Freedom Socialist • Vol. 17, No. 3 • October-December 1996

VOICES OF COLOR

Asian Americans defy "model minority" myth

by Nancy Reiko Kato

WHEN A reactionary like Newt Gingrich expresses concern that affirmative action may be discriminatory against Asian Americans, I have to suspect that we are being set up.

Affirmative action is no longer necessary, according to politicians and their funders; Asian Americans, they tell us, are the example of how old-fashioned hard work and values still open the door to success in the USA.

Hold it -- sound the alarms! The reality of racist oppression against Asian Pacific Americans is once again being rewritten into its opposite: the myth of the model minority.

Racist "love" masks exploitation. Our typecasting as the "good" minority is designed to help keep workers of all colors squabbling among ourselves for the approval of the bosses. The ruling class wants us to conform to the stereotype of passive, submissive house boys and geisha girls, devoted to serving their needs and interests.

To accomplish this, they build up the false image of the model minority. Through diligent effort and loyalty to the master, goes their lie, Asian Americans can attain equality without disturbing the status quo. We are held up to other people of color to show how ambition and thriftiness are all that's required to live the American dream.

This is particularly true of the many tenacious small-business owners. But what isn't recognized is that large numbers of Asian Americans come from peasant cultures, where owning a family business, no matter how tiny, is how success is judged. Furthermore, given language barriers on top of racism, these little enterprises that exploit the entire family are often the only avenue of survival open to us once here.

And then our much-exaggerated success is used against us. Portrayed as the Asian menace stealing jobs from "real Americans," we are scapegoated for economic crisis.
Some movement misleaders rise to the capitalist bait, fueling tensions between us and darker-skinned minorities. Louis Farrakhan of the Nation of Islam, for example, labels us "bloodsuckers" because of the Asian American shops operating in Black neighborhoods.

And while the model minority mystique encourages whites to love us for our reputed docility, it also teaches them to fear us, because we may supposedly cost them a job or a school placement.
But if we've made it, why haven't our college degrees resulted in employment opportunities and pay scales comparable to our white counterparts? With so many of us attending college, why are Asian Americans only one percent of college administrators?

Why do Filipino and Korean and Chinese garment workers suffer some of the most torturous labor conditions?

Why are 85 percent of the Cambodians and Laotians in California's Alameda County, where I grew up, poor?

No, our yellow skin hasn't shielded us from racism. The pattern of discrimination is clear -- from early exclusion laws against Chinese and Filipino women that kept Asians and Pacific Islanders from forming stable communities, to imprisonment of Japanese Americans in camps during World War II, up through the current dramatic increase in anti-Asian crimes of violence.

Buying the hype. For the bosses, one of the greatest benefits of the model-minority myth is that it plays up racial divisions among working people. And they are aided, of course, when Asian Americans accept negative depictions of ourselves and other people of color.

This happens in part because our past is hidden. Many Asian Pacific immigrants arrive here already weighted down by stereotypes of other races, but minus the knowledge of vibrant multi-racial coalitions that their forebears participated in to win civil rights for all.

But ignorance is not the only problem. Some Asian Americans have a material stake in embracing the pretense of our favored status. When the federal Glass Ceiling Commission interviewed 14 Asian American male executives, not one deemed himself a minority!

In their attempt to secure a piece of the American pie, Asian Uncle Toms will often prove their loyalty to the system by lashing out against people of color. University of California regent Stephen Nakashima, for example, voted to repeal affirmative action at UC.

Refuse to be used by the bosses! But these sell-outs are exceptions, not the rule. Asian American history is bursting with courage, compassion, and collaboration with other oppressed people.

Filipinos joined with their Chicano and Mexicano sisters and brothers to found the United Farmworkers Union. Asian American students helped lead the Third World strikes at San Francisco State that established Ethnic Studies. Japanese Americans spoke out against the proposal to intern Arab Americans during the Persian Gulf War. Asian American seamstresses have fought for safer conditions and higher pay for all garment-industry workers.

Today, we persist in resistance -- especially in the battle for affirmative action, where groups like UC Santa Barbara's Asian Sisters in Action Now (A.S.I.A.N.) have come to the fore.

Affirmative action, which Asian Americans were active in winning, has integrated higher education and the workforce. It has led to the creation of Ethnic Studies and contributed to breaking down the barriers of racial and sexual bigotry on the job, as women and men of every shade learn together how management exploits them all.

It's no wonder, then, that the right wing has decided it's time to dismantle affirmative action, and is trying to use the model-minority myth to recruit Asian Pacific Americans to this task.
But we won't be their flunkies! Our responsibility is to raise our voices even higher in the fight for justice for our race and our class -- the working class. And that is exactly what we will do.

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