Blog Post Week 2: Cold War Origins of Model Minority Myth
- In Robert Lee’s “Cold War Origins of Model Minority Myth”, he argues that Asian-Americans were being labeled the “model minority” during the Cold War not because they were successful people but because they were “politically silent” and “ethnically assimilable”.
- “At a time when it is being proposed that hundreds of billions be spent on uplifting Negroes and other minorities, the nation’s 300,00 Chinese Americans are moving ahead on their own with no help from anyone else .” (151)
- Lee uses this quote from a U.S. News article to show how the success of Asian Americans as immigrants in the U.S. is overshadowed by the political issues of other minority groups. During the cold war African Americans led a civil rights movement demanding equal rights and opportunity and an end to Jim Crow segregation. The civil rights movement was supported by the President Johnson and members of his administration. In contrast during the cold war Asian Americans were not as politically involved out of fear of being deported and distrust of the government. Despite receiving virtually no help from the government the Asian American community was still able to assimilate into American culture through high educational achievement, moving into good (white) neighborhoods, and interracial marriages to whites. Rather than being recognized for their self reliance and ability to assimilate without government intervention they are praised for not being as outspoken and troublesome as other minority groups.
- A key term that Lee introduces is model minority. The concept of a model minority is built upon the idea of minorities being “politically silent” and “ethnically assimilable”.
- In the last part of the reading Lee mentions how there is a “domestication of exotic sexuality” (179). He spends a great deal of time describing the dramatic shift in the portrayal of Asian women in American films during the Cold War. Rather than being the exotic mysterious women in films, Asian women are being portrayed as women who are “suitable for marriage and motherhood” (179). This made me think of the in-class screening of Slaying the Dragon, which is also about how the portrayal of women has changed since the silent film era. The movie shows how women go from being portrayed as the dragon lady, to the seductive and exotic Suzie Wong, then to the submissive wife of the 50’s. Both the movie and the reading indicate a change in representation of Asian Americans from exotic to acceptable in American films.
- Why do Asian Americans (the minority) have to be the ones to be completely accommodating to America (the host society) by having to be the group to assimilate? Why can’t the host society be more accommodating?
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