Title: Images of "Model Minority" in Print Media and the Inclusion and Exclusion of Asian-Americans
Abstract: IntroductionStories of Asian-Americans are about inclusion and exclusion. On one hand, in contemporary America, Asian-Americans are deemed as entrepreneurial, perseverant, hardworking and extremely intelligent, to the extent that the Asians in America are portrayed as minorities, a group that serves as the for other minorities and, even the majorities. (e.g., Louie, 2004; Takiki, 1998; Wu, 2002) It is widely accepted that Asian-Americans have achieved unparalleled success, especially at schools (e.g., Fryer & Levitt, 2006; Ogbu, 1983; Reardon & Galindo, 2009), in the American society. On the other hand, however, the United States has a history of presenting Asian-Americans as foreigners and enemies and legally exploited and expelled many of them from the country during the first half of the 20th century. Some of these nativist and xenophobic attitudes continue to persist and has manifested in hate crimes against Asian-Americans in contemporary America (Lott, 1998; Lee, 2005; Shah, 2010; Louie, 2004; Wu, 2002). Since the first wave of Asian immigration to the in the 1900s, Asians in America have suffered from social segregation and have been associated with images such as the starving masses, beasts of burden, depraved heathens, and opium addicts (Chan, 1991, p. 45). Such images have been historically associated with the derogatory term Yellow Perils (Tamura, 2001; Chan, 1996, 1998).iDespite the negative images of Asians presented in American media and popular culture during the first half of the twentieth century, the idea of Asians as a minority emerged. Coined in 1966 by sociologist William Peterson, the term minority was first articulated in an article entitled Success Story: Japanese American Style in the New York Times (Peterson, 1966). By 1966, it appears that the term Yellow Perils had been discarded by the public and Americans instead began to embrace Asians as an archetype of the ideal immigrant. News and World Report (1966) further validated this positive idea of the in another article, Success Story of One Minority in the U.S. Adding to the praise was the abandonment of national origins as the basis for establishing quotas for a hemispheric formula and preferences for certain classes of immigrants in 1965. Hence, it seems that since then, Asians living in America had finally shaken off the Yellow Peril images because they finally have become a group of minorities. But why? How did this drastic turn of narrative happen? More importantly, what were the characteristics of the minority group that render them the model of other ethnic groups? Who created these images, from what sources, and for what purposes? Further, how can educators better understand issues facing Asian-American students given a historicized concept of minority?This study addresses these questions using materials in popular magazines, including Saturday Evening Post, Life, and Newsweek between 1945 and 1966. Given its critical role as both the reflection and the manufacturer of public consciousness (Anderson, 2006; Chun, 2000), print media's accounts of Asian-Americans partially speak to the images of this group that existed in the public's mind during these two decades. Chun (2000) also points out the significance of popular writers and Western sinologists on the invention of Chinese-American identity. Examining Asian-Americans' images documented by the print media in a particular historical era, hence, contextualizes the seemingly universalized and taken-for-granted image of Asian-Americans. Although cultural studies scholars and educational anthropologists have already addressed implications of image on issues regarding American citizenship and cultural pluralism (Ho, 2004; Lee, 1999; Simpson, 2011; Wu, 2002) in contemporary society, seldom have historians examined the images of using print media as the primary resource. …
Publication Year: 2014
Publication Date: 2014-12-01
Language: en
Type: article
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Cited By Count: 1
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