MODEL MINORITY MYTH NEEDS MORE PUSHBACK
Conversations about affirmative action and Asian Americans discuss the model minority myth as one that positions Asian Americans as the “good” minority that suffers the consequences of discriminatory university admissions policies that unfairly benefit Black and Latinx applicants. The model minority myth presents us as an American success story by placing Asian Americans in close proximity to Whiteness at the expense of Black and Latinx communities and thus allegedly reaping the benefits of a rigged system.
The 1960s and 1970s saw the wider circulation of the model minority myth, in part, as a way to discredit cross-racial movements for liberation. In the decades that followed, repeated and concerted backlash against this organizing included numerous attempts to curtail affirmative action and to defund public education.
Yet the model minority myth also reveals a longer history of cross-racial movements in the United
States that show us why affirmative action is an important ground upon which to build solidarity in the present. Just a few years after President Lyndon B. Johnson created affirmative action with a
1965 executive order, the Third World Liberation Front and other student organizations built a cross-racial movement comprising Black, Latinx, Native and Asian American students by tying the fight for ethnic studies at the university level to the ongoing movement for civil rights and decolonization struggles around the world.
Students used the premise of affirmative action, the need to address deepseated racial inequities, to build their movement. They critiqued the insularity of the university and the ways it limited access for people of color and working people, and they called on it to expand its walls to people who shared their experiences. This movement found solidarity with activists fighting against anti-Black racism, White supremacy, colonization, urban renewal and the U.S. war in Vietnam.
Last year, 50,000 University of California academic workers went on strike for fairer wages. Much like past student movements, they are organizing to change inequitable conditions from within the institution. They continue to fight for a fully implemented contract amid what they call an escalating retaliation campaign from the university. Nonetheless, they are proof that student movement building works. They are also the kinds of students that would benefit from affirmative action. Most students who have both lived experiences of poverty and the tools and passion to organize are, thanks to systemic racialized oppression, students of color. Affirmative action bans aim to exclude these student organizers who hold universities accountable. Without student movement building, universities will continue to underpay workers, power the military industrial complex and occupy stolen Indigenous land. Twenty-five years ago, Proposition 209 banned race-based affirmative action in California public universities and public employment, exacerbating socioeconomic inequities. Degrees in science, technology, engineering and math obtained by underrepresented students declined, resulting in an average 5 percent wage decline. In addition, the practice of tracking disproportionately places students of color in classes marked for low-income careers. And the unequal suspension of Black, Latinx, Indigenous, Southeast Asian and Pacific Islander students leads to a higher rate of incarceration, where prison labor is exploited for slave wages.
From preschool to university, academia continues to use racist policies to underdevelop and recruit youth as a cheap labor force. The resulting ban on affirmative action is an attempt to restrain the collective power of students who believe in and demand a better world. As Asian Americans, we are every bit a part of that.
Our ancestors renounced the model minority myth by organizing cross-racial solidarity movements in their homes, workplaces and campuses to win liberation for all people. A university education is but one tool toward liberation. Let us give equal weight to collective education efforts — from grassroots organizations like Universidad Popular, to parents tirelessly advocating for children with disabilities, to the legacy of the Black Panther Oakland Community School. Affirmative action bans and the model minority myth seek to use Asian American students as a racial wedge. It is our responsibility to know the lessons of liberatory educators and youth who show us alternative solutions to the gatekeepers of academia.
Students used affirmative action’s premise — the need to address racial inequities — to build their movement. They critiqued universities’ insularity and how officials limited access for people of color and working people.