99. Minority Model

Currently in Los Angeles at a weekend meeting. We have been doing some unconscious bias training as a group and lately I have been feeling kind of out-of-place. We were having a conversation about stereotypes and our advisor/organizer posed a question about whether positive stereotypes exist. Having gone through my childhood years as the teacher's pet, I automatically knew my peers' answer.As a future educator, and being surrounded by future educator, the model minority myth is a painful realization that one is never good enough, never unique enough, and never thought about. The classroom is a child's first introduction to forced socialization. You meet other kids that might like the color purple too so you become best friends. And within the classroom the teacher is your guide to understanding math, science, and also about yourself. Don't you have that one teacher that triggers bad thoughts and low self-esteem? How is it possible that students of color are thrown into classrooms without responsible adults to help them understand that stereotypes do not exist inside a safe environment such as a classroom. My teachers may have automatically thought I was bright and studious, why else was I a participant of G.A.T.E and tracked into honors and college prep. courses.

Asian American students are believed to be studious and quiet and smart. When a teacher is presented with the idea of the perfect student, this teacher no longer needs to worry about teaching. This child can teach herself. This dismisses the fact that children are complex and come from different backgrounds. Can you teach a Vietnamese refugee the same way you teach a 8th generation South Asian student? Youth poverty rates for Southeast Asian males are much higher than any other group. Obama is deporting more individuals than any of his predecessors. In SF, Vietnamese men are at a much higher rate of being arrested compared to any other group.

These facts are not yet widely known due to the misleading stereotype that Asian Americans/Asians will be able to succeed in comparison to other people of color. Isn't that racist thinking? These myths have been perpetuated and ingrained through media and through the actions of a system that was built to oppress certain peoples and through the words and actions of people everywhere, including the teachers within our classrooms.