The June of 2020 saw protests and Twitter hashtags run wild following the murder of George Floyd in Minnesota. Characterized by the overwhelming urge to see quantifiable change, citizens of nearly every major city in the world marched and chanted until government officials listened. Like any major social or political movement, the Black Lives Matter movement was revealing of a much more deeply rooted issue: a system cannot fail the people it was never designed to protect—a vital realization given that most minorities in America are set up to fail.
As underserved communities all over the country protested in honor of the lives lost to police brutality and predictive policing, they were met with the same demeaning response that had been used to silence them for centuries: “if Asian minorities can succeed in America, why can’t you?” Hence, the model minority myth.
The Model Minority Myth perpetuates a narrative built on the idea that Asian Americans are a model minority because of their professional and educational achievements, along with their ability to assimilate with American culture. The myth has historically been used to argue that because Asian Americans were able to forge a monetarily successful path, other minorities should be able to do the same. In light of the Black Lives Matter movement and the increasing concentration of daily conversations surrounding racism, the Model Minority Myth makes itself known now more than ever in the form of large-scale weaponization—it is used to silence unprivileged or undermined minorities as they attempt to rightfully voice their concerns about a country that has repeatedly used their lives as currency to further its own interests.
What one must consider before misusing the myth as a way to silence Black communities is that Asian Americans’ presence in the tapestry of the American economy is deliberate. It is designed to have the impact that it does. After the U.S. adopted the Hart Celler Act in 1965 with the purpose of attracting skilled and educated Asian migrants so as to diversify and stimulate the sinking economy, the façade of an American dream felt more falsely tangible than ever.
Asians in America have been given a different set of opportunities than other underrepresented American minorities. In the case of Black Americans, the Model Minority Myth simply does not apply as a rebuttal to silence Black communities because Asians in America do not have the same history of oppression working against them. It is a misleading beacon of hope, deluding minority communities into thinking that the epitome of success is impressing White America, because that is how the success of minorities is quantified; if Asians can assimilate into a white dominated job market, work amongst the white man, and settle in upper middle-class white neighborhoods, then they pass the rubric of success created for minorities by the white man.
Redefining how we quantify minority success comes at the cost of mass re-education, reallocation of monetary resources, and most importantly, listening to underserved minorities as they use their voices in a nation full of actors determined to silence them. It is difficult but necessary, because we cannot be actively anti-racist in any of our pursuits unless we purge our communities of the racism and injustice that is so deeply imbedded into the American identity.