Battling Prejudice: BLM vs. The Model Minority Myth

This year, we have seen the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement in response to the killing of George Floyd at the hands of the police. As the movement gained mass support worldwide, it emerged opposers to this cause just as widespread as its followers — white supremacist groups making public statements in direct hostility towards BLM, or family and friend arguments debating its meaning and purpose of what “Black Lives Matter” truly encompasses.

It is not unknown that Asians have prejudices against other minorities. Many of our relatives and friends may even oppose and condemn BLM themselves. As a BIPOC community that is under the same shackles of white dominance as so many others, we ask ourselves, why is it so hard for our community to come together and support BLM? Why have we faced so much division this year upon the surface of this question?

We can trace these prejudices back to the infamous Model Minority Myth — a narrative pushed upon the Asian community to portray them as impassive, agreeable, and superior in school and work. It was pushed during the 1960s that signified a dramatic change in the way Asian communities in the U.S. were treated and viewed; this reverent and respected image of the AAPI community contrasted with the Chinese Exclusion Act and Japanese concentration camps just years prior. Unashamedly, it was promoted in the media to essentially garner the sympathy of Asian Americans and encourage assimilation lest they be stereotypes and shunned, which resulted in a sharp division in unity between the Asian American and African American communities, both of which were struggling for their rights and visibility at that point in history.

In light of the BLM movement, Gen-Z has brought significant attention to their issues of internalized racism in their own lives and have taken steps in the effort to dismantle something so ingrained in our community. But as we see Gen-Z tackle these issues, the youth’s efforts are counteracted just as readily by older generations that fail to see the harms of this myth.

Gen-Z is significantly more open-minded, accepting, and outspoken when compared to previous generations, swept up in a sociopolitical and health crisis — forcing us to unlearn, learn, and educate each other. Racism, homophobia, transphobia fail to pass as easily they did in past years. We hold each other accountable.

Still, we see older friends and relatives oblivious to the implications of the Model Minority Myth. They pride themselves in this false notion that they are the “model” racial group in the face of Western society, that they are inherently smarter than any other minority, that they are the ones who remain calm, agreeable, and impassive. They find themselves stuck in this false narrative and pressure themselves in holding themselves to it, even though these stereotypes are in no way accurate nor fulfillable. In these unattainable standards, Asians harbor feelings of superiority and can tint their image of other minorities. In believing that they are the “model minority,” any other racial group can seem inferior, subordinate. Here, we see the risks of ignorance towards the harms of the Model Minority Myth — the possibility of Asians wanting to fulfill it, instead… laying the foundations for the pitting of the Asian community against other minorities and the enforcement of racist mindsets.

The Model Minority Myth pits minorities against each other and creates a division between those oppressed under the same institutions and the workings of white supremacy. It is counteractive towards the unity in Asian communities and other racial groups and harbors hostility in Asians towards “lesser” or “inferior” races, reflecting the ideas that the Model Minority Myth enforces. As Asians look upon themselves as the “model” or the “better” race, it only sets the stage for them to look down upon other racial groups as not successful, agreeable, or intelligent as them.

There has been noticeable racism in the Asian community against Black people. In the World Values Survey, a study done to determine racial tolerance determined that India was one of the least tolerant in the world — and racial tolerance was also significantly low in diverse Asian countries such as Indonesia, Philippines, China, Kyrgyzstan, and South Korea.

A common sentiment in the community is how Asians look at the Black community of individuals that are “inherently” violent and stray away from those that look “suspicious” and have prejudices and preconceived notions about Black men, in particular, above any other demographic. Stemming from systematic racism from slavery and forward, the myth of Black racial inferiority has manifested itself in the beliefs and everyday practices of Asians worldwide. Being violent is not something that is inherited genetically. It is a trait that is nurtured through one’s environment and is definitely not just limited to the Black community. Generalizing an entire racial group of a single stereotype enforces racism and racial profiling, contributing even further to the systemic and systematic struggles that Black people face every single day.

The Asian community has those that are violent, that are addicts, that are unstable, that are struggling, that aren’t smart, and more — just like any other racial group. Asians are not a “perfect” minority.

When that is acknowledged, it opens one’s eyes to the universalities of imperfectness, of human adversities. When human struggles are tied to a single minority group, it criminalizes them and puts them at a disadvantage in the eyes of the law and at the hands of the general public. The mass outlook on the Black community is something that cannot go unnoticed. Racism has its origins. It doesn’t appear out of thin air.

We have heard our relatives say “all lives matter,” not understanding the context and the need for a statement like “Black lives matter.” We have heard it time and time again; we have repeated it endlessly — all lives can’t matter until Black lives do. We see Black people getting shot, killed, harmed, and the justice system does not do them justice. People are mad. People are tired. If George Floyd was an Asian man, if Breonna Taylor was an Asian woman, if Tameer Rice was an Asian child… we might finally understand sympathy as a community. We would get a glimpse into the years of oppression and frustration that the Black community fights every day. We would understand why they shout “Black lives matter” in the streets.

It does not need to happen directly to us for us to care.

It is the goal of the Model Minority Myth is to alienate us, to make it seem like we cannot sympathize with oppression because we are intelligent and resilient, grouping us into a false standard that jeopardizes our mental health and cultural beliefs. Yet we can’t sympathize with our white counterparts, either, because we are still oppressed under a white-dominated society and institutions built off years of hatred and hostility towards BIPOC.

It is our job to fight these myths and narrow this gap and division that colonization has created between us and other minorities that need our support and help.

As part of the Asian community, we have to stop being complacent with white supremacy and check ourselves and our internalized prejudices. We have to see in what ways colonization has affected our society culturally and dismantle the harmful effects of imperialism in our everyday lives. We have to own up to our own faults and misconceptions and realize we are not a “model minority,” and we are not any more “white” or “privileged” than any other racial group.

The hatred and racism that Asians have faced throughout the course of this pandemic, from President Trump publicly naming COVID-19 as the “Chinese virus” and initiating a wave of anti-Asian sentiments from society at large, is fueled by the same hostility and racism from the white-dominated systems in this country. The way Asians are ostracized and mocked are coming from the same people and the same institutions that are oppressing Black people. Both forms of hate stem from the same perpetrator, and this is what needs to be fully acknowledged to be able to stand in solidarity with BLM. Densho, an organization that works to preserve the Japanese-American history of incarceration during WWII, stated:

The anti-Asian violence being directed at our communities during this pandemic is inextricably linked to the anti-Black violence that allows the police to murder unarmed civilians like George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, that teaches the Amy Coopers of the world to weaponize their white tears to summon those same police, that teaches us to stay silent while those same police commit those same murders as if that will somehow protect us. If we hope to end this violence — all of it — we must reckon with our complicity in this tangled web of white supremacy, and our responsibility to dismantle it.

This is not the time to comply with racist and discriminatory mindsets. This is the time to unlearn those prejudices and realize the way the Model Minority Myth has been embedded into Asian culture has given way to a giant ripple of internalized racism in our own community, reflected in the way we treat and view others minorities.

Anti-blackness in the Asian community cannot go unacknowledged or ignored. When we realize how anti-black racism manifests in our own lives, we can find ways to resolve to do better.

When you see a Black individual by themselves, walking in the street at night, walking in a store, going about their daily lives — check yourself before you racially profile them. It is unfair to assume anyone’s character or intentions by the color of their skin. Stop micromanaging their actions around you because the color of their skin threatens you. It is this same paranoia and fears ingrained in us in the myth that Black people are inherently violent that enforce these habits, and we have to learn to stop generalizing the Black community into a community that is out to harm us.

When you see a social media post demanding justice for a lost life, a wrongly accused or faced with the threat of unjust incarceration or death — check yourself before you gaslight them. Immediate responses like, “are you sure they meant it that way?”, “it’s not always about race” “they’re overreacting” invalidates the struggles and experiences of Black people. Don’t gaslight in general. When it comes to police brutality, anti-Black racism, and related topics, one will find that a majority of the time, it is about race.

Black people face police violence at extremely disproportionate rates. Black people have been 28% of those killed by police in 2020 despite only being 13% of the population. They are 3 times more likely to be killed by police than white people and 1.3 times more likely when unarmed. 98.3% of killings by police from 2013-2020 have not been charged with a crime.

This is why we shout “Black Lives Matter,” because in the eyes of this country at this very moment, they don’t. Not when innocent Black men, women, and children are killed by impulsive acts of violence at the hands of police. Not when they face extreme discrimination in almost every avenue — education, jobs, beauty, entertainment, and more. All lives can’t matter until Black lives do.

We can look to Yellow Peril for Black Power as the Asian community reclaimed a condescending term that was used against us for years to empower and uplift those who were being silenced and oppressed. A phrase once used to alienate Asians from the Western world, Yellow peril is no longer a term of shame and cowardice, it has been morphed into one of renewed pride and zealousness, joining with the Black community to express its support, first spoken by Mao Tse-tung on behalf of the Chinese community in 1963:

I call on the workers, peasants, revolutionary intellectuals, enlightened elements of the bourgeoisie and other enlightened persons of the world, whether white, black, yellow or brown, to unite to oppose the racial discrimination practised by U.S. imperialism and support the American Negroes in their struggle against racial discrimination.

BLM is not the first time African Americans have spoken up about the injustices and flaws in the U.S. institutions, nor is it the first time we have seen mass opposition to this fight. BLM has been labeled as a terrorist organization, an extremist group. We cannot let these accusations sway us. What we need is cooperation and support among minorities. Hatred, fighting, and prejudice will not get us anywhere.

This is what we need to see in our society, the unity between those fighting against a system that has been made to quiet our cries for help and screams in protest.

We win nothing from hatred, we win nothing from hostility. At the end of the day, we are all still fighting against race-based violence, xenophobia, police brutality, imperialism, and more.

We have so much more that joins us than what divides us.