of all is encapsulated in a series of questions and statements often directed
to Asians (Cargile 2010; Cheryan and Bodenhausen 2000; Kawai 2005; Le
2010; Lee 1994):
Where are you from?
Where are you REALLY from?
But you speak English so well!Scholars and analysts see this as a symptom of a larger problem, often
referred to as the perpetual foreigner syndrome: “We are figuratively and
even literally returned to Asia and rejected from America” (Wu 2002: 79).
Wu is affronted by such casually racist and condescending remarks which
imply “that I am not one of ‘us’ but one of ‘them’ ... I am a visitor at best,
an intruder at worst” (ibid.: 80).
Our discomfort with those Asians we see as unable or unwilling to
assimilate into Anglo society is balanced out and made tolerable by the
contrasting stereotype, those model Asians who are unobtrusive and well
behaved in their other-ness, who assimilate to the point that we can
overlook (or at least, claim to overlook) issues of race and physical
characteristics and language.
Today the model minority is the “most influential and prevalent
stereotype for Asian Americans” (Kawai 2005: 109). The concept was first
articulated in print in a 1966 New York Times Magazine story (“Success
Story, Japanese Style”) and later in the same year, a ‘’Success Story of
One Minority in U.S.’’ about Chinese Americans (U.S. News and World
Report). In both cases the immigrant group in question (Japanese,
Chinese) were provided as examples of good immigrants, who obeyed the
laws, respected the government’s authority, put great value on family ties
and responsibilities, pursued education and believed in hard work as the
primary route to success. The two articles celebrated Japanese and Chinese
Americans as the model minority groups who had close family ties, were
extremely serious about education, and were law-abiding (Kawai 2003;
Park 2008b). Asian American had come to mean “exhibiting cultural
values that are conducive to socioeconomic success” (Park 2008: 552).
More than forty years later, the condescending tone of these
pronouncements published in the early1960s is hard to overlook. In the