The Woke ‘Model Minority’ Myth For progressives, Asian-American achievement is an embarrassment. By William McGurn
https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-woke-model-minority-myth-11614035596?mod=opinion_lead_pos8
The North Thurston Public Schools in Lacey, Wash., made headlines in November when their “equity report” classified Asian-Americans along with whites instead of as “students of color.” Apparently the Asian-Americans were doing too well academically to be students of color. After what the district said was “an overwhelming public response,” it admitted its “category choices” had “racist implications” and dropped the equity report from its website.
To normal Americans, it makes no sense. How are Asian-Americans not “people of color”? But give the North Thurston folks credit for following progressive logic to its conclusion. Modern progressive theory more or less divides the nation between the oppressors, defined as whites, and the oppressed, defined as everyone else. In this framework, achieving success puts you on the side of the oppressors and thus makes you white or “white-adjacent”—even if your family came from China or India.
Calling it progressive to send children of color the message that achievement is white is an irony lost on the woke. Bigoted laws such as the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 or actions such as the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II were once thought among the worst stains on American history left by anti-Asian racism. But these days the characterization of Asian-Americans as the “model minority” triggers the woke.
“Asian-Americans are caught in a bind—condemn the system of white supremacy and privilege along with other people of color or be ‘banished’ from the victim group as white-adjacent,” says Wenyuan Wu, executive director of Californians for Equal Rights. “The end goal here is to pit people against each other as if our hyphenated identities are bigger than our common destiny as Americans.”
The principal reason for this is the fact of Asian-American achievement. This is an embarrassment to progressives because it undermines the claim that structural racism dooms nonwhite citizens to the margins of the American dream. So Asian-American achievement must either be dismissed as somehow white or sacrificed at the altar of equity.
Examples abound. A report last year called “The Secret Shame” notes how public schools in America’s most progressive cities have been failing their black and Latino children for decades. How does New York Mayor Bill de Blasio respond? In January America’s self-styled progressive in chief announced that New York will abolish the entrance exam for the city’s gifted-and-talented programs for young students. If you can’t fix the schools that are broken, you cut down to size the schools that are working.
In 2019 Mr. de Blasio’s School Diversity Advisory Group reported that though Asians are only 17% of New York’s kindergarten population, they account for 42% of the gifted-and-talented seats. Plainly the mayor’s “success” requires reducing the number of Asian-Americans no matter how qualified they are. The mayor has also tried to abolish the entrance exam for the city’s high-performing high schools, where Asian-American students again are “overrepresented.” And the progressive war on merit is by no means confined to New York. San Francisco’s renowned Lowell High School abolished its own merit-based admissions this month, again in large part because a student body selected by merit will have too many Asian-Americans and too few students from other minority groups.
The progressive contention is that admitting students on individual merit is really about upholding white dominance. What about Asian-American success, then? In this narrative, that’s using the model-minority myth as a “wedge” against African-Americans, to send them the false message that with strong families and hard work America’s racism can be overcome.
In reality, by applying different entrance standards for different racial groups, the equity movement is stoking racial resentment and pitting one group against another. Note that the same people who decry the model-minority stereotype have little to say about the stereotype Harvard’s admissions office has created with subjective personality assessments whose results consistently rate Asian-Americans as lacking in traits such as courage, leadership and likability. This lowers their overall admissions scores and makes them easier to reject.
In the past, anti-Asian bigotry took the form of direct assaults. These reflected claims that Asian-Americans were inferior, incapable of assimilating or stealing jobs. But today many Asian-Americans are learning that the progressive form of discrimination may be the most insidious of all.
“What do progressives say to a Chinese-American or Indian-American when she realizes their ideology means her children will be held to higher standards to get into college simply because of their race?” asks Wai Wah Chin, charter president of the Chinese American Citizens Alliance of Greater New York.
“Should she really have to tell her children they must just accept that because of their race they will have to work harder to get the same opportunities as others—and accept this new racism as the price of a woke America?”
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