Host: Anya Steinberg (she/her/hers)
Episode 1: It’s a Fiction
This episode focuses on Asian American/Pacific Islander (AAPI) identity development, where the term “Asian American” came from, and what it means to be AAPI. We also discuss the Model Minority myth, where it came from, and what implications the myth has for the community.
Guests include: Professor Rich Lee and Professor Vichet Chhuon from the University of Minnesota Twin Cities, Joan Dao with the Vietnamese Solidarity and Action Network, and Sierra Takushi, Colorado College ’21.
Anya Steinberg: Hi, and welcome to New Narratives: dispatches from Minnesota that highlight the stories of Asian America. I’m your host, Anya Steinberg. I’m the storyteller intern at Asian American Organizing Project, which is a non-partisan, non-profit based out of St. Paul, Minnesota, and focused on supporting the Asian American/Pacific Islander community in the Twin Cities area.
We’ll be talking about who Asian America is, what it means to be Asian American, and the infamous Model Minority Myth, the stereotype that shapes the lives of many Asian Americans. So let’s get started.
[Music Playing]
Anya Steinberg: So what does it even mean to be Asian American? If you’re like me, and you have multiple identity crises a week, you’ll know that sticking a permanent definition on a single person is nearly impossible, much less an entire population of millions of people. We’re going to build Asian America from the ground up–talking about the personal, the historical, and the political. I decided to enlist the help of some experts in talking about the subject. Professor Rich Lee, a professor of psychology at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities, sat down to talk with me about how identity is formed on an individual basis.
Professor Rich Lee: The way in which we identify is largely given to us by our parents. A parent might say to a child, ‘well, you know, you’re Asian American and you are Korean.’ And so, the child just sort of accepts these identifiers, not really digging deeply into what it means.
But as kids develop and develop their own social relationships, they will begin to experience prejudice and discrimination. And then suddenly, these identities take meaning because now it’s not just an empty word to say you are Korean or you are Asian American. There is a socially embedded meaning to those words. At that point, I think oftentimes people move from what’s called the foreclosed identity where they just sort of accept: ‘That’s who I am because others told me.’ They begin to explore: ‘What does [my identity] really mean?’ So, by high school you start to explore this more and more and then you have to make certain decisions, like how do you want to identify? Are you ready to take on the pros and cons that come with it?
Anya Steinberg: I think many people in the POC community and other marginalized communities could relate to this: their identity formation may begin with their family or with some Google searches, but it will undoubtedly include some experiences with discrimination or racism.
My good friend Sierra Takushi is a rising senior and Race/Ethnicity and Migration study major at Colorado College who grew up in southeast Minneapolis. She was the only person at her predominantly white Christian private school who had two Asian parents. Growing up, that influenced the way she perceived herself. She described some of these experiences to me.
Sierra Takushi: I think that I didn’t come to terms with my identity until later in middle school and at that point in middle school, I realize, now in reflection, that recognizing my identity meant contributing to the meme of being an Asian person, like the full Asian person at high school. Like it definitely became a racialized joke that I was Asian, that my mom was Asian, that my dad was Asian.
I realize now how problematic it was, but it felt like, because for the first time I realized I was different in a racialized way, I had to compensate for my embarrassment by going along with the jokes.
For one of my birthdays, a good friend of mine, like a very good friend of mine, she went all out and she made me a customized sweatshirt that just said Asian on the front. Then, like, pretty much listed out all the stereotypes of Asian Americans on the back of the sweatshirt that I adhere to.
Anya Steinberg: And…
Sierra Takushi: And I wore the freaking sweatshirt, like I thought that it was cool.
Anya Steinberg: I also spoke with Joan Dao, an activist with Vietnamese Solidarity and Action Network about her formative experiences with racism.
Joan Dao: Yeah, I watched my mom as a young four-year-old be discriminated against in her own nail shop because of purely the fact that she was an immigrant and she spoke with an accent. That, like, it’s one of those defining moments where it’s like, I have to get my English together. I have to iron out this accent out of my mouth so that way, when people see me, they see my mom and they don’t treat her like that.
Anya Steinberg: For Sierra, it was important to claim to be not just Asian but also American to disrupt those feelings of otherness and challenge people’s assumptions. Her dad is Japanese American, third generation. Her mom, over the summer, became a U.S. citizen after living in the U.S. for 30 years. She immigrated from Thailand, but even with her new citizenship, would only identify herself as Thai, not Thai American. To Sierra, claiming to be Asian American is the best way to encompass all her family’s histories and her position in America today into one identity.
Sierra Takushi: I know it’s not my responsibility or a necessity to prove my nationality to the U.S. But I do think that in a way I combat the idea that all Asians are forever foreigners to the U.S. by owning the part that I am Thai, that I am Japanese, but that I am specifically Japanese and Thai American.
Anya Steinberg: For others I talked to, their ethnic and cultural identification is a more important piece of themselves than their Asian Americanness. Joan felt like although Asian American is a useful term, identifying ethnically is more central to a personal identity.
Joan Dao: I just use Viet American. Like if we are talking about a whole, like there’s a reason people want to be part of a group or not. And I think it depends on what it is. If I’m talking about being Viet, then I’m talking about being Viet. Recognizing that like Africa, like Europe, like any other continent, there is a lot of diversity. Using the broad term, you also have to recognize that you know, there are differences. There’s a lot of shared commonalities, but there are some things that are distinct and we should also recognize as well.
Anya Steinberg: Historical and political context also plays a role in personal identity formation for many Asian Americans. Professor Vichet Chhuon who teaches an Asian American studies program at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities told me that he considers himself Khmer and Cambodian American, but also Asian American for a good reason.
Professor Chhuon: There’s a history of that term and identity that has significance. It’s important to recognize that it is born out of struggle, born out of oppression. At the same time, I am still Cambodian, right? I am still a Cambodian refugee to this country and that marks me differently. That means I have very different experiences than other Asian Americans. My racial identity is Asian American is not just something internal, it is psychological that something that I claim psychologically. But it’s also sociological, historical, it’s political, in terms of the kind of moment we are living.
Anya Steinberg: Being Asian American like any other racial identity is something that is created from very complex and interconnected building blocks. For some people, it could be phenotype, it could be ethnicity, it’s culture and food, it’s language, it’s location, and life experiences, and for others it is just a feeling. It’s hard to believe listening to how much Asian Americans think about their Asian Americanness that the idea of being Asian American didn’t even exist a century ago Professor Lee and Professor Chhuon gave me some hard facts on how Asian America was born.
Professor Lee: The idea of being Asian American only emerged during the Civil Rights era in the late 60s. Prior to the Civil Rights Movement, Asian Americans didn’t identify collectively as Asian. They identified ethnically, so they were the Chinese Americans, the Japanese Americans, the Filipino Americans. And, in many ways, they competed against each other for a small amount of resources available. But the 1960s really catalyzed these different Asian ethnic groups to begin to work collectively toward the benefit of all of them. And then in the recession of 1980s, people shifted their attention until the murder of Vincent Chin, who was Chinese American and living in Detroit. And a group of unemployed autoworkers mistook him as Japanese and during his bachelor party before his wedding, viciously and brutally attacked and killed him with a baseball bat.
But because of xenophobia, because of stereotypes of Asian are all foreigners, people didn’t know who is Japanese, who is Korean, who is Chinese. And so these autoworkers attacked Vincent Chin and killed him because of their anger toward the Japanese.
Professor Chhuon: The two men were — they didn’t receive jail time. They gave them a slap on the wrist so this kinda led to this idea that it kinda don’t matter, you know, what kind of yellow you are. So an Asian American pan-ethnic identity, really, I wouldn’t say, wasn’t born at that moment but it really became more energized.
Anya Steinberg: Some people are still confused today about who or what Asian American is, as the umbrella expands to include more and more groups of people, it becomes more diffuse and more difficult to define. Here is Sierra and Joan.
Sierra Takushi: I think it’s how you want to truly define what you’re talking about. If we go by Asian American as who is walking down the street and will be racialized as Asian American, I think, in that sense, how you are racialized, there might be a pan-Asian American experience. What I mean by that, it’s just that I guess it didn’t matter that I am like a dark skin, Southeast Asian, daughter of a Southeast Asian immigrant.
Like in high school, I would just be classified as Asian by my classmates. No matter what I look like, if people knew that I was Asian, I think that the same jokes, the same stereotypes would apply to me as other ethnicities from Asia. So, in that way, I think there is a pan-Asian American experience, in how the majority of the U.S. might racialize us, but I don’t think that there is a pan-Asian American experience within communities, but now I am cringing because I think maybe –[laughs]– see, this is really a daily struggle.
Joan Dao: I think it’s something that we strive for because there are not many of us, so you build that community but like if you will go back to Asia, there is no pan-anything. Everyone is very nationalistic in the sense that they want distinction. So it’s how do you, you know, bridge that, right? I don’t want to, to not recognize these distinctions but I also want the solidarity knowing that we support each other because we do share a lot of experiences together and have — either in the U.S., are having to survive the U.S. everything, and, or you know what brought us to the U.S.
Sierra Takushi: It’s so diverse and there are so many conflicts even between Asian cultures, ethnicities, and nationalities. Even within the geographical area of Southeast Asia, I know that there are so many prejudices between countries. That extends to my experiences in the U.S. because my mom, from Thailand, might be confused as a Vietnamese woman on the street. But, in her head, she holds a lot of prejudices against Vietnamese people, largely because of refugee crises in Vietnam, coming to Thailand and the xenophobic responses by Thai citizens. Like from my observation, there is a really big difference between the fact that Black people in the U.S. who are descendants of enslaved peoples are people who are united by that common ancestry and story specific to the U.S. Whereas Asian Americans are coming from all over, from different regions in that continent at different points in history, and with different reasons for immigrating or migrating or seeking the asylum.
Sierra Takushi: I just wanna clarify that I am not saying that only Asian Americans come from diverse places and for different reasons. Like we know that enslaved Black people came from all sorts of places and we also know that at not all Black people in the US today are descendants of enslaved Black people. But, I do think there is a difference between the fact that Asians coming over in the 20th century had a very vastly different historical — a shared history than Black people being forced into slavery when they came over to the U.S. I just think history and that historical context is largely what makes the term pan-Asian, or like pan-Asian American experiences problematic.
Anya Steinberg: Which brings us to one aspect of Asian America that is constantly both reinforced and unpacked: the model minority myth. I asked Professor Lee to share with me how the term was created historically.
Professor Lee: The origin of the word model minority though, really came about as a way to justify racism and racial disparities between Blacks and whites in this country. This has happened throughout history where whites have used other racial groups as wedges to shift the focus or the blame from whites to the minority populations.
The idea of being a model minority on the surface seems positive. This is a group of immigrants who’ve pulled themselves up by their boot straps and by putting their heads down and not complaining and working hard and staying committed to their families, they have achieved educational and occupational success and have successfully assimilated within this society. That’s the narrative of the model minority stereotype. But it is not known as just a stereotype, it’s also known as a myth because the data don’t bear any of that necessarily to be true.
Anya Steinberg: The insidious nature of this myth means it’s still pervasive today. Asian Americans have a complicated relationship with the myth. Non-Asian Americans let it drive their perception of Asians Americans which definitely affords us some privileges. Even if the stereotype is inaccurate, there are a lot of ways that being cast as a smart and hardworking group of people works in our favor.
Sierra Takushi: Walking through life, I’ll have to face tons of racial microaggressions, just like any person of color. But I also understand that because the model minority myth exists, in a lot of people’s mind, even if it’s a problematic ideology, I probably benefit from the model minority myth. Because even if it’s racist to say that all Asians are smart, like in a job interview, if someone believes that, like that’s probably a benefit. That’s the root of the problem. Even if it’s in some ways, a beneficial stereotype, it’s a stereotype that overgeneralizes people and applies characteristic traits to millions of people, whereas white people can get away with being their individual selves.
Anya Steinberg: Asian Americans themselves have to admit that sometimes we buy into the myth. For example, sometimes Asian immigrant communities believe in the myth because it’s so intertwined with the American Dream, or the idea that hard work will secure you a good future in America. Joan is the daughter of two Vietnamese refugees. Her parents fled war atrocities caused by American colonialism in Vietnam and sought a better life wherever they were granted asylum. For her parents, the myth became a survival tactic for making it in America.
Joan Dao: We all have been exposed to it. Some of us still buy into it. My parents definitely still buy into it. But it’s not wrong in the sense that you want your child to succeed. They’re all things that you’d use as survival tactics is what I’ve come to understand. I think it’s also just a difference in generation. If you have parents who have always focused on survival and have been impacted by war, when everything is uncertain, when everything is unstable, it makes sense to want stability for your kids.
Anya Steinberg: For all its possible advantages, the myth is still a stereotype and stereotypes are inherently harmful to any marginalized group. I want to know what kinds of real-world consequences there are of the model minority myth. Professor Lee weighed in for me.
Professor Lee: One great example is in educational opportunities for Asians. On the one hand, Asian Americans may be seen as academically prepared and successful. But then, when an Asian American student is experiencing difficulties in school, resources may not be offered to that student because there is that stereotype that they will figure it out, they are always successful. They always figure things out for themselves.
There is also a tendency for Asian Americans also to be seen as foreigners, right? So, this is another stereotype of the Asian Americans. There is this model minority stereotype but there is also a stereotype of Asian Americans as foreigners. And so therefore, they all must have limited English proficiency. And so early on, oftentimes, Asian American kids get tracked to the English language learner courses or programs, even if they are native born American, just because educators see the last name of that person, and they assign to an ELL course.
In Silicon Valley, for example, Asian Americans are overrepresented in the number of employees working in the tech industry. Yet, they are underrepresented in tech leadership positions in the same company, because there is a persistent stereotype that Asian Americans are model minorities, are hardworking, and diligent but they are not leadership material. They are too quiet. So, the same stereotypes that are attributed to Asian Americans for their success are also used to limit their ability to succeed.
Anya Steinberg: Sierra also wanted to point out the assumption that characterize the community as homogenous can lead to harmful overgeneralizations.
Sierra Takushi: I think the Census is a perfect example of how applying the model minority myth and applying the pan-Asian American identity or label to these populations is detrimental because it just erases the people who are struggling, and are just like historically, systemically disenfranchised by the U.S.
Anya Steinberg: She brought up the Census, which is used to allocate funding and political representation among other things, and takes racial demographics along with tons of other data. However the racial categories often aren’t enough to capture nuances and the distinct needs of Asian American communities.
Sierra Takushi: For the Census Bureau to say like, ‘Are you Asian American?’ and for a predominantly Hmong community in Minneapolis to mark ‘Yes I am Asian,” as for a handful of East Asian American, economically privileged in Edina to mark ‘Asian,’ it is just actively erasing the voices of those who are underrepresented. who are under-resourced.
Anya Steinberg: Professor Lee also mentions the way in which the myth can take the toll on an individual level.
Professor Lee: There’s an increasing body of psychological research showing that being treated as a model minority places an undue stress in everyday lives of Asian Americans and Asian Americans who also internalize stereotypes, right? Meaning that Asian Americans who believe that Asian Americans are harder working and do succeed because of their effort and merit are actually experiencing more stress in everyday life because they have to carry these expectations that are not always really even realistic or achievable.
Anya Steinberg: In these conversations about the myth, I sense that there was a theme emerging, that the myth itself overgeneralized and lumped the population together with very different histories and backgrounds in America. Almost everyone I talked to, spoke to the importance of un-generalizing Asian American identity, and realizing that, while there are some crazy rich Asians, some Asian Americans do need resources.
There are undocumented Asian Americans. There are Asian Americans facing poverty, historical trauma, and sometimes police violence or other forms of brutality. But when I asked Professor Chhuon to talk about the model minority myth, he brought up how the complications to the model minority narrative also need to be complicated themselves.
Professor Chhuon: I think I am in some way, it has to be said, that all these kinda major — indicators are certainly not true for many communities. It is not true for all communities. These are racial stereotypes. These are assumptions based on race. They’re essentializations, which is racist. So, in that way I think it’s both necessary but in some way it’s also — it can also feel very essentializing too, right?
The flip side is that all Cambodians are struggling. You know, all Cambodians don’t do well in school, right? And that is not true either. Some of my work has kind of addressed this and this is kind of the nexus of race, class, gender, immigration–so this work is trying to it violate some of these assumptions that Khmer boys are on the way to dropping out of the school, that Khmer boys are inherently gang affiliated. That they don’t care about school and other things. That discourse needed to be unpacked, that discourse needed to be violated. And in some ways, that discourse is running up against the model minority discourse, right? That kinda narrative tha, well these are not the good Asians, right. These are the problem Asians–why can’t you be like the Chinese [Americans] in Monterey Park, right? The Koreans in certain communities? Who are on their way to Stanford and Berkley. I want to challenge some of that.
Anya Steinberg: For Professor Chhuon, It is important to keep in mind that there racial tropes at play, even when challenging something racist like the model minority myth. And this speaks to the complexity of Asian American identity and the heterogeneity present in the community. There are certainly Asian Americans who advantage themselves with the model minority myth or who are anti affirmative action and align themselves with whiteness and white supremacy. There are also certainly Asian Americans who work against that, who try to unpack these harmful stereotypes. Professor Chhuon wants us to remember that the model minority myth is only one iteration of a long pattern of racism against Asians in America.
Professor Chhuon: What I always tell my students, whether I am teaching Asian American studies or other courses, is that we have to recognize these racial stereotypes today, which is maybe the model minority, right? That changes as well. That wasn’t always the case, in this society. I always say that the mid 19th century, on the U.S. west coast, there were maybe 20 thousand Chinese. People were just freaking out, right? People were just freaking out. They were calling them ‘yellow hordes,’ they were basically saying that they were primitive people, they were unfit for membership in our society: “Look at the way they dress, look at their hair.” Right?
That was the discourse, the popular discourse. These weren’t things reflected in some kind of racist magazine. These were things reflected in what we might call Star Tribune today or some sort of mainstream newspaper. That was how the Chinese were talked about, the Asians were talked about at one point in time. So the model minority is relatively new and so these racial stereotypes will change depending on context, depending on what political moment we are on. And I think we are seeing that with COVID. That’s why I always remind my students, but I think reminding just everyone that the aspiration toward whiteness has been ongoing. It has not been achieved. It won’t be achieved, you know. It’s a fiction. It’s a fiction.
Anya Steinberg: And that’s a wrap for the first episode of the New Narratives. Special thanks to those featured in today’s story: Professor Rich Lee, Professor Vichet Chhuon, Joan Dao, and Sierra Takushi. Music featured in this episode is LONE by Small Million. This episode is written, edited, and produced by your host Anya Steinberg, Storyteller Intern at the Asian American Organizing Project. More information about AAOP can be found at our website aaopmn.org. Thanks so much for listening, everyone. See you next time.