Stereotyping Asian Americans: The Dialectic of the Model Minority and the Yellow Peril

ABSTRACT

The model minority stereotype is viewed as the most influential and pervasive stereotype for Asian Americans today. In this article, the author argues that this seemingly positive stereotype, the model minority, is inseparable from the yellow peril, a negative stereotype, when Asian Americans are stereotypically represented in mainstream media texts. The model minority–yellow peril dialectic is explicated with the concepts of racial triangulation and the ambivalence of stereotypes. Racial meanings for Asian Americans cannot be discussed without considering both local and global contexts. The author explores historical, political, and economic contexts of both the United States and Asia in which the two stereotypes were produced and reproduced, and examines how the dialectic of the model minority and the yellow peril operates in a Hollywood film, Rising Sun.

Keywords:

• Asian
• Asian American
• model minority
• race
• stereotype
• yellow peril

An earlier version of this paper was presented at the Asian and Pacific American Communication Division, the National Communication Association, Miami, FL., November 2003.

I appreciate the insightful comments of Professor Ricky Lee Allen, Krishna Kandath, Bradford ‘J’ Hall of the University of New Mexico, and Dr. William Starosta, Howard University.

Notes

Kibria (2002) included an independent chapter dealing with the model minority stereotype but not other stereotypes in her book Becoming Asian American.

See Shim (1998) for the revival of the yellow peril stereotype and see Kim (2000) for the revival of the model minority stereotype.

On the other hand, people from Southeast Asia, especially Hmong immigrants, tended to be left out. For example, Southeast Asian immigrants are labeled as the superminority's poor cousins (Ramirez, 1986, p. 156).

The New York Times Magazine article of 1966 already contains comparison between Japanese Americans and Whites in terms of occupation, income, and life expectation.

Senpai means the senior person. Connor teaches Smith about the senpai-kohai relationship in Japanese culture. Smith calls Connor senpai, and Connor calls Smith kohai, the junior person.

The elimination of affirmative action programs has occurred since the 1990s in California, Texas, Florida, and Washington (Steinberg, 2003).