Jeff Yang in WSJ Deconstructs “Model Minority” & “New Jews” Stereotypes of Asian Americans
October 30, 2012
The “model minority” myth applied to Asian Americans has been a persistent trope since the phrase’s first use in 1965 by a sociologist in a New York Times column that used it to face off Japanese Americans against African Americans. The not-so-subtle underlying message was, ‘look at this Asian minority, they went through hell during World War II (the imprisonment of more than 110,000 people of Japanese descent in American concentration camp) and faced racism for most a century, yet they work hard, don’t complain and succeed as students and employees.’
