The American Dream, American Nightmare: Whiteness And The Model Minority Stereotypes

American Dream, American Nightmare: Whiteness and the Model Minority Stereotype

White society’s portrayal of Asian Americans as a model minority in the United States originated over eighty years ago during World War II, when China became a U.S. ally in the war. This caused white Americans to view Chinese Americans favorably while villainizing Japanese Americans. Since the model minority stereotype originated, it has further entrenched itself in white society’s view of Asian Americans, evolving to assert that Asian Americans achieve at high levels relative to the rest of society. The model minority stereotype may appear positive and harmless, as it attributes Asian American success to valuing hard work and education, which are values tied

1). Kim proposes racial triangulation as the phenomenon where White society simultaneously valorizes Asian Americans relative to Black people and views Asian Americans as unassimilable with Whites on cultural and racial grounds (Kim 107). Through this, racial triangulation asserts that being the model minority means never being accepted as part of White society. As Huang explains through the archetype of the “alien,” racial triangulation situates Asian Americans such that White society sees their cultural differences as irreducible (Huang 21:50). Racial triangulation additionally points to the reason why White people use Asian Americans as a model minority. The relative valorization of Asian Americans by Whites occurs because the latter can co-opt Asian American success and values such as hard work into rhetoric that promotes capitalism. In turn, White society uses Asian Americans as a “model” for other minorities it wants to embody what it defines as White

Viet Than Nguyen discusses this further in his 2020 article “How the Model Minority Myth of Asian Americans Hurts Us All.” By tracking the model minority myth over time from the 19th century to the present day and introducing the role of capitalism in creating the myth, Nguyen shows that the myth has remained largely unchanged, implying that capitalism and those who profit the most from it (White society) are the cause of this. It is because Asian Americans benefit more from capitalism than African American communities that Asian Americans engage in racism toward them, as Howard Imazeki did when he suggested that African Americans needed to stop blaming society for issues he viewed as their personal failures. However, as Nguyen notes, the U.S. is a “successful project of colonization… we call successful colonization “the American Dream.” When White society utilizes the model minority stereotype to hold Asian Americans up as representations of achieving the American Dream, it also puts pressure on Asian Americans to continue acting in ways that perpetuate white supremacy. Asian Americans may then become reinforcers of racism if they do not examine the values associated with the American Dream