Abstract
Asian Americans1 vary tremendously in their immigration histories, sense of ethnic identity and affiliation, degree of acculturation to mainstream U.S. societal norms, and amount of out-marrying by younger generations. I use the term Asian American as a collective term inclusive of a variety of ethnicities without an essentialized expectation of uniformity, but with some shared Asian cultural beliefs having roots in Confucianism. Despite the vast diversity among Asian Americans in the United States, as a panethnic2 group, they have been historically constructed as homogenous and stereotyped as model minorities (Lee, 1996; Wu, 2002; Zia, 2000). This myth emerged in the 1960s from a sociopolitical context in which Asian American success was pitted against an African American deficit model. In this chapter, I discuss how this myth is still perpetuated in American society today, resulting in the need for Asian American parents to socialize their children to deal with racism and discrimination.
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© 2006 Marianne N. Bloch, Devorah Kennedy, Theodora Lightfoot, and Dar Weyenberg
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Adler, S.M. (2006). Problematizing Asian American Children as “Model” Students. In: Bloch, M.N., Kennedy, D., Lightfoot, T., Weyenberg, D. (eds) The Child in the World/The World in the Child. Critical Cultural Studies of Childhood. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230601666_4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230601666_4
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, New York
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