In recent years, there has been much debate about paying “reparations” to the
descendants of former slaves because they worked for no payment and had their lives
torn apart through slavery. (Jews have received reparations from the German and Swiss
governments that profited from seizing their assets during World War II, and Black
South Africans have received reparations for what was lost during apartheid.) Oppo-
nents claim that it would be too costly and would result in profiteering by minorities.People from East and South Asia
About 3.6 percent of the U.S. population traces its ancestry to East, Southeast, or South
Asia. These groups include China (22 percent), the Philippines (15 percent), India
(15 percent), Korea (10 percent), Vietnam (10 percent), and Japan (9 percent). Harsh
quotas limited immigration before the 1960s, so most are recent immigrants. They
differ tremendously in language, religion, and culture, and often they have long-
standing ethnic and national conflicts back home (Korea versus Japan, China versus
Vietnam, and so on) that make the umbrella term Asian Americanproblematic.
Even within a nationality, there are many ethnic differences. People from China
may speak Mandarin, Cantonese, or any of a dozen other varieties of Chinese or a hun-
dred local languages. People from India may be Hindu, Muslim, Christian, Buddhist,
Sikh, Jain, or atheist. People from Mindanao, the largest and most industrialized island
of the Philippines, may look down on people from other islands as uncouth and unciv-
ilized. So even Chinese American, Indian American, and Filipino/abecome a problem.
The Asian American population is expected to triple by 2050, rising from 10.7 million
to 33.4 million, primarily due to immigration (U.S. Census Bureau, 2005).
Asian Americans are often depicted as “the model minority.” Many measures of
discrimination are significant only for Blacks and Hispanics (like school achievement,
college enrollments, prison populations); Asian Americans score the same as Whites, or
surpass them. They have the highest college graduation rate of any ethnic group.
Though Asian Americans are only 5 percent of the total population, they comprise
15 percent of all U.S. physicians and surgeons, 15 percent of all computer and math-
ematical occupations, 10 percent of all engineers, and 16 percent of
the student body at Ivy League colleges (Kim, 2006). They are less likely
to become victims of racially motivated hate crimes than any ethnic
group except Whites.
Even the stereotypes of Asian Americans are somewhat different.
Prejudiced beliefs about Blacks and Hispanics mark them as barbaric,
unpredictable, violent, and sexually dangerous. The Bell Curveand other
works claimed that African Americans were genetically inferior to
whites, had a lower native intelligence—that is, the arguments were
about “nature” and no amount of “nurture” could compensate for their
natural inferiority (Hernnstein and Murray, 1996). Prejudiced ideas
about Asian Americans mark them as weak, passive, and asexual. In the
mass media, they commonly appear not as thugs and drug dealers but
as mystical sages and science nerds—stereotypes that are equally unfair
but not nearly as threatening (Hamamoto, 1994). The success of Asian
Americans, though, is attributed to their incredible work ethic, discipline,
and parental influence—that is, as the result of “nurture.” Few would
be so consistent as to posit that Asian Americans were genetically supe-
rior to other groups. Of course, all of these are broad and false stereotypes. The point
is that racist arguments are inconsistent; people refer to whichever one suits their pur-
poses.
Scholars wondering about the “success” of the Asian American population have
come up with several explanations. First, most Asian immigrants belonged to the268 CHAPTER 8RACE AND ETHNICITYnAthletes like 2007 All-Star
Game MVP Ichiro Suzuki defy
stereotypes of Asians as weak-
lings and submissive nerds.