Toward an Anti-Imperialistic Critical Race Analysis of the Model Minority Myth

Abstract

<jats:p> Over the past three decades, many higher education scholars have engaged in efforts to counter the stereotype that Asian Americans achieve universal and unparalleled academic success. While most of these scholars adopt an anti-oppression approach, some researchers have claimed that this literature reinforces oppressive deficit paradigms. To understand this conflict in existing literature, the current authors utilize an anti-imperialistic approach to analyze scholarship on the model minority myth. The current analysis reveals little evidence that research on the myth reinforced hegemonic deficit thinking. Instead, authors find that scholars largely utilized complex and multifaceted antideficit approaches, challenged dominant essentialist model minority frames, engaged in strategic (anti-)essentialism to navigate complex pan-racial contexts, and reframed the myth to achieve diverse purposes that speak to different audiences. Several implications for conducting critiques of literature reviews and future research on the myth are discussed. </jats:p>

The Centrality of Critical Agency: How Asian American College Students Develop Commitments to Social Justice

“…One of the most common manifestations of systemic violence toward Asian Americans is the model minority stereotype, which essentializes Asian Americans as an academically and occupationally hypersuccessful population (Park, 2008;Suzuki, 2002). Because this myth depicts Asian Americans as relatively successful at assimilation and benefitting from the supposed meritocracy that exists within the United States, this trope often portrays this population as passive and less likely to challenge the status quo (Yi et al, 2020). This racial trope also functions to mask significant inequalities within Asian America and legitimize the exclusion of Asian Americans from higher education research and conversations about social justice (Grim et al, 2019;Hartlep, 2015;Museus & Kiang, 2009).…”

“…Existing research also shows that systemic forms of oppression heavily shape Asian American students' lives on college campuses specifically (Chou & Feagin, 2008;Museus & Park, 2015;Yi et al, 2020). The model minority trope can result in the failure to consider these students in institutional policy and practice, thereby normalizing their exclusion and marginalization on their respective campuses (Yi & Museus, 2015).…”

“…Existing research suggests that Asian American students' networks might have an impact on their commitments to social justice as well. First, there is some indication that family members might hinder Asian American students' involvement in social and political affairs, and parental pressures might detract from Asian American students pursuing educational pathways that might encourage such work (Museus, 2013;Yi et al, 2020). In a qualitative analysis of parental influences on 24 Southeast Asian American undergraduates' educational trajectories, Museus (2013) found that parents sometimes encouraged their children to pursue more economically lucrative and secure pathways (e.g., becoming a physician, attorney, or engineer), which can pose challenges to students wanting to pursue majors and careers that focus on social justice (e.g., community organizing, education, or politics).…”

“…In addition, systematic empirical inquiries that examine how Asian American college students, in particular, develop such commitments are difficult to find. This gap in knowledge could be due to misconceptions that Asian American college students do not face structural challenges and are therefore complacent (Yi et al, 2020). Indeed, such racialized misconceptions contribute to the invisibility of research on Asian American college students in general (Museus, 2009) and therefore could also be responsible for the lack of attention given to their role in social justice efforts.…”

COVID-19 and Black Lives Matter: Examining Anti-Asian Racism and Anti-Blackness in US Education

“…This myth homogenizes Asian Americans as a uniform group disregarding the different histories of oppression, resources, and opportunities with which sub-groups of Asian Americans immigrated and contributes to racial exclusion from research, policy, and practice considerations that might better support distinct Asian American communities in education. It has also been used as a political tool by white supremacists to invalidate claims of systemic racism against non-Asian American People of Color and has advanced the deficit orientation that communities of color were to blame for inequalities in the first place (Yi et al, 2020). The recent Justice Department's charge against Yale University discriminating against Asian and white students in violation of civil rights law (Hartocollis, 2020), and the 2014 lawsuit filed by Asian American students against Harvard University's affirmative action, funded by right-wing activist Edward Blum, is an "example of how white power perpetuates anti-Blackness within Asian communities at the expense of Black people" (Ramirez, 2020, para.…”