ON ASIAN AMERICAN IDENTITY
Why Dispelling The Monolith and Model Minority Myths Are Necessary For Environmental Justice
In the recent cover story of New York Times Magazine, Jay Caspian Kang writes, “The confusion and the vagaries of ‘Asian American’ result, in part, from necessity: What else could you possibly do with a group that includes everyone from well-educated Brahmin doctors from India to impoverished Hmong refugees?”
The term “Asian American”, first coined by student activists at UC Berkeley in the late 60s, has become synonymous with “anyone who can trace their ancestry to the continent of Asia.” It’s a term that has been used, especially in light of recent attacks on Asian Americans, to foster solidarity in the shared trauma of growing up non-white in this country.
But, as Kang implores in the aforementioned question, the “Asian American experience” cannot be represented by one all-encompassing timeline, or even one name for that matter. “Asian American” is an experience and appearance that has always been and still is constantly evolving.
Nevertheless, simplifications of the vast diversity amongst Asian American continue to dominate narratives, to the harm of the entire “Asian American community” — especially within the context of the climate crisis. The disproportionate environmental injustice implications that historically poor and refugee descended Asian American populations experience are lost and cast aside when society continues to view Asian Americans as a well-off monolith.
The model minority myth — a myth that perceives Asian Americans to be the “ideal” American minority due to their general socioeconomic and educational status — has been used by white supremacists time and time again to divide Asian Americans from other communities of color. The myth uses Asian American success as a tool to condemn Black, Hispanic, and Indigenous Americans for being “unable to overcome discrimination and pull themselves up by the bootstraps.” It perpetuates the narrative that Asian American success is a result of a work ethic that other people of color lack.
However, the model minority myth is simply a false and gross generalization. It’s misleading to present Asian Americans as the wealthiest race in America when, in fact, Asian Americans hold the greatest income inequality range of any racial category. According to Pew Research Center, as of 2016, “Asians in the top 10% of the income distribution earned 10.7 times as much as Asians in the bottom 10%.” Asian populations that can trace their background back to refugees, namely from Southeast Asia, have a much greater poverty rate than Americans of East Asian ancestry.
Moreover, even broad East Asian success is not the result of mentality. It can be systemically traced to restrictive immigration policies of the early 20th century, such as the Page Act of 1875 and the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 that followed. Asian American immigration only began to rise in 1965, after immigration reform, and just three years before redlining was banned (although its practices would continue on for some time). Furthermore, immigration preference was still given to well-educated Asian individuals, whereas Black Americans, for example, trace their ancestry to forced labor.
There must be an understanding of nuance and diversity within the Asian American community, because it translates to vastly different experiences in the United States with direct environmental implications. For example, there is a sizable Laotian population that resides in California’s West County. There, 40% of the Laotian population, aged 25 and older, live below the poverty line, with one third of all Laotians residing in the United States living in poverty — a far cry from the solely wealthy picture of Asian America painted in the collective consciousness. West County, particularly the cities of Richmond and San Pablo, are heavily impacted by industrial fossil fuel facilities.
Anti-racist work regarding Asian Americans and environmental justice doesn’t end with dispelling the model minority myth, however. As with many communities of color, there is still rampant anti-Blackness in the Asian American community that must be dismantled, especially amongst certain East Asian populations, many of whom have adopted the model minority’s “bootstraps” mentality for themselves and have, for example, lobbied against affirmative action.
Still, it’s essential to recognize that observed “tension” between Asian Americans and other communities of color, is rooted in white supremacy. In fact, a significant amount of Asian American anti affirmative action activism is due to the strategizing of conservative legal strategist Ed Blum, effectively weaponizing Asian students against other college hopefuls in marginalized communities.
Our history as communities of color is filled with actions of solidarity — take the Bandung Conference of 1955, when Asian and African representatives discussed decolonization, and recently, Black Lives Matter’s support of Stop Asian Hate, for example.
We should continue to focus on these acts of solidarity in order to not lose sight of our collective vision — a world without white supremacy pitting vulnerable communities against each other. Each community of color has their own unique racial experience in the United States, but share a common goal of creating a world free of discrimination, prejudice, and injustice. And climate change, a phenomenon that functions as a culmination of these oppressive structures, requires this kind of radical collectivism, intersectionality, and representation to solve.
Image Source: Alan Takemoto, poster marking the 10th anniversary of the annual pilgrimage to Manzanar (1979)