How can you be a "model minority" if you don't speak English?

“You look like you’re from China!”

The little girl looks at me with her bright brown eyes, naturally inquisitive, almost pleased to have made such an observation. I can tell that she is waiting for a response, some affirmation that her speculation is correct. I had mentally prepared myself for my first day as a volunteer at a Head Start program in Detroit. Hitting, crying, screaming—these were my worst-case scenarios. I did not expect the most salient aspect of my identity to be questioned with such confidence and gusto by a girl barely over the age of five.

Cultural insensitivity is not uncommon in the U.S, or the world for that matter (see Laura’s post). And how can I find fault in genuine innocence? What bothered, and continues to bother me, about the little girl’s comment is how indicative it is of a larger societal issue. I was probably the first, or one of a small number of Asian people this little girl has ever encountered. She will probably never know the beauty of diversity because policy makers and America’s educational system will keep her in a classroom with those who share her skin color and class background. Not surprisingly, segregation in the classroom affects the quality of education a racial minority receives in comparison to his or her white counterparts.

In a country where racial discourse is too often framed from a black and white or black and Latino dichotomy, where do Asian Americans find voice in discussions on educational inequality? More specifically, in a country where Asian Americans have supposedly set and exceeded standards for educational success, should we even care?

Last month, the New York Times released an article entitled “Report Takes Aim at ‘Model Minority’ Stereotype of Asian American Students.” According to the report, the model minority perception “diverts attention from systemic failings of K-to-12 schools, shifting responsibility for education success to individual students.” While psychological distress and esteem issues are unsurprising outcomes of the dangers of the model minority myth, as the report suggests, the failings of the educational system are unfortunately overlooked.

Left in the Margins: Asian American Students and the No Child Left Behind Act, a report by the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund (AALDEF), states that the myth of the model minority often negates the fact that many Asian Americans, particularly those who do not speak English as their first language, have difficulties succeeding in school. Contrary to stereotypes that describe Asian Americans as model students of academic achievement, many Asian American students are struggling, failing, and dropping out of schools that ignore their needs.

Programs meant to close the achievement gap between minority and white students and improve the achievement of all students, such as No Child Left Behind (NCLB) lack the provisions necessary to ensure that such laudable goals are actually met.

NCLB requires that students are regularly assessed in reading and math, often in the form of standardized testing, and that their performance on these assessments be used as a measure of the school’s educational quality. If student scores do not meet these achievement targets, the school may face a number of sanctions, including the dismissal of staff and a complete overhaul of the school’s management. The law fails to acknowledge that schools must first be equipped with the proper resources in order to achieve academic success.

I began this post with the anecdote of the little girl in Detroit because, as hackneyed as this sounds, she made me examine my own shortcomings and privileges. I didn’t know how to respond to her question because I knew why she asked it, and that knowledge made me uncomfortable. I was probably one of the first, or the first Asian person she had ever encountered because Asian Americans who actualize the “American dream” and consequently fulfill the model minority stereotype don’t send their children to public school in Detroit.

But what about the Asian Americans who, due to the failings of the education system, find it difficult to fulfill the stereotype? According to the AALDEF report, most school districts do not provide sufficient services for English Language Learners (ELL), especially those who speak a language other than Spanish. In California, home to one of the largest concentrations of A/PIAs in the country, there were over 34,000 Vietnamese speaking ELLs. Yet despite Vietnamese being the second most common native language of California ELLs, there are no two-way bilingual programs in the entire state of California for any Southeast Asian languages.

I may be presumptuous in saying this, but in Garden Grove, home to the largest concentration of Vietnamese outside of Vietnam, the median household income is approximately $50,000, compared to neighboring cities whose residents claim average household incomes in the $100,000 range. The demographics in these cities are also significantly different. As of the most recent census, 30.9% of Garden Grove’s population claimed to be of Asian descent compared to the neighboring city of Orange (my hometown), with only 9.3%. In short, money matters.

NCLB expired in 2007 and is up for reauthorization. According to AALDEF, as Congress considers the reauthorization of NCLB and other education reforms, legislators, policy makers and policy advocates must take into account the needs of Asian American students, a group that is often neglected, due in part to the model minority myth.

It’s easy to discuss the myth and to ironically sit in out ivory towers and attempt to debunk it. Segregation, economic disparities, language barriers and the resulting challenges they cause—to me, these things matter more than how good the Asian kid next door is at calculus and whether his ability to understand the derivative of a graph affects his psychological well being. We know the model minority myth is false. It’s time to focus on fixing the causes of those falsehoods.

NY Times Article
College Board & NYU Report on the Model Minority Stereotype
AALDEF Report
California Census Data

-Veronica