
We covered a lot today. A lot of different topics, a lot of different nuances. here and we know that the current, the current environment evokes a lot of different opinions. So I think this is especially the time that like, we’re very interested in hearing your opinions about what we’ve discussed today. What’s happening in the world right now, where the Asian communities place is.