Model minority
This success is typically assessed through metrics including educational attainment, representation within managerial and professional occupations, household income, and various other socioeconomic indicators such as criminal activity and strong family and marital stability.
[3][4] The concept of the model minority has generated controversy due to its historical application to suggest that economic intervention by governments is unnecessary to address socioeconomic disparities among particular racial groups.
[6] The concept of a model minority is heavily associated with U.S. culture, due to the term's origins in American sociologist William Petersen's 1966 article.
[10] Recent additional studies have delved into the role of jealous prejudice in instigating certain historical mass casualty events, such as the Holocaust, noting that the theory of the venting of frustrations on an innocent but weak target is a notion that is part of popular "folk psychology" and should be re-examined, arguing instead that envious prejudice plays a relevant role in scapegoating[11] in some social contexts.
The concept of the model minority has generated controversy due to its historical application to suggest that economic intervention by governments is unnecessary to address socioeconomic disparities among particular racial groups.
[15] It has also been pointed out that the concept, which also has been criticized for over generalizing the success of some community members, has been used to invalidate and render less visible the racism faced by model minorities.
"[36] According to Yanan Wang writing for the Washington Post, since the 1960s, "the idea that Asian Americans are distinct among minority groups and therefore immune to the challenges which are faced by other people of color is a particularly sensitive issue in the community, which has recently fought to reclaim its place in social justice conversations with movements like #ModelMinorityMutiny.
[52] According to the Federal Bureau of Investigation's 2003 report Crime in the United States, Asian Americans have the lowest total arrest rates[53] despite a younger average age, and high family stability.
[60] An empirical literature review shows that most of the existing data used to justify the model minority image regarding Asian American academic achievement is aggregated.
[61] As cited in a case study, many deficits of Southeast Asian American students' academic achievement can be attributed to the structural barriers of living in an immigrant household.
[66] Although Cambodian and Vietnamese refugees endured similar immigration hardships, the aforementioned differences in academic success is attributed to structural and cultural factors.
Such a label one-dimensionalizes Asian Americans as having only traits based around stereotypes and no other human qualities, such as vocal leadership, negative emotions (e.g. anger or sadness), sociopolitical activeness, risk taking, ability to learn from mistakes, desire for creative expression, intolerance towards oppression or being overlooked of their acknowledgements and successes.
[citation needed] Furthermore, the model minority image can be a threat to underachieving Asian American students' academic experience and educational advancement.
Asian Americans may also be commonly stereotyped by the general public as being studious, intelligent, successful, elitist, brand name conscious, yet paradoxically passive.
This is problematic because it shifts responsibility away from schools and teachers and misdirects attention away from finding a solution to improve students' learning experience and alleviate the situation.
Asian American students also have more negative attitudes toward seeking academic or psychological help[83] due to fear of shattering the high expectations of teachers, parents, and classmates.
[citation needed] Psychological distress from model minority stereotyping is related to the stressors associated with the pressure to succeed, differential treatment, and embarrassment or shame to seek help.
[95] In most cases, East Asians such as Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and Taiwanese Americans hold a high position in terms of successful educational goals.
[98] Thus, politicians such as Assistant Secretary of Labor Daniel Patrick Moynihan suggested that fostering cultural change amongst African Americans was essential to address the overall issue of racial inequality.
[101][102] The invisibility of the success of Africans was touched upon by Dr. Kefa M. Otiso, an academic professor from Bowling Green State University, who stated that, "because these immigrants come from a continent that is often cast in an unfavorable light in the U.S. media, there is a tendency for many Americans to miss the vital contribution of these immigrants to meeting critical U.S. domestic labor needs, enhancing American global economic and technological competitiveness.
[126] Though this fails to explain why poverty, corruption, violence, ethnic conflict, and generally poor socioeconomic conditions continue to plague African nations such as Nigeria.
[131] In comparison to other immigrant groups, Caribbeans are far more likely to be naturalised American citizens, display a better standard of English and have higher rates of health insurance cover.
[145] Euromonitor International for the British Council suggests that the high academic achievement by Nigerian students is mainly from most of the pupils already having learned English in their home country.
[citation needed] In a study of a popular New Zealand newspaper, articles "never portrayed the Chinese as a model minority that silently achieves" and this was "not in line with overseas research, suggesting that this stereotype merits further analysis".
More recently, refugees who arrived in France after the Fall of Saigon are often more financially stable than their counterparts who settled in North America, Australia and the rest of Europe, due to better linguistic and cultural knowledge of the host country, which allowed them to enter the education system and/or higher paying professions with little trouble.
[170] Unlike their counterparts in North America and Australia, Laotians in France have a high rate of educational success and are well-represented in the academic and professional sectors, especially among the generations of French-born Lao.
[14] Ly denounces the positive stereotypes associated with the Asian community in France in her book Model Young Girl (Jeune fille modèle).
[185] In 2016 Christian Arabs had the highest rates of success at matriculation examinations, namely 73.9%, both in comparison to Muslim and Druze Israelis (41% and 51.9% respectively), and to the students from the different branches of the Hebrew (majority Jewish) education system considered as one group (55.1%).
Another recent CBS study, among foreign born citizens and their children living in the Netherlands in 2005, shows that on average, Indos own the largest number of independent enterprises.
[208] Although third- and fourth-generation Indos[213] are part of a fairly large minority community in the Netherlands, the path of assimilation ventured by their parents and grandparents has left them with little knowledge of their actual roots and history, even to the point that they find it hard to recognise their own cultural features.
