Craig White's Literature Courses Terms / Themes Model Minority (really immigrants, "ideal immigrants," NOT true minorities)   examples: Jewish-Americans in early-mid 20th century Asian Americans in Millennial era Other possible inclusions: Greek-Americans? American Africans?

thanks to https://sites.dartmouth.edu/pac/2014/01/24/ models-minorities-a-personal-tale-of-asian-american-ness/

Everyday speech outside our classroom describes any identifiable ethnic group as a "minority," but a "Model Minority" is not a true minority according to usage in American Immigrant Literature, which defines true or enduring minorities as non-immigrant groups that did not not immigrate to join the USA's dominant culture (esp. African Americans and Native Americans).

The American Dream / Immigrant Narrative provides the  simplest definition:

"Model Minorities" appear as "ideal immigrants," assimilating, exemplifying, and validating practices and values promoted by the USA's Dominant Culture, e.g.

hard work

education (incl. literacy)

family stability plus or minus extended biological families

selective assimilation (incl. retention of original culture's stabilizing values, and some exclusive intermarriage with other Asians)

low political & media profile ("Don't rock the boat!") (Contrast with minority's needs for government, media to protect rights.)

prestigious association with STEM (science, technology, education, medicine) or the 3Ms: math, medicine, and music.

All good—Asian Americans today, like Jewish Americans a century ago, rise quickly from supportive communities to populate professions in medicine, science, academics, and classical performing arts.

Potential downsides:

"Positive stereotyping" pressures young Asian Americans into limited career choices, expectations of over-achievement.

Asian Americans' achievements as an ethnic group leads to "negative stereotyping" of true-minority ethnic groups like African Americans as failures or political nags.

           African Americans and Asian Americans are both identifiable ethnic groups, but . . .

           Asian Americans fit the immigrant profile: voluntary migration for freedom, opportunity, and profit; assimilaltion through intermarriage; cultural and family stability as economic base.

African Americans fit the minority history profile: involuntary migration and slavery, segregation, and working for others' profits instead of one's own; laws against intermarriage until 1960s or later; cultural and family stability broken by slavery and segregation (>poverty), lack of capital development in communities.

Model Minorities' practices and values promoted by the USA's Dominant Culture:

Selective assimilation + retention of original culture (religion, language, after-school program)—like the dominant culture to a degree, that is, the model minority doesn't entirely assimilate but maintains its original culture (to variable degrees).

Model minorities often assimilate economically and educationally while maintaining a distinct ethnic identity in religion, customs, and marriage (which may contribute to family stability and low crime rates). Unlike the resistance to assimilation manifested by aggrieved minority groups, this resistance to assimilation imitates a leading quality of the dominant culture (obj. 4).

Model minorities' confidence in their home traditions may enable them to navigate American culture by imposing ethnic myths or stories on assumedly European-American values and practices.

Low Political & Media Profile / "Don't rock the boat!"

Asian Americans enjoy increasing prominence in the USA's professional and financial sectors, but they are under-represented in media and politics.

indifference to past discrimination? (Chinese immigrants may know about the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 but may not bring it up or tell their children.)

East Asian deadpan / poker face as deflecting attention.

Contrast minorities like African Americans or American Indians who demand reparations or proportional representation (with mixed success at best).

Historically, the “Model Minority” label is often applied to a new immigrant group that exemplifies, fulfills, or exceeds ideals implicit in the immigrant narrative.

Early to mid-20th century, Jewish immigrants were the “model minority,” as their children became well-educated professionals: doctors, lawyers, psychologists, writers.

Asian Americans now fit this pattern. (East Asians: Chinese, Korean ± Japanese, Indochinese; South Asians, esp. Indian-Americans, Pakistani-Americans [i.e., from Indian Subcontinent])

Culture Wars over dominant-culture assimilation vs. multiculturalism

Social conservatives praise "model minorities” in contrast to so-called “problem minorities” (esp. true minority groups like African Americans) as evidence that American culture is "colorblind" and anyone who buys into the system can succeed in it.

Problem: Use of "minority” term in "model minority" confuses race / ethnicity with class / history.

Asian Americans may have some physical distinctions from the white dominant culture, but their immigrant backgrounds lack a history of slavery or property-expropriation in the USA. (Asians were discriminated against in early 20th-century immigration policy and World War 2 internment camps, but in the true immigrant spirit of "forgetting the past," they don't bring up the subject unless their children go to college and take courses in multiculturalism.)

Asian-American home cultures may provide support for business, math, music, literacy, traditions of education. (Chinese culture seems to be automatically capitalist regardless of capitalism's theoretical home in Western Europe.)

Qualities Model-Minority ethnic groups may bring from their own cultures.

Another possible candidate for "Model Minority": Greek-Americans?

In early to mid 20th century, Greeks fled instability in homeland, migrated to USA, developed economic niche operating diners in Eastern USA.

Greeks maintained somewhat distinct culture around Greek Orthodox Church, which encouraged ethnic marriage.

Literature and other arts:

Jeffrey Eugenides's novel Middlesex about a Greek-American family in Detroit won the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for fiction.

Academy Award winning director Elia Kazan (A Streetcar Named Desire, On the Waterfront) was Greek American.

2002 comedy My Big Fat Greek Wedding starring and written by Nia Vardalos.

Other media figures of Greek-American descent: Jennifer Aniston, Zach Galifianakis, Amy Sedaris, David Sedaris. 

African immigration to the USA is a recent phenomenon, but Nigerian Americans show some traits of model minorities:

Commitment to education & higher education.

Family stability, traditional gender roles.

Community support for members' business and educational initiatives.

Some selective assimilation; e.g. some "Nigerian suburbs" or suburban enclaves.

British colonization of Nigeria: British accents (prestige), British manners

Background of evangelical Christianity from American and British missionaries:

Some Nigerian Americans and other American Africans are even more evangelical than white American evangelicals. (White conservative evangelicals have a bad historical relationship with African Americans but often think very well of American Africans and evangelical missions to black nations in Africa or the Caribbean, e.g. Haiti.)

Challenges to "Model Minority" identification

article on "model minority" as stereotyping

Asian Nation site on Model Minority image & reality

Forbes magazine article on Indian Americans as new Model Minority

thanks to http://sites.psu.edu/tarapeng/2015/04/10/model-minority-myth-why-people-of-all-races-cultures
-and-other-minorities-need-to-stand-in-solidarity-against-this-toxic-myth/