Asian American racialization, racial capitalism, and the threat of the model minority

Abstract

This paper argues for an Asian American racialization that takes seriously the political economy of racial capitalism. To do so, it first discusses the racial category of Asian American, and then take up the myth of the Model Minority as the defining form of Asian American racialization in education. This paper then connects the Model Minority to the tropes of Yellow Peril and Orientalism, arguing that our shortcomings of understanding Asian American racialization generally, and in education specifically, require us to develop a different theory of Asian American racialization that is not wholly confined within the boundaries of the United States. Following the racial political economy of Day (2016), this paper then discusses a conceptualization of Asian American racialization as that of abstract and efficient alien labor, and points to the ways this explains how Asian Americans have been used within racial dynamics in the U.S. This paper concludes with a discussion of the implications this reconceptualization of Asian American racialization for the construction of the Model Minority in education.

Keywords:

• Model minority
• Asian American education
• racial capitalism
• Asian transnational racialization
• anti-Asian racism

Acknowledgments

The author would like to thank Dr. Benjamin Chang, Dr. Anthony Brown, Dr. Leigh Patel, Dr. Nolan Cabrera, Dr. Mira Shimabukuro, and Dr. Alex Means for their feedback on earlier drafts of this paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 In this paper, I am strictly referring to “Asian Americans” and not “Asian-Pacific Americans.” I do so because, while I recognize the political legacy of the formation of the Asian-Pacific American category, this paper focuses on Asian American racialization, which in my view is entirely distinct from the racialization of the indigenous peoples of the Pacific Islands. Further, there is also a history of Pacific Islander peoples being marginalized, neglected or ignored under the banner of “Asian-Pacific American,” and I do not wish to perpetuate this phenomenon.

2 See Lye (2008) for other critiques of this issue that I did not include here.

3 This analysis also suggests that the relatively common occurrence of racial micro-aggressions where Asian American employees, colleagues, and peers are mistaken for each other (Chen, 2021; Gorman, 2021) is actually a manifestation of this racial fungibility at the individual level.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Wayne Au

Wayne Au is a professor in the School of Educational Studies at the University of Washington Bothell and a longtime editor for the social justice magazine, Rethinking Schools. His research focuses on critical education theory and practice, including analyses of high-stakes testing, education policy, curriculum studies, anti-racist education, and Marxist theory. His most recent book is the updated 2nd edition of Unequal By Design: High-Stakes Testing and the Standardization of Inequality.