week 2 reading blog

In the article The Cold War Origin of the Model Minority Myth, the author argues that Americans cannot separate the way that the war influenced the country from people who come from the opponent  countries and this create the stereotype between Americans and minority. Those Asian Americans try to adapt themselves to become American in order to avoid the stereotype that other Americans group have on them. In addition, the minority group such as Japanese Americans spread Americans stereotype ideas by creating romantic movies to show their real life situation during 1960s. The famous story that states this problem is Sayonara and Pocahontas.  these two story represent stereotype of Asian Americans who fall in love with white Americans. The quotes that show evidence of this arguments are:

“Pocahontas could be viewed as the sexual, maternal, self-sacrificing, fertile native woman who symbolizes the fruit of conquest” (Lee 171). This means that the character in Pocahontas symbolize real life Asian American in the united states. She willing to give up her status to fall in love with a white American. Another quote from Flower Drum Song that show how Asian Americans try to improve their culture in order to decrease the stereotype is “Linda status as an All-American girl is measured by her clothes performs, jewelry, and cars that transform an Asian body into American body” (Lee 178). This quote show that Linda as a main character in the movie shows that she has what other white Americans have too. She tries to prove that she is American and avoid stereotype on Asian American.

In page 151, the author introduces the word “silent minority”. The author introduces this term to represent specific type of minority group that stay still and do not show any interested toward stereotype and stereotype did not affect them as much as Japanese

This can tied up to other Asian culture such as Cambodia because some Cambodian parents who immigrants to the united states still want their children to married with someone in their own culture. This way it is easy for them to communicate.