The Origins of the Model Minority Myth

How did a myth like this even materialize? To properly understand the Model Minority Myth, we must first understand the origins of it. The term “model minority” was first coined in 1966 by American sociologist William Petersen in which he discusses the success stories of Japanese Americans. In his article, Petersen emphasizes that “family structure and a cultural emphasis on hard work allowed Japanese Americans to overcome the discrimination against their group and achieve a measure of success in the United States” (Kasinitz 2008).

With Asian Americans being historically labeled as the “Yellow Peril”, which accused Asians to be a threat towards Western expansion, the myth was evidently not created to benefit the Asian community of the United States in any way. The Model Minority Myth was sprouted through the roots of American imperialism and ideology that aimed to keep power and influence in Western hands. By the 1980’s, the term had been “generalized and popularized by the media to include all Asian groups, and it has become a broad brushstroke that masks the diversity and differences among the Asian ethnic and cultural groups” (Li 2005).

In recent times, the Model Minority Myth is universally known and implemented into the American mindset encouraging modern misconceptions of Asian Americans. These misconceptions include: the myth of Asian Americans being a single monolithic group, the myth of Asian Americans being well educated and high earning, the myth of Asian Americans immigrating to the United States in the “right” way, the myth that Asian Americans face less systematic racism and discrimination, and the myth that Asian Americans are fairly represented in leadership positions (Jin 2021). These are just a few of the toxic stereotypes that the myth umbrellas.

(1) Kasinitz, Philip. (2008). “Becoming American, Becoming Minority, Getting Ahead: The Role of Racial and Ethnic Status in the Upward Mobility of the Children of Immigrants.” The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, vol. 620. http://www.jstor.org/stable/40375819.

(2) Li, G. (2005). “Other people's success: Impact of the ‘model minority’ myth on underachieving Asian students in North America”. KEDI Journal of Educational Policy, 2(1).

(3) Jin, C. H. (2021). “6 charts that dismantle the trope of Asian Americans as a model minority”. NPR. https://www.npr.org/2021/05/25/999874296/6-charts-that-dismantle-

the-trope-of-asian-americans-as-a-model-minority.