This past semester, I took an Asian American Studies course in order to fulfill some Gen-Ed credits at my university. I had the sort of bland expectations you would expect for a class like this. However, I am pleased to say…I was right about the class the whole time. The entire course was framed around the fight against racism and discrimination and the difficulty for Asian Americans to integrate into the United States. Every class was imbued with a victim narrative that only inspired a certain kind of conversation where we could only analyze the challenges and injustices without room to celebrate the contributions, achievements, or cultural impact of Asian Americans. The class portrayed a reductionist view where Asian American history was simply a battle against oppressive forces, and I found myself longing to hear some celebratory stories of cultural identity outside of that particular lens. However, that never came to be. I learned nothing about how the Chinese introduced ethnic food to Americans. I learned nothing about how Indian Americans contributed to the technological boom of the 2000s. I learned nothing about how Japanese and Korean entertainment ravaged global cultural boundaries and fostered a new generation of cross-cultural appreciation. Is this aspect of Asian American history not just as pivotal to understanding as the struggles against racism and discrimination? Can we talk about Asian American success without having to evoke their struggles against oppression as the backdrop? The ironic lack of diversity in the portrayal of Asian American history left me (and other students I talked to in my class) wanting.

One main point that my professor emphasized is that the Asian American psyche is not a monolith–i.e. Asian Americans don’t all think the same. Anybody with a competent faculty of thinking would agree with this statement, but I found many of the discussions and material antithetical to this idea. First, the professor enforced a strict interpretation of certain ideas (e.g. affirmative action, model minority) without room for deviation. Every conversation had an assumed prior that you agreed with the portrayal–for example, seeing the idea of model minority as a myth, as if that interpretation is a fact. Second, the professor would inject overtly political opinions into the discussion with a strong attitude that discouraged any kind of disagreement, essentially incentivizing conformity over critical thought.¹ Third, the course offered an excessive amount of material with authors who couldn’t tolerate people who didn’t share their worldview. I watched a couple of seminars of supposed Asian American Studies pundits who made statements along the lines of: “Muslims who vote Republican are a shame to their people and are only voting against their own interests”² and “I can’t understand why Asian Americans are protesting affirmative action, and I couldn’t even imagine talking to one of them.”³ I found it incredibly ironic and disappointing that these experts could evoke this kind of ostracizing sentiment when their whole field revolves around the intricacies of the Asian American experience. It seemed like the entire anti-monolithic sentiment was just a façade, where none of these people can actually tolerate much disagreement at all. And the whole discussion begs the question, what does being Asian American even mean?

Model Minority “Myth”

It’s pretty difficult to encapsulate what being Asian American even means. A loose idea is an American with Asian heritage, which we can usually gauge through physical appearance. But even this interpretation is vague, as the mentality often shifts when you try to extend this idea to someone who’s half Asian, quarter Asian, or even less, but that’s a discussion for another day. It would be naive to consider the idea of “Asian American” as purely an ethnic boundary, so we often extend the definition to include common culture, values, and history. However, is there a single attitude that every single Asian American shares? No, of course not! The whole anti-monolithic view in the previous paragraph says as much. Does that mean we can’t say anything about Asian Americans that largely applies to the population, such as the statement that Asians eat rice? Obviously you can, so why am I bringing this seemingly trivial point up? It’s because this logic somehow doesn’t apply when we talk about the “Model Minority Myth.”

The model minority concept points to the idea that some ethnic groups–including most Asian American groups– are perceived to be achieving a higher socioeconomic status in comparison to the overall population average.⁴ However, it’s also commonly seen as a weapon to talk down to marginalized groups, implying that they can succeed in the same conditions while ignoring other extraneous variables. In a vacuum, I will discuss this concept using the former contextualization.

The idea of the “Model Minority” as a myth was introduced in the class as a statement of truth, ideologically akin to the statement that 1+1=2. This portrayal typically boils down to the common argument that “not all Asian Americans are successful.” More commonly, in the form of the response that “not all Asians are good at math.” This disconnect fundamentally relies on the idea that “we cannot generalize something positive about a population if some members of that population do not meet that standard.” And to some extent, I agree. It would be foolish to walk up to some Asian guy you never met and assume he’s great at math or only eats rice. However, the problem arises when the focus shifts solely to individual exceptions without considering the broader cultural or societal patterns. For example, we can generally say that humans have five fingers. You would not go out of your way to argue that some people are born with six fingers or no hands. I don’t wish to equate “not being good at math” with a genetic defect, so let me counter with the alternative statement that “college graduates earn more income than non-college graduates.” The statement holds regardless of whether you know some college graduates who are jobless or work minimum wage. So, I think I can make the fair blanket statement that “most Asian American groups have higher average income and educational attainment compared to the national average.” Since this statement is just blatantly true (statistically), we’ll go with the more common model minority statement that “many Asian American families typically hold values that lead to economic success, such as education, family, or academic achievement.”

However, I often see the refusal to accept this idea because it’s somehow stereotyping all Asians or weaponized against other groups. However, to simply call it a “myth” is throwing the baby out with the bathwater. You can consider the central ideas of this theory without falling into the trap of oversimplification or harmful generalization. However, this sort of nuance never existed within my class, as the surface-level notion that “not all Asians are successful” forced the concept of Model Minority Myth into the spotlight, which basically governed every single discussion for the rest of the course. You would think an Asian American Studies class would jump on the opportunity to talk about positive cultural aspects within the Asian American psyche, but clearly, this was not the case. There was a taboo over this defining portion of Asian American culture. Instead, the course would attribute Asian American success as the result of Asians working within complying to a racist system, Asian immigrants typically coming over with advanced degrees or Asian American children being unduly privileged. In order not to promote a reductionist view of Asian American success, the course chose to enforce an even more reductionist and narrow-minded rationale instead.

I’ve already explained why I vehemently disregard the arguments above in my blog post, Affirmative Action Unmasked. Instead, I’ll give some personal anecdotes to counter them this time around. I have an incredibly fortunate and privileged background, born to two parents with graduate degrees from top Chinese institutions who immigrated over with H1-B visas. I lived in relatively wealthy areas with access to an endless array of resources like math camps, violin lessons, and art classes with the full support of my family. My parents always emphasized education and academic success. Unsurprisingly, many of the Asian American (mostly Chinese) kids I grew up with had parents with similar backgrounds and shared the same kind of academic ambition and view toward life–to us, it was never a question of whether or not we would go to college, it was a given. You would imagine that we all ended up in college pursuing competitive degrees because our parents were well-educated and successful. However, when I came to college, the story remained the same in spite of parental background. I met many Asian American friends whose parents were not well educated. They worked blue-collar jobs, owned restaurants, had little wealth, and maybe even immigrated illegally. But the expectation was the same–college was the goal. Regardless of the background and trajectory, the goal was ultimately the same.

I’ve walked the streets of Chinatown in New York. I’ve seen the poverty there, the absolute desolation, and the struggle to survive. Even in more dire situations than I could imagine, these people work hard so their kids can get a good education and live a better life than their own. This is no coincidence. This isn’t because they all had college degrees. This isn’t because society was unjustly propping them up for success. This isn’t because they had resources other people couldn’t access. This is because of the deep desire to have their kids succeed, and the inculcation of the values that hard work, perseverance, and education are the keys to a better life. And this sentiment, one way or another, is widely prevalent within many Asian communities. You can say that not all Asian families are like this. You can say that many parents are overly harsh about their children’s success. However, you can’t deny this aspect of Asian American culture. You can come after me for being a privileged kid and the benefactor of “successful” parents. You’re right. However, don’t be under the impression that my parents had it easy. They were the first in their families to go to college. They worked hard within a system that begged their failure. They came over to the U.S. with nothing. They sacrificed their pesonal wellbeing so my sister and I could have a good life. This is no coincidence.

These values are in no way baked into the biological thread of the Asian American existence. They are just more common within the Asian American psyche, whatever that reason may be. Any family can value these same things, and it’s no surprise that you can find similar stories within other communities around the world. Again, what makes someone Asian American? The only thing that is always true is that they have some Asian heritage. There is nothing else that can be conclusively said that applies to every Asian American. So, what holds the subject of “Asian American Studies” together? The Asian American category itself is in part defined by cultural and social generalizations that bring people together. If we can’t even generalize about cultural values that cause Asian American success, what can we generalize about? The whole course discusses how Asian Americans triumphed in a system that marginalized them, yet we cannot talk about specific factors that contributed to their success. You can argue that these ideas can be mechanisms to create harmful stereotypes or vilify other groups, but is the solution to preach an anti-truth instead, just to make some people feel better? I think not.

Conclusion

Unfortunately, this kind of reductionism was much too common within the humanities-focused courses I took during college. There always seemed to be this air of conformity around certain discussions, where students were expected to give some compliant view that the professor would approve of. In a system where students mostly care about their grades and the professors hold so much power, there is typically no incentive to challenge them. It’s really under the teachers’ purview to encourage constructive dialogue, but I have found these teachers quite rare. In a vacuum, I have nothing against any of my professors, and I have found most of them pleasant and caring of their students, and I didn’t really want to needlessly make a hoopla about them. However, there was this cognitive dissonance embedded into my Asian American studies class that I couldn’t quite shake off, which led me to write this. The course did not practice what it preached, often reducing the Asian American narrative to a narrow, monolithic view. I felt that it did not deliver on creating a cohesive description of what it means to be Asian American. I wanted to leave the course having learned something new about individual agency, cultural adaptation, and the dynamic interplay between heritage and assimilation. However, I didn’t get anything I wouldn’t have learned from a typical U.S. history class, which left me disappointed and unfulfilled. If I want what I’m looking for, I’ll have to find the answer somewhere else in my life.