The image of Asian-Americans as a homogeneous group of high achievers taking over the campuses of the nation’s most selective colleges came under assault in a report issued Monday.
The report, by New York University, the College Board and a commission of mostly Asian-American educators and community leaders, largely avoids the debates over both affirmative action and the heavy representation of Asian-Americans at the most selective colleges.But it pokes holes in stereotypes about Asian-Americans and Pacific Islanders,
including the perception that they cluster in science, technology, engineering
and math. And it points out that the term “Asian-American” is extraordinarily
broad, embracing members of many ethnic groups....
The report found that contrary to stereotype, most of the bachelor’s
degrees that Asian-Americans and Pacific Islanders received in 2003 were in
business, management, social sciences or humanities, not in the STEM fields:
science, technology, engineering or math. And while Asians earned 32 percent of
the nation’s STEM doctorates that year, within that 32 percent more than four of
five degree recipients were international students from Asia, not
Asian-Americans.
The report also said that more Asian-Americans and Pacific Islanders were
enrolled in community colleges than in either public or private four-year
colleges. But the idea that Asian-American “model minority” students are edging
out all others is so ubiquitous that quips like “U.C.L.A. really stands for
United Caucasians Lost Among Asians” or “M.I.T. means Made in Taiwan” have become common, the report said.
The report quotes the opening to W. E. B. Du Bois’s 1903 classic “The Souls
of Black Folk” — “How does it feel to be a problem?” — and says that for
Asian-Americans, seen as the “good minority that seeks advancement through quiet
diligence in study and work and by not making waves,” the question is, “How does
it feel to be a solution?”
That question, too, is problematic, the report said, because it diverts
attention from systemic failings of K-to-12 schools, shifting responsibility for
educational success to individual students. In addition, it said, lumping
together all Asian groups masks the poverty and academic difficulties of some
subgroups.
Okay, here's my read on this article (mind you, I'm reacting to what's in the article, though I'd love to see the report itself): yeah, this does come off as the takeaway--meaning the impressions a person forms about an event, a discussion, a product, or a service--from the "Asians/Asian-Americans section" of an Ethnic Studies 101 course. ("Gosh, 'they're' different after all!") And yeah, I can hear some folks arguing that the commission shouldn't have had to even do the research and write this report because any person can take, and should take, a cursory look on the Interwebz or otherwise seek out this information to understand the complexity of Asian American communities and opinions about the "model minority stereotype"--in other words, why does the onus have to fall on these leaders and educators to explain Asians and Asian-Americans, specifically students, to the rest of us?
I agree with both arguments.
But I am going to give some credit to the commission, their endeavor, and the article because they point out the real-life effects of the divide-and-conquer strategy of the "model minority" stereotype and hints at some more points of political coalitions between API/APIA people, African Americans, and Latinos (and Native Americans) around education, race, and class, which isn't heard too often in the national discourse:
“Certainly there’s a lot of Asians doing well, at the top of the curve, and that’s a point of pride, but there are just as many struggling at the bottom of the curve, and we
wanted to draw attention to that,” said Robert T. Teranishi, the N.Y.U.
education professor who wrote the report, “Facts, Not Fiction: Setting the
Record Straight.”
“Our goal,” Professor Teranishi added, “is to have people understand that the population is very diverse.”
...
“The notion of lumping all people into a single category and assuming they have no needs is wrong,” said Alma R. Clayton-Pederson, vice president of the Association of
American Colleges and Universities, who was a member of the commission the
College Board financed to produce the report.
“Our backgrounds are very different,” added Dr. Clayton-Pederson, who is black, “but it’s almost like the reverse of what happened to African-Americans.”
...
The report said the model-minority perception pitted Asian-Americans against African-Americans. With the drop in black and Latino enrollment at selective public universities
that are not allowed to consider race in admissions, Asian-Americans have been
turned into buffers, the report said, “middlemen in the cost-benefit analysis of
wins and losses.”
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