The outlook on Asian Americans as a minority that has succeeded in integrating into the new culture and become prosperous as a whole is somewhat common in society. Popular sentiments, particularly the anti-racism calls that have become more frequent in recent years, appear to ignore Asians, including them into the category of supposedly privileged oppressors along with whites. However, this attitude is both inappropriate considering the real status of many Asian Americans and potentially damaging, serving to isolate their social group. These stereotypes encourage the division and discrimination of specific groups of Asian immigrants and their children, obscuring real issues.
Erika Lee describes this phenomenon in chapter 17 of her book, The Making of Asian America: A History. She claims that much of the overestimation of American Asians stems from a continued history of the media presenting them as a model minority. According to Lee, news stories would deliberately omit the participation of Asians in riots, portraying them as uniformly hardworking as opposed to violent and dangerous African Americans. Ultimately, the narrative would lead to resentment from other racial groups, including whites who felt displaced by the overly perfect Japanese, Koreans, Chinese, and others.
In my experience, this stereotype holds for large portions of the population, leading to a skewed perspective with regards to Asian Americans. Usually, people would only identify residents of Far Eastern countries such as China, Korea, and Japan as Asians, associating their specific features with the definition. Indians and other people from Southern or Middle Asia would not be recognized as members of the same minority, even after an explanation that they were from the same part of the world. As such, their socioeconomic circumstances would usually be ignored when people were speaking about the group’s success, well-being, and acculturation.
I believe that the lack of connection between the stereotypes about Asian Americans and the real situation of the minority stems from this misconception. I hear about China, Japan, and Korea in the context of being Asian considerably more than Vietnam or India. Lee presents Cambodian Americans as the opposite of the image of success associated with their group. However, I think that many people would not consider a person like Mao So a “true” Asian, associating him with his home country instead. This difference in how labels are applied, combined with the ease of defining someone using blanket terms, leads to confusion and misunderstandings.
The popular American understanding of Asian Americans tends to focus on Far Eastern countries and ignore the rest of the area. As a result, the success of the community tends to be exaggerated in comparison to its actual state when all of the relevant groups are included in the analysis. Even the parts of the group that is successful face discrimination from people who feel that the immigrants are displacing them in high-skill positions. Overall, the situation is a result of numerous misconceptions that lead to the exclusion of less successful groups, which skews the overview.