“Historian Ellen Wu’s The Color of Success: Asian Americans and the Origins of the Model Minority just might be the best examination of the roots of the model minority stereotype in print.
…
No doubt the enthusiasm among many Asian Americans to accept model minority stereotyping was a reflection of the fact that the menu of choices where stereotypes were concerned appeared to be restricted to either “model minority” or “yellow peril.” And the stakes were high. The “yellow peril” stereotype had been used to justify wars in Korea and Vietnam, the mass internment of Japanese Americans during WWII, anti-communist persecution of Chinese Americans under the McCarran Act, and no small amount of racial exclusion and terrorism.”
“As long as U.S immigration policy has a preference for the highly educated, the U.S. will continue to bring in ‘model minorities’.
The term ‘model minority’ is based on a bias for educated people.
Latinos are also ‘model minorities’ in that they are compliant workers who harvest the crops and work in the slaughter houses, but they are not ‘sold’ by the media in those terms because on average they are not the highly educated workforce.”
See on www.racefiles.com
