On the Asian 'Model Minority Myth' and Phantom White Supremacy

(AP Photo/Yam G-Jun)

In 2009, as an undergraduate liberal arts student, I signed up for a decidedly Marxist sociology course called “Race, Class, and Gender Ideology,” which, based on the title, appealed to my political disposition at the time.

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The propagandistic nature of the course, which was intended to indoctrinate students into liberal groupthink rather than educate, had the opposite effect on me: It turned out to be a personal red pill of sorts before “red pill” was a meme.

Among the many, many logical inconsistencies was a chapter titled “The Model Minority Myth.”

The central thesis was that white supremacists, who run the country and indeed the world through brutal oppression and exploitation of minorities, use the impressive socioeconomic statistics on American Asians to create a “model minority myth” that thwarts the Social Justice™ narrative, which is gospel and unquestionable.

In this way, proponents of the “model minority myth” theory work backward, forming the conclusion (white supremacy) and then negating any evidence that contradicts it — in this case, the stunning success of Asians in America by virtually every standard possible. As a general rule of thumb, the truer a contradictory fact, the more aggressive the attempt by the power structure to discredit it.

According to the Brookings Institution, 54% of Asian Americans hold bachelor’s degrees, compared to 36% of whites and 23% of blacks. Asian Americans earn more money than any other racial demographic, per Pew Research: “In 2019, the median annual household income of households headed by Asian people was $85,800, compared with $61,800 among all U.S. households.” Asians also commit fewer crimes per capita than other races. Again, by nearly every metric, they outperform their peers and serve as model citizens.

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The reasons for these successes are obvious to anyone who is honest: Asians have a culture that embraces hard work and academic pursuit, arguably to a fault. In most of East Asia, as anyone who has lived there can attest, they send their kids to school for 12 hours a day just to gain a competitive edge.

But in polite liberal society, you’re not allowed to acknowledge that culture actually informs economic and social outcomes. Hence the “model minority myth” talking point relentlessly pushed in the corporate media and state institutions, like the mid-size public university I attended.

Instead of an American success story, Asian prosperity and the obvious implications must be derided as “racist” precisely because it so fully belies the white supremacy narrative.

Via NPR:

At the root of Sullivan’s pernicious [model minority] argument is the idea that black failure and Asian success cannot be explained by inequities and racism, and that they are one and the same; this allows a segment of white America to avoid any responsibility for addressing racism or the damage it continues to inflict.

The truth is that one of the major reasons, if not the primary reason, for lagging black economic performance and social advancement in the modern era is that American black culture is extremely anti-intellectual. I went to black-majority public schools in Atlanta, where I witnessed the phenomenon firsthand.

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Yes, there is nuance, and the black experience in America is different than the Asian. But the claim that, in 2022, the United States is inherently racist to the extent that it prevents black economic and social progression is demonstrably untrue, and Asian success is the proof.

Oreo cookies, in other contexts, are popular processed foods. In turn-of-the-century black lexicon, though, “Oreo” was often-used slang that meant a black kid who studied hard and did well in academia  — in other words, who acted “white.” So, ambitious black students’ peers would disparage them as “Oreos,” meaning that they were black on the outside and white on the inside, solely on account of their academic interests. I literally can’t count how many times I overheard one black student call another one “Oreo.”

In response, most hung their head in shame, and either gave up academic pursuits or did so quietly on the margins, the object of scorn by their peers, ostracized for their achievements.

Related: Biden Education Official Says Democracy—And Everything Else—Is White Supremacy

Again, social engineers have made it uncouth to explain this reality out loud, so that the narrative that the cause of all social ills is white supremacy can go unchallenged.

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“The answer is racism. I forgot the question,” is the liberal ethos.

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