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Craig White's Literature Courses Critical Sources
“Report
Takes Aim at ‘Model Minority’ Stereotype of Asian-American Students.” |
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[1] The image of
Asian-Americans as a homogeneous group of high achievers taking over the
campuses of the nation’s most selective colleges came under assault in a report
issued Monday.
[2] The report, by
New
York University, the
College Board and a commission of mostly Asian-American educators and
community leaders, largely avoids the
debates over both affirmative action and the heavy representation of
Asian-Americans at the most selective colleges.
[3]
But it
pokes holes in stereotypes about
Asian-Americans and Pacific Islanders, including the
perception that they cluster in science,
technology, engineering and math. And it points out that the
term “Asian-American” is extraordinarily
broad, embracing members of many ethnic groups.
[4] “Certainly there’s a lot of
Asians doing well, at the top of the curve, and that’s a point of pride, but
there are just as many struggling at the bottom of the curve, and we wanted to
draw attention to that,” said Robert T. Teranishi, the N.Y.U. education
professor who wrote the report, “Facts, Not Fiction: Setting the Record
Straight.”
[5]
“Our goal,” Professor
Teranishi added, “is to have people understand that the
population is very diverse.”
[6]
The report, based on
federal education,
immigration and census data, as well as statistics from the College
Board, noted that the federally defined
categories of Asian-American and Pacific Islander included dozens of groups,
each with its own language and culture, as varied as the Hmong, Samoans,
Bengalis and Sri Lankans.
[7]
Their
educational backgrounds, the report
said, vary widely: while most of the nation’s Hmong and Cambodian adults
have never finished high school,
most
Pakistanis and Indians have at least a bachelor’s degree.
[8]
The
SAT scores of Asian-Americans, it
said, like those of other Americans, tend to
correlate with the income and
educational level of their parents.
[9] “The notion of lumping all
people into a single category and assuming they have no needs is wrong,” said
Alma R. Clayton-Pederson, vice president of the Association of American Colleges
and Universities, who was a member of the commission the College Board financed
to produce the report.
[10]
“Our backgrounds are very
different,” added Dr. Clayton-Pederson, who is black, “but it’s
almost like the reverse of what happened
to African-Americans.”
[11]
The report found that
contrary to stereotype, most of the
bachelor’s degrees that Asian-Americans and Pacific Islanders received in
2003 were in business, management,
social sciences or humanities, not in the STEM fields: science, technology,
engineering or math. And while Asians earned 32 percent of the nation’s STEM
doctorates that year, within that 32 percent more than four of five degree
recipients were
international students
from
[12]
The report also said that
more Asian-Americans and Pacific Islanders were enrolled in community colleges
than in either public or private four-year colleges. But the idea that
Asian-American “model minority” students are edging out all others is so
ubiquitous that quips like “U.C.L.A. really stands for United Caucasians Lost
Among Asians” or “M.I.T.
means Made in Taiwan” have become common, the report said.
[13] Asian-Americans make up about 5 percent of the
nation’s population but 10 percent or more — considerably more in California —
of the undergraduates at many of the most selective colleges, according to data
reported by colleges. But the new
report suggested that some such statistics combined campus populations of
Asian-Americans with those of
international students from Asian countries.
[14]
The report
quotes the opening to W. E. B. Du Bois’s
1903 classic “The Souls of Black Folk” — “How does it feel to be a problem?”
— and says that
for Asian-Americans,
seen as the “good minority that seeks advancement through quiet diligence in
study and work and by not making waves,” the question is, “How does it feel to
be a solution?”
[15] That question, too, is
problematic, the report said, because it diverts attention from systemic
failings of K-to-12 schools, shifting responsibility for educational success to
individual students. In addition, it said, lumping together all Asian groups
masks the poverty and academic difficulties of some subgroups.
[16]
The report said
the model-minority perception pitted
Asian-Americans against African-Americans. With the drop in black and Latino
enrollment at selective public universities that are not allowed to consider
race in admissions, Asian-Americans have been turned into buffers, the
report said, “middlemen in the cost-benefit analysis of wins and losses.”
[17]
Some have suggested that
Asian-Americans are held to higher admissions standards at the most selective
colleges. In 2006, Jian Li, the New Jersey-born son of Chinese immigrants, filed
a complaint with the Office for Civil Rights at the Education Department, saying
he had been rejected by
[18]
The report also notes the
under-representation of
Asian-Americans in administrative jobs at colleges. Only 33 of the nation’s
college presidents, fewer than 1 percent, are Asian-Americans or Pacific
Islanders.
[Instructor’s note:
“under-representation of Asian-Americans” is often observed in politics and
entertainment, especially for East Asians. (South Asians appear somewhat more in
popular media.)]
