Asians- is there such a thing as a good stereotype?

Well my timing coincided nicely with Chinese New Year on this one, though it was actually not on purpose.

While it seems to me that no one ever talks about it, Asian-Americans have quite the history in this country. These individuals, often men, left their homes hoping to find jobs so that they could send money home to their families; since the countries they came from were either poor or going through strife such as civil war and famines. 

              Much of our railroads would have not been completed, especially on the west coast, were it not for the countless individuals brought here from various Asian countries under the guise of finding gold and other wealth.  Instead they were brought to be slaves.  Even after slavery was abolished, Asians were not allowed to become citizens, were only given dangerous jobs at best, had no personal rights, and could neither send for their families, nor leave to return to them.  If you were an Asian woman, you were most likely forced to be a prostitute.  This was in the 1800s though, so of course it got better right? 

Until the internment camps…this spot in American history that gets half a page in the textbooks, although it went on during and after World War II.  Naturally we were at war with the Japanese, so every Japanese-American must be under suspicion of being a spy.  We made sure we added others of Asian descent as well, just to be sure. 

Last I checked, we were also at war with Germany and Italy at that time…and I don’t recall any of those immigrants being put into camps.

            Then the sixties came along, with the Civil Rights movement and Model Minority Stereotype.  This was a fun filled tool used by (naturally) White politicians at the time to show how Asian-Americans, despite all of the adversity they had faced, had begun to triumph in areas such as academics.  Statistically, Asians and Asian-Americans do perform better academically than virtually every other group (including Whites), this is true.  However, during the Civil Rights Movement, this was a political weapon to once again affirm that African-Americans clearly were not succeeding by faults of their own, such as that they were lazy.  It also created a competition between Asian and White Americans. And for the hat trick: Asian-Americans now have standards to live up to which studies have shown can lead to depression and self-perpetuating beliefs about what Asians can excel at- such as math and science.

So, is it possible for a group of people to be stereotyped for good qualities?? 

You betcha’

As a summary, Asian-Americans were treated to a life of abuse and hate for many years, until that downgraded to mere discrimination.  Now, not only are they discriminated against, but it is often because they are trying to be “better” than other Americans.  Add insult to injury: being Asian often time’s means that other Americans will not even realize that there is other “kinds” of Asian than just Chinese and Japanese. 

            While this blog post is not of my original plan to focus on words which cause continuous discrimination and oppression, I felt that the harmful nature of so called “positive stereotyping” of Asian-Americans was something which needed to be shared.  As always, I welcome any constructive criticism and would genuinely love to hear from anyone who wants to share about their experiences as an Asian-American.

Happy New Year J

Contributions to this blog post are from:

Shen, F.C., Swanson, J.L., & Wang, Y.W. (2011).  Devlopment and initial validation of the internalization of Asian Americans stereotypes scale.  Cultural Diversity and Ethnic Minority Psychology, 17 (3), 283-294.  doi: 10.1037/aoo24727. 

- As well as the Asian American Alliance 

http://www.asianamericanalliance.com/Statistics.html