Pei-te Lien's "How to un-model a minority: A micro-syllabus on Asian American politics" published in The Washington Post

 

How to un-model a minority: A micro-syllabus on Asian American politics

Here’s how to teach — or learn — about this complex topic

By Andrew Aoki and Pei-te Lien
April 28, 2021 at 3:00 a.m. PDT

While some people talk of Asian Americans as “honorary Whites,” the recent spike in violence against Asian Americans — including a gunman killing eight people, six of them women of Asian descent, at Atlanta-area spas — remind us that this group too can be marginalized and attacked. As Margaret M. Chin and Yung-Yi Diana Pan explained here at TMC recently, the “model minority” myth is part of the problem.

So how do you un-model a minority? That requires understanding this population’s immense diversity and its complex place in the nation’s efforts to repair its racist past.

Click here to read the full article.