The birth of a new (Asian) nation: why being labeled the ‘model minority’ does harm

It’s a fresh new morning, the birds are singing, my Harvard diploma hangs statuesquely on my wall and I begin my day as part of the world’s master race, planning to overtake all of the world’s engineering jobs while simultaneously taking over Silicon Valley as my hub for “my people” — the Asians.

This is how Richard Spencer, white nationalist politician and certified racist, sees Asians: the master race, second to Caucasians, but the master race nonetheless. Labeling Asians as the “master race” has seen far more implications than most of us can imagine. It places difficult and dangerous pressures on an entire race.

It’s no surprise that to Spencer, a bedsheet-wearing supremacist, any mention of Muslims, blacks or Hispanics will induce gags and plans to create disgustingly discriminatory policies to take them down.  

The only group that seems to have gone past Spencer’s racist filter is what he calls “the Asians.” Spencer thinks  Asians should become something similar to slave-programmers, locked in warehouses and propelling America into the foreground of the economic and technological stage. (He is, by the way, an unrelenting fan of Trump. Enough said.)

One can only expect that Spencer, who believes that Asians are “the master race” due to their “built-in” capacity for all things STEM, is also an expert in objectifying an entire race of people.

Spencer told Mother Jones magazine, “There is something about the Asian girls. They are cute. They are smart. They have a kind of thing going on.”     

Spencer not only exoticizes “the Asian girls” but also shows how society has found a way to defiantly claim, “I’m not racist; I like Chinese food,” while easily and determinedly internalizing racism by overtly separating Asians from being human, labeling them “the Asians.”

From the late 20th century to the present, America has seemingly been struck with identifying Asians as “the model minority.” A quick search of “model minority” in Google yields articles like “Asian Americans and the Model Minority Myth” and “Unraveling the Model Minority Myth of Asian American Students.” Ideas like the model minority are yet another way in which American society has subjected Asians to undue pressure.

According to education.com, “The stereotype suggests that Asian Americans are more academically, economically and socially successful than any other racial minority groups.”

While everyone else wishes Asians would stop complaining about this supposed “compliment,” it’s no wonder these same people who complain are blind to the disturbing and ultimately harmful effects the “model minority” myth that has brought upon Asians Americans.

After receiving a test, people ask, “Oh, did you get an ‘A-?’ isn’t that an Asian fail? Are you going to be disowned?” When sitting down in a new assigned group project, someone whispers, “Dude, we don’t have to do any work. We got an Asian girl.”

Unbeknownst to them, each time we hear this, it reinforces and traps us in the stereotype, ignoring the complexity of the people we are and letting our success be mislabeled as something that we are “given” due to our ethnicity alone.

Despite its supposedly positive stereotype, the “model minority myth” and the belief that somehow any race can be a master class is dangerous. In fact, it begins the classification and implicit separation of people along racial lines. The discussion of race should “celebrate” race instead of creating hierarchies and reinforcing harmful stereotypes.

So please stop calling us “the Asians.” The “the” is not necessary — we’re just Asian, not some mystical master class.