Asian America: THE Model Minority

Assignment #4:

• Find an image of a raced, classed, gendered,… (whatever) body.
• Post it to the Blog and Read it, using our materials and methods
• Read (or otherwise use) your body’s reaction (maybe letting Dyer’s account guide you)

and use all of this to:

• Analyze the Politics of Representation going on with the image. What’s the ‘political / cultural work’ it’s doing to construct our view of the world and those bodies that inhabit it?

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For so long, the term "model minority" has been labeled upon the Asian American race. The idea of "model minority" jumpstarted after WW2 and during the Civil Rights movement in the 1960s when the Black Americans were fighting for equality. At this time, the Asian American were very passive and quiet about their opinions of white supremacy and white biases, racial degradation and racial biases. So the term, 'model minority' was labeled upon a group of minority as a way to stop Black Americans from engaging in the Civil Rights movement.

In the cover of the TIME magazine, sometime in the 80s and early 90s, you have a group of Asian American kids--stereotypical as "whiz kids", probably nerdy, and school oriented. This is a prime example of body practice in the media that in some way, manifestation of this stereotypical Asian America that are nerds, like to study, read, do math, science, and--for the men in particular--emasculated.

According to the Model Minority Myth, Asians are "passive, interchangeable, resilient,intelligent in technology and math, and forever assimilating, always seen as perpetual foreigners." This body practice of passive aggressive, emasculation, and almost kind of introverted nerdy kind of way.

This also goes into the whole idea of "body" and "white" in Dyer's reading in a sense that Asians are essentially genetically engineered to be good at math, to be passive, and primitive. That no matter how long they've been in the U.S., they're always going to be seen as perpetual foreigners, never quite assimilated into mainstream society. This whole concept of white bodies as enterprising, leading, and innovative--while blacks are laboring, following--- Asians are, on the other hand, seen as in between the two group as far as education, success, and everything else is concern.

So as Dyer simply states, "every image is an argument," therefore this photo makes the argument that Asians are these passive, introverted, nerdy, group of people that are never quite assimilated into society.