Asian American Stereotypes Research Articles

The NLAAS story: Some reflections, some insights.

The General Social Survey (GSS), a national survey that queries U.S. residents about their behaviors and attitudes on social issues, shows that many Americans do not have as much familiarity with Asian Americans as they do with other racial and ethnic groups (Gee, Ro, Shariff-Marco & Chae, 2009). Thirty-four percent of the GSS sample stated that they had less in common with Asian Americans compared to African Americans, Latinos, Whites, and Jews. African Americans received the next highest percentage (17%). When the question was reversed, “Which group do you have the most in common with?”, a small percentage of the GSS respondents cited Asian Americans (7.5%) and African Americans (7.7%). What accounts for this lack of connection with Asian Americans? There are several likely reasons, including past and current stereotypes of Asian Americans, the geographic and residential distribution of racial groups across the country, and the high proportion of immigrants among Asian Americans that make them seemingly dissimilar to U.S.-born residents. It is also likely that there is relatively limited scientific data available about Asian Americans which make it difficult to adequately inform the general public about Asian American experiences on a wide range of dimensions. It is within this context that the National Latino and Asian American Study (NLAAS) was conceived, designed, implemented, and analyzed. NLAAS is the first national epidemiological study of Asian Americans that used state-of-the-art sampling and survey design strategies, an interview guide that was translated into multiple languages and dialects, and includes data that can be compared across Black American, Latino and White samples see Pennel). Its findings have been disseminated to a broad range of public and scientific audiences and the data are still being analyzed. NLAAS has received special recognition for its contribution to the scientific enterprise and it became one of the most downloaded datasets when it became publically-available. We are gratified and honored that this special issue of the journal has focused on analyses derived from the NLAAS. This paper serves to provide some of the initial thinking behind NLAAS and discuss some of the themes that we find in the papers included in the two special issues.

Breaking the “Chinese Habit”: Jade Snow Wong in First Person

Ever since the 1970s, as writers and critics began to develop an Asian American canon and search for role models for their own writing, Snow Wong and her 1950 autobiography, Fifth Chinese Daughter, have been forcefully criticized. Comparisons of the book to contemporary writing took place at Wong's expense, and she was accused of capitulating to her readers' tastes for exotic an era that prized overt resistance to such demands. (1) Scholars continue to debate Wong these terms, whether by attempting to recuperate her reputation (2) or by cautioning that Wong's accommodations of her white majority audience are still reason for concern. (3) This debate focuses not only on the text itself, but also on Wong's integrity, to borrow a phrase from Sau-ling Cynthia Wong's account of the pen wars concerning Maxine Hong Kingston and The Woman Warrior (29). Elaine H. Kim, for example, grants that the book valuable as a document of Asian American social history but considers the author herself psychologically vulnerable to racist demands and ultimately, in light of today's changing attitudes, rather (72). Similarly, Frank Chin questions her integrity both as a writer and as a Chinese American, stating the introduction to Aiiieeeee! that she was obviously manipulated by white publishers to write to and from the stereotype of Asian Americans (13). Wong's own (perceived) personal failings have been integral to criticism of her book. Because Wong's accommodation of a white readership is central to her reputation, it is surprising that no critic has yet examined her writing leading up to Fifth Chinese Daughter--writing that offers clues about the nature of that accommodation. Her earlier essays, published the magazine Common Ground 1945 and 1948, provide a kind of fossil record documenting the evolution of her self-presentation. If judged along the lines of the old resistance/accommodation framework, these early works do not vindicate Wong; at times, they demonstrate that she provided an increased level of exoticism writing for a broader audience Fifth Chinese Daughter. However, they also show the complexity of Wong's position as an Asian American author the postwar era, and an understanding of that complexity may lead to a more sympathetic reading. Based on her distinct personae the Common Ground essays, Fifth Chinese Daughter, and her life following the book's publication, I suggest that Wong's construction of different selves for different audiences indicates her artistic and psychological strength. By creating the figure of Jade Snow, Wong is able to meet the orientalist expectations of her world order to be published and, simultaneously, to separate herself from those expectations at a personal level. Rather than being pathetic or manipulated, she found ways to maintain control of her texts and her self-image, even the face of external pressure. A comparison of Wong's Common Ground essays and Fifth Chinese Daughter sheds some light on the issue of whether, how, and why Wong made adjustments based on editors' and readers' preferences, as both contain similar reworked for different audiences. Although Wong later claimed an interview that her book didn't duplicate any previously published material (Witness 12), and none of the three Common Ground essays appears its entirety the subsequent book, Fifth Chinese Daughter does draw on and adapt much of this and therefore carries the additional copyright years of 1945 and 1948. In the book, Wong's stories about her family and about San Francisco's Chinatown are expanded, contracted, recast, and recontextualized; some take center stage the book, while others are eliminated entirely. Perhaps most surprisingly for those who have read Fifth Chinese Daughter first, the personal essays Common Ground are narrated the customary first person, rather than the third person of her 1950 book. …

Television Exposure, Model Minority Portrayals, and Asian-American Stereotypes: An Exploratory Study

This exploratory study examines how television exposure influences White-American viewers’ attitudes toward Asian-Americans. Prior research reveals that the dominant image of Asian-Americans in contemporary television is that of the "model minority." Drawing on social identity, intergroup communication, and attributional theories, this study explores the negative outcomes of the seemingly positive Asian-American model minority stereotype. Path analyses conducted with preliminary empirical data from a survey of White-American college students (N = 323) revealed that viewers who internalized television stereotypes reported more stereotypical perceptions of Asian-Americans, greater internal attributions for Asian failures, and more symbolic racist beliefs about Asian-Americans. Directions for future research and implications for media scholars, practitioners, and policymakers are discussed.

Development and initial validation of the Internalization of Asian American Stereotypes Scale.

This research consists of four studies on the initial reliability and validity of the Internalization of Asian American Stereotypes Scale (IAASS), a self-report instrument that measures the degree Asian Americans have internalized racial stereotypes about their own group. The results from the exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses support a stable four-factor structure of the IAASS: Difficulties with English Language Communication, Pursuit of Prestigious Careers, Emotional Reservation, and Expected Academic Success. Evidence for concurrent and discriminant validity is presented. High internal-consistency and test-retest reliability estimates are reported. A discussion of how this scale can contribute to research and practice regarding internalized stereotyping among Asian Americans is provided.

The Portrayal of Korean Americans in Hollywood Films

The benefits of using films/movies in the English language classroom to teach culture and cultural awareness in addition to the four skills of language acquisition have been well documented. This study attempts to examine how Korean Americans are portrayed and depicted in Hollywood films which have traditionally reduced the complexity of Asian nations and cultures into simplified stereotypes. Most Asian characters were stereotyped as the “Yellow Peril,” “Lotus Blossom,” “Dragon Lady,” “Charlie Chan,” or “Dr. Fu Manchu.” Though these negative stereotypes were commonly used in early Hollywood films, they continue to appear in many contemporary films. In recent years, additional stereotypes of Asians and Asian Americans have appeared, such as the “Nerdy Shy Guy,” the “Anti-Model Minority,” and “The Greedy Merchant.” The study also examines how Hollywood deals with Korean women who do not fit the classic and contemporary negative Hollywood stereotypes. The study concludes by suggesting methods for identifying the negative stereotypes presented in Hollywood films in the English language classroom in order to raise awareness and when necessary to challenge these stereotypes of Asians and Asian Americans in films or other forms of media.

Barack Obama as the post-racial candidate for a post-racial America: perspectives from Asian America and Hawai‘i

ABSTRACT Okamura reviews the 2008 US presidential campaign and the election of Barack Obama as a ‘post-racial candidate’ in terms of two different meanings of ‘post-racialism’, namely, colour blindness and multiculturalism. He also discusses his campaign and election from the perspective of Asian America and Hawai'i given that Obama has been claimed as ‘the first Asian American president’ and as a ‘local’ person from Hawai‘i where he was born and spent most of his youth. In both cases, Obama has been accorded these racialized identities primarily because of particular cultural values he espouses and cultural practices he engages in that facilitate his seeming transcendence of racial boundaries and categories generally demarcated by phenotype and ancestry. Okamura contends that proclaiming Obama as an honorary Asian American and as a local from Hawai‘i inadvertently lends support to the post-racial America thesis and its false assertion of the declining significance of race: first, by reinforcing the ‘model minority’ stereotype of Asian Americans and, second, by affirming the widespread view of Hawai‘i as a model of multiculturalism.

Eternal Return of the Saline Body: Michael Joo's Salt Transfer Cycle

He is naked. He swims. But not in water. He swims in a glass case of monosodium glutamate. MSG. He breathes heavily. Rhythmically. His toned arms sweep repeatedly through the white substance, making butterfly wings in the dust. His long black hair drapes his moist back. The MSG chafes his skin; he bleeds from thousands of tiny cuts. He sweats, and the sweat mixes with the blood mixing with the salt. He swims faster, but he does not go anywhere. He swims in place. The faster he swims, the more he sweats and bleeds, sweats and bleeds. (1) He is naked. He is now lying face down on a desert floor. The floor is not a sandy yellow, but an alabaster white. He lies on a white plain made out of salt. He licks the ground. Tastes the salt. The crystals prick his tongue. Blood. He crawls, arms and legs wriggling, chest and pelvis gyrating against the salty ground. The salt clings to his body, cuts his body. He slowly rises up and walks, back hunched over, then jogs. Runs. Sweat, blood, and salt trickle off hair, tongue, and flesh, sprinkling his dark shadow and the white ground. His body is now covered in salt. As he runs, the salt penetrates the cuts in the soles of his bare feet. He runs toward low mountains in the fading horizon. He is naked. He is now in the mountains. But these are not desert mountains. There are tall pine trees, thick with green. The air is cool. He hears birds chirping. He sits on the ground, leaning against a large rock. Thick flakes of salt plaster his face and body. He looks like a ghost, quiet and still. In the distance, there is movement. He is not alone. He is cautiously approached by a group of wild elk. He does not move. They stop. One elk comes forward. It gingerly sniffs him. Then licks. Slowly. Then hungrily. Licks the salt, sweat, and blood from his body. He feels its warm, wet, rubbery tongue lather his body. Eventually the salt is gone. The elk leaves. He is alone again. He breathes heavily. Anxiously. His chest heaves. Suddenly he stands up, leaps into the air, and lands in a vat of MSG. He has (eternally) returned. So begins, again and again, Korean American artist Michael Joo's Salt Transfer Cycle (1994). The eight-minute video premiered in 1994 as a solo exhibition at the Thomas Nordanstad Gallery, in collaboration with the Petzel/Borgmann Gallery, in New York City. The entire installation featured several TV monitors playing the looped video; slaughterhouse meat trays inscribed with the words potency, longevity, vigor, and desire; a row of elk antlers lining a wall; and a scale model of the Blue Flame, the experimental vehicle that broke world land-speed records in the Utah desert. Joo shot the video in three locations--his studio apartment in New York City's Chinatown, the Bonneville Salt Flats in western Utah, and the northern mountains of South Korea, near the Korean demilitarized zone (DMZ). While these spaces are listed in Joo's artist statement, the viewer in the installation space feels dislocated among a cycling of unmarked landscapes, left to focus on the naked Asian man perpetually moving through these landscapes. Such dislocation forces us to ask: what is the relationship between this racialized body and these deracinated spaces? Rather than a continued erasure of the obscured contexts of New York City, Utah, and the Korean DMZ and their connection to a gendered Korean and Asian American identity, Salt Transfer Cycle dramatizes the contradictory and enabling ways the historical specificity of these spaces remains elusive and performs as elusive remains. As Joo notes in his artist statement, the thematic concern of the video is [t]he schizophrenic and elusive nature of 'modern' socio-cultural identities ... as well as specific Asian American stereotypes (14). As a conceptual and performance artist whose career spans three decades, Joo demonstrates a sustained interest in the fluid materiality of identity, particularly Asian American identity. …

Becoming a “Model Minority”: Acquisition, Construction and Enactment of American Identity for Korean Immigrant Students

While the “model minority” stereotype of Asian Americans and its negative effects has been documented elsewhere, relatively little attention has been paid to how recent Asian immigrant students begin to embrace the stereotype while in schools. This study explores the identity formation process for a group of recent Korean immigrant students as “model minority” in an urban high school to empirically document the process. Through interviews and observations, I learned that the immigrants acquired an unauthentic American identity as a racial minority, constructed their status as “model minority” in response, and enacted the stereotype as they sanctioned those who couldn’t live up to the stereotype. The aim is to add to the body of knowledge on the school experiences of recent Asian immigrants.

Complementary Objectivity and Ideology: Reifying White Capitalist Hierarchies in Time Magazine’s Construction of Michelle Rhee

Time’s coverage of Michelle Rhee employs “complementary objectivity” to simultaneously support White capitalist values manifest in Rhee’s pro-market educational reform proposals and to contain the person of Rhee evident in the use of historical stereotypes of Asian Pacific Americans. This use of objectivity creates a sense of impartial coverage while hiding alternative, especially labor, critiques, maintaining racist hierarchies, and promoting White interests.

Questioning the model minority: Studies of Asian American academic performance.

The current paper reviews literature on the academic performance of Asian Americans with a critical eye toward understanding the influence of discrimination on this process. Specifically, this study seeks to understand the extent to which researchers have gathered sufficient knowledge to dispel “conventional knowledge” of Asian Americans as model minorities. We questioned the extent to which studies explicitly measured student performance as a product of individual effort and Asian cultural influences, while simultaneously measuring the impact of exposure to discrimination. We present a review of studies on Asian American academic performance published 1990‐2008. Our analysis suggests that social science research has continued to perpetuate the stereotype of Asian Americans as a “model minority.” The majority of the reviewed studies did not differentiate among Asian American ethnic and generational groups. These studies also tended to infer culture as an explanation for the high achievement of Asian Americans without examining the impact of sociopolitical factors, such as racial discrimination. In fact, many of the reviewed studies reported that Asian Americans were deficient relative to Whites on attributes thought to be related to culture (e.g., personality characteristics, parenting behaviors) while finding that they achieved academically at levels similar to or higher than Whites. Finally, the majority of these studies have not used culturally appropriate methods to test their hypotheses and research questions. Thus, we recommend that studies embrace emic/population-specific and sociopolitical (Sasao & Sue, 1993) approaches to understand and explore factors that contribute to academic achievement in this group.

Koreans in America During Economic Downturn

Housing bust situation during economic downturn in USA unravels dark side of Korean immigrant experience in America forcing examination of ugly side of model minority stereotype of Asian Americans that contributed to new height of optimism, competition and consumption in the United States.

When Being a Model Minority Is Good . . . and Bad: Realistic Threat Explains Negativity Toward Asian Americans

The current research explores the hypothesis that realistic threat is one psychological mechanism that can explain how individuals can hold positive stereotypical beliefs toward Asian Americans yet also express negative attitudes and emotions toward them. Study 1 demonstrates that in a realistic threat context, attitudes and emotions toward an anonymous group described by only positive, "model minority" attributes are significantly more negative than when the group was described using other positive attributes. Study 2 demonstrates that realistic threat significantly mediates the relationship between (a) the endorsement of the both the positive and negative stereotypes of Asian Americans and (b) subsequent negative attitudes and emotions toward them. Studies 3 and 4 conceptually replicate this effect in experimental situations involving interactions with Asian Americans in realistic threat contexts. Implications for understanding the nature of stereotyping and prejudice toward Asian Americans and other minority groups are discussed.

Asian American stereotypes as circulating resource

Drawing on theories and methods in linguistic anthropology, this paper examines the ways in which circulating stereotypes of Asian Americans emerge as resources in conversations among Asian Americans. Specifically, this paper analyzes two video-recorded interactions at a videomaking project in Philadelphia’s Chinatown to trace how Asian American teen participants invoke Asian American stereotypes, orient to them in various ways, and reappropriate them to: 1) position the self and other relative to stereotypes; 2) construct stereotyping as an oppressive practice to resist or as an interactional resource to celebrate; and 3) bring about interactional effects from widely circulating stereotypes (e.g., Asian storeowner) that are different from those from locally circulating typifications (e.g., Asian minivan driver), what I call widespread typifications and local typifications, respectively. By interrogating the very notion of stereotype as a performative resource, this paper illustrates how Asian American stereotypes can be creatively reappropriated by Asian American teens to accomplish meaningful social actions.

Automatic Activation of Yellow Peril Asian American Stereotypes: Effects on Social Impression Formation

The authors randomly assigned 69 undergraduates to 1 of 2 perceptual priming conditions involving 80-ms flash words presented on a computer screen to activate information processing outside of conscious awareness. In the high-prime condition, the authors exposed participants to stereotype words associated with the Yellow Peril view of Asian Americans. The authors exposed participants in a low-prime condition to neutral words. All participants then read a vignette and evaluated its protagonist on several social dimensions. Results indicated that the priming procedure effectively biased participant evaluation of the vignette target, but only on items closely linked to Asian Americans. Contrary to predictions, however, participants in the high-prime group rated the target less Asian than did their low-prime group counterparts, an apparent reversal of the expected priming effect. The authors discussed theoretical implications.

Racial Ideology, Model Minorities, and the "Not-So-Silent Partner:" Stereotyping of Asian Americans in U.S. Magazine Advertising

Racial Ideology, Model Minorities, and the "Not-So-Silent Partner:" Stereotyping of Asian Americans in U.S. Magazine Advertising

“Asian Culture” and Asian American Identities in the Television and Film Industries of the United States

“Asian” culture has long been fodder for films and television shows produced in the United States. Four main stereotypes of Asians and Asian Americans emerged from the imagination of primarily white cultural producers in Hollywood: “Yellow Peril,” “Dragon Lady,” “Charlie Chan,” and “Lotus Blossom.” These images can be understood as “controlling images” in the sense that negative stereotypes provide justifications for social control and positive stereotypes provide normative models for Asian thought and behavior. Resistance to these images became substantial in the 1960s when Asian American filmmakers developed “triangular cinema,” a strategy for Asian American community building, political mobilization, and the creation of an Asian American film aesthetic. The films of triangular cinema are “liberating images” that stake out a position for independence and autonomy for Asian American communities.

National abjection: the Asian American body onstage

National Abjection explores the vexed relationship between and Americanness” through a focus on drama and performance art. Karen Shimakawa argues that the forms of Asian Americanness that appear in U.S. culture are a function of national abjection—a process that demands that Americanness be defined by the exclusion of Asian Americans, who are either cast as symbolic foreigners incapable of integration or Americanization or distorted into an “honorary” whiteness. She examines how Asian Americans become culturally visible on and off stage, revealing the ways Asian American theater companies and artists respond to the cultural implications of this abjection. Shimakawa looks at the origins of Asian American theater, particularly through the memories of some of its pioneers. Her examination of the emergence of Asian American theater companies illuminates their strategies for countering the stereotypes of Asian Americans and the lack of visibility of Asian American performers within the theater world. She shows how some plays—Wakako Yamauchi’s 12-1-A , Frank Chin’s Chickencoop Chinaman , and The Year of the Dragon —have both directly and indirectly addressed the displacement of Asian Americans. She analyzes works attempting to negate the process of abjection—such as the 1988 Broadway production of M. Butterfly as well as Miss Saigon , a mainstream production that enacted the process of cultural displacement both onstage and off. Finally, Shimakawa considers Asian Americanness in the context of globalization by meditating on the work of Ping Chong, particularly his East-West Quartet .

Racial Ideology, Model Minorities, and the "Not-So-Silent Partner:" Stereotyping of Asian Americans in U.S. Magazine Advertising

As one of the most visible and powerful media institutions of U.S. popular culture, advertising plays a central role in conveying and disseminating a dominant racial ideology. After establishing an analytical framework based on the relationship between racial ideology and stereotypes of Asian Americans, this study investigates how Asian Americans are represented in American news magazines advertising and how racial ideology is embedded within those depictions. Quantitative analysis found Asian Americans are frequently depicted as highly educated, proficient with technology, and affluent. A textual analysis reinforced these findings and also led to additional insights related to gender dynamics, potential conflicts within the Asian American category, and the relationships between Asian Americans and other minority groups.

Yellow: race in America beyond black and white

A leading voice in America's Asian community tackles what it means to be Asian American today.. In tradition of W. E. B. Du Bois, Cornel West, and other public intellectuals who confronted color line of twentieth century, journalist, law professor, and activist Frank H. Wu offers a unique perspective on how changing ideas of racial identity will affect race relations in new century.Often provocative and always thoughtful, this book addresses some of most controversial contemporary issues: discrimination, immigration, diversity, globalization, and mixed-race movement, introducing example of Asian Americans to shed new light on current debates. Combining personal anecdotes, social-science research, legal cases, history, and original journalistic reporting, Wu discusses damaging Asian American stereotypes such as the model minority and the perpetual foreigner. By offering new ways of thinking about race in American society, Wu's work challenges us to make good on our great democratic experiment.

Revisiting the Model Minority Stereotype: Implications for Student Affairs Practice and Higher Education

AbstractThe model minority stereotype of Asian Americans is retrospectively analyzed twenty‐five years after the author’s original study of this issue. The continuing effects of this stereotype in higher education are examined.