Asian American Education and Income Attainment in the Era of Post-Racial America

2014 ◽  
Vol 116 (6) ◽  
pp. 1-38 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alejandro Covarrubias ◽  
Daniel D. Liou
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Educational Attainment ◽  
Asian Americans ◽  
Asian American ◽  
Low Income ◽  
Model Minority ◽  
Policy Framework ◽  
Coalition Building ◽  
Asian Populations ◽  
Earning Power

Background Prevailing perceptions of Asian Americans as model minorities have long situated this population within postracial discourse, an assumption that highlights their educational success as evidence of the declining significance of race and racism, placing them as models of success for other people of color. Despite evidence to repudiate the model minority thesis, the visibility of Asian Americans in higher education continues to reinforce essentialist paradigms about their presumed success while rendering invisible the educational experiences and diminished educational earning power of low-income, women, and noncitizen Asian populations. Purpose The purpose of this article is to situate the most recent data on the mobility of Asian American students within the K–Ph.D. educational system in the new so-called colorblind postracial America. This article presents the most recent national educational outcomes for Asian Americans by looking at differences in attainment across race, class, gender, citizenship, and educational earning power. Research Design Drawing from the March Supplement of the Census’ 2010 Current Population Survey (CPS), we carried out multiple cross-tabulations that allowed us to disaggregate the educational attainment and earning power for Asian Americans across various social categories. The March Supplement of the CPS, referred to as the Annual Social and Economic Supplement (ASEC), is given once a year over 3 months—the 2010 ASEC was given to 77,000 households, with a response rate of over 91.5%. This quantitative analysis of the intersectional effect of race, class, gender, and citizenship provides a more nuanced examination of their interactional impact on educational attainment. Findings/Results Our intersectional analysis of educational attainment and earning power reveals the multiplicity of experiences and heterogeneity among Asian Americans. There is a clear positive relationship between class and educational attainment, but the intersectional impact of gender with class, and gender with citizenship points to a nonlinear relationship between these constructs and educational attainment when they are examined together. The data also make evident important gaps in earning power for Asian Americans compared with White Americans, and an especially disproportionate burden of diminished earnings for Asian American women. Conclusions/Recommendations This study sounds the alarm as postracial discourse has created several new challenges on issues related to Asian Americans, affirmative action policies, and the vitality of ethnic studies in the K–Ph.D. system. As a result of this study, the authors warn that the model minority thesis inaccurately depicts Asian Americans in policy discussions on education, race relations, poverty, and civil rights. This article makes important recommendations for coalition building, research approaches, and a new educational policy framework that can mediate current policy failures to include Asian Americans in discussions of equity.

The Racialization of the African-American and Asian-American Citizen: A Comparative Legal Analysis

2019 ◽  
Vol 3 ◽  
pp. 30-41
Author(s):  
Mallory Yung
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Asian Americans ◽  
Asian American ◽  
Model Minority ◽  
Legal Discourse ◽  
Court Cases ◽  
Legal Analysis ◽  
Critical Race ◽  
Social Hierarchies ◽  
American Citizen

The perception of racial tensions in North American settler countries has historically been focused on the Black/White relationship, as has much of the theoretical legal discourse surrounding the concept of “race”. Accordingly, the scope of much critical race scholarship has been restricted such that it rarely acknowledges the racial tensions that persist between different racially-excluded minorities. This paper hopes to expand and integrate the examination of Black and Asian-American racialization that critical race scholars have previously revealed. It will do this by historicizing the respective contours of Black and Asian-American racialization processes through legislation and landmark court cases in a neo-colonial context. The defining features of racialization which have culminated in the ultimate divergence of each group’s racialization will be compared and contrasted. This divergence sees the differential labeling of Asian-Americans as the ‘model minority’ while Blacks continue to be subjugated by modern modalities of exclusionary systems of control. The consequences of this divergence in relation to preserving existing racial and social hierarchies will be discussed in the final sections of this paper.

Distressed Asian American Neighborhoods

2003 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 67-84
Author(s):  
Douglas Miller ◽  
Douglas Houston
Keyword(s):  
Community Development ◽  
Educational Attainment ◽  
Asian Americans ◽  
Asian American ◽  
Selection Criteria ◽  
Demographic Characteristics ◽  
Ethnic Enclave ◽  
Racially Diverse ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
Socioeconomic Data

There is a serious lack of demographic and socioeconomic data about Asian Americans living in distressed areas. The approach suggested to address this problem is community development with professional and academics to provide updated information on many issues such as poverty, educational attainment pertinent to these disadvantaged AA communities. The article discusses the selection criteria employed to choose the fourteen distressed communities that is analyzed. Details describing demographic characteristics, such as most AA communities are racially diverse, are supplemented with statistics to provide concrete data. Unemployment and poverty go hand-in-hand and in distressed AA communities these problems are occurring in higher frequency than other communities. The typical depiction of an AA community as a rich ethnic-enclave is debunked. The dominant problems in these communities are also representative of the problems most immigrants face today. The motivation for this analysis is to compel policy-makers to develop further research into these communities to understand their problems in order to make policies effectively addressing their needs.

The Mean is Not Enough: Using Quantile Regression to Examine Trends in Asian–White Differences Across the Entire Achievement Distribution

2009 ◽  
Vol 111 (5) ◽  
pp. 1274-1295 ◽  
Author(s):  
Spyros Konstantopoulos
Keyword(s):  
High School ◽  
Academic Achievement ◽  
Achievement Gap ◽  
Quantile Regression ◽  
Asian Americans ◽  
Asian American ◽  
White Students ◽  
Model Minority ◽  
High Achievers

Background In recent years, Asian Americans have been consistently described as a model minority. The high levels of educational achievement and educational attainment are the main determinants for identifying Asian Americans as a model minority. Nonetheless, only a few studies have examined empirically the accomplishments of Asian Americans, and even fewer studies have compared their achievement with other important societal groups such as Whites. In addition, differences in academic achievement between Asian Americans and Whites across the entire achievement distribution, or differences in the variability of the achievement distribution, have not been documented. However, this is an important task because it provides information about the achievement gap for lower, average, and higher achieving students. Purpose The present study examines differences in academic achievement between Asian American and White students in average scores (e.g., middle of the achievement distribution), in extreme scores (e.g., the upper and the lower tails of the achievement distribution), and in the variability of the achievement distribution. The main objective of this study is to determine the achievement gap between Asian American and White students in the lower and upper tails of the achievement distribution to shed some light on whether the achievement gap between the two groups varies by achievement level. Participants I use data from four national probability samples of high school seniors to examine Asian American–White differences in achievement from 1972 to 1992. Specifically, I used data from the base year of the NLS (NLS:72), the base year of the High School and Beyond (HSB) survey of 1980, the first follow-up of the HSB survey in 1982 (that is HSB:80, HSB:82), and the second follow-up of NELS (NELS:92). Research Design The study is correlational and uses quantile regression to analyze observational data from the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s. Findings The findings indicate that the Asian American–White gap is more pronounced in mathematics than in reading. In 1992, the gap in the middle and the upper tail of the mathematics distribution is greater than one third of a SD, which is not a trivial gap in education. In reading, the gap is overall smaller, and nearly one third of a SD in 1992 in the upper tail (favoring Asian students). Conclusions It appears that Asian American students are indeed a model minority group that performs not only at similar levels but also at higher levels than the majority group, especially among high achievers in mathematics (and reading in the 1990s).

Imperatives of Asian American Citizenship

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ellen D. Wu
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Identity Formation ◽  
Asian American ◽  
Chinese Americans ◽  
Asian Populations ◽  
Model Minorities ◽  
Asian American Identity ◽  
The Many ◽  
The Cold War

This introductory chapter describes the racial order in twentieth-century America—its evolution, consequences, and significance. Japanese and Chinese Americans, the largest ethnic Asian populations, and the two that figured most prominently in the public eye between the 1940s and 1960s, are central to this investigation. Their trajectories unfold separately in order to illuminate their distinct histories. Yet Japanese and Chinese Americans also appear in tandem to emphasize the many parallels that account for their concurrent emergence as model minorities. As a mix of cultural, social, and political history, the chapter highlights how the discursive and the material mattered for Japanese American, Chinese American, and ultimately Asian American identity formation from World War II through the “Cold War civil rights” years.

Asians and the Myth of the Model Minority in Higher Education

2016 ◽  
pp. 447-468
Author(s):  
Ronn Johnson ◽  
Ji Youn Cindy Kim ◽  
Jojo Yanki Lee
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Native Americans ◽  
Asian Americans ◽  
Asian American ◽  
Help Seeking ◽  
Model Minority ◽  
Help Seeking Behavior ◽  
Dominant Culture ◽  
Health Concerns ◽  
Seeking Behavior

When compared with African Americans, Latinos, and Native Americans, Asian are often attributed more positive attributions from the dominant culture. The developed stereotype, Myth of the Model Minority (MMM), suggests Asian Americans achieve a higher degree of success than the general population. Under the internalized assumption of being psychologically trouble free, the MMM stereotype contributes to Asians being less inclined to proactively engage in help seeking behavior despite the presence of severe mental health concerns. Psychocultural examples relating to Asian Americans (e.g., Virginia Tech Shooter case) are reviewed to form a clinical and forensic psychological framework that offers a challenge as to why the MMM is problematic in higher education. The myths related to MMM and the experiences—positive or negative—of MMM are analyzed to encourage subsequent empirically-based applications for addressing MMM as well as serving as a caveat against using monocausal explanations or other thumbnail assessments of Asian American behavior in higher education.

Accurately Counting Asian Americans Is a Civil Rights Issue

2018 ◽  
Vol 677 (1) ◽  
pp. 191-202 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jennifer Lee ◽  
Karthick Ramakrishnan ◽  
Janelle Wong
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Asian Americans ◽  
Asian American ◽  
The United States ◽  
Census Bureau ◽  
Foreign Born ◽  
Data Disaggregation ◽  
Rights Issue ◽  
The U.S

Asian Americans are the fastest-growing group in the United States, increasing from 0.7 percent in 1970 to nearly 6 percent in 2016. The U.S. Census Bureau projects that by 2065, Asian Americans will constitute 14 percent of the U.S. population. Immigration is fueling this growth: China and India have passed Mexico as the top countries sending immigrants to the United States since 2013. Today, two of three Asian Americans are foreign born—a figure that increases to nearly four of five among Asian American adults. The rise in numbers is accompanied by a rise in diversity: Asian Americans are the most diverse U.S. racial group, comprising twenty-four detailed origins with vastly different migration histories and socioeconomic profiles. In this article, we explain how the unique characteristics of Asian Americans affect their patterns of ethnic and racial self-identification, which, in turn, present challenges for accurately counting this population. We conclude by discussing policy ramifications of our findings, and explain why data disaggregation is a civil rights issue.

scholarly journals Researching From Buried Experiences: Collaborative Inquiry With Asian American Youth

2015 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 77-94 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gerald Campano ◽  
Lan Ngo ◽  
Grace Player
Keyword(s):  
Asian Americans ◽  
Asian American ◽  
Collaborative Inquiry ◽  
Model Minority ◽  
Research Literature ◽  
Practitioner Research ◽  
Immigrant Community ◽  
Asian American Youth ◽  
Out Of School

This article reports on an out-of-school practitioner researcher study, the Community Researchers Project, involving predominately Indonesian youth who were members of a Catholic parish in a diverse multilingual neighborhood of our city. The lives and learning of many of the youth in the Indonesian immigrant community were, to a large extent, invisible in the research literature or homogenized through broader generalizations regarding Asian Americans, such as the myth of the "model minority." Through analysis of several representative student inquiries, we argue that practitioner research can be an effective methodological vehicle for unearthing "buried" personal and collective histories that impact students.

Yellowface Performance: Historical and Contemporary Contexts

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Josephine Lee
Keyword(s):  
Asian Americans ◽  
Asian American ◽  
Model Minority ◽  
White Americans ◽  
Interracial Interactions ◽  
Racial Categories ◽  
American Theater ◽  
The 19Th Century ◽  
Political Radicalism ◽  
East West

In European and North American theater and film, the centuries-old practice of “yellowface”—white actors playing Asian-identified characters—has dominated the ways that Asians and Asian Americans have been presented. Since the 19th century, yellowface representations in American theater portrayed these characters as villainous despots, exotic curiosities, or comic fools. These roles in turn greatly reduced the opportunities for the employment and recognition of Asian and Asian American actors. Yellowface performance does not only misrepresent Asians and Asian Americans by limiting the kinds of visibility and opportunities that they might have, but it also supports the imagined distinctions between those values presumably embodied by white Americans and those associated with oriental others. Late-19th and early-20th-century plays such as George Ade’s The Sultan of Sulu (1902), Joseph Jarrow’s The Queen of Chinatown (1899), and David Belasco’s Madame Butterfly (1900) not only used yellowface acting but also expressed anxieties about interracial interactions and the potential for racial contamination produced by U.S. imperialism and Chinese immigration. Both yellowface and “whitewashing” (the erasure of Asian and Asian American characterizations from film and theater in order to benefit white actors) continue to be used in U.S. theater and film. In addition to protesting, Asian American performing artists have responded by creating alternative venues for Asian American performers and writers to make their talents known, such as Los Angeles’s East West Players (established in 1965). Asian Americans have also fully engaged with these issues through writing a host of plays that feature characterizations of actors who suffer the effects of discriminatory casting practices. Two plays in particular, David Henry Hwang’s Yellow Face (2007) and Lloyd Suh’s Charles Francis Chan Jr.’s Exotic Oriental Murder Mystery (2015) not only critique the legacies of yellowface representation but also prompt broader reflection on how contemporary Asian American identities are shaped by both political radicalism and “model minority” conformity. These plays re-appropriate yellowface to comment on the changing and contested nature of racial categories such as “Asian American” as well as the continuing problems of racial typecasting.

Asian Americans

Sociology ◽  
2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jennifer C. Lee ◽  
Alexander Lu
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Ethnic Groups ◽  
Asian Americans ◽  
Asian American ◽  
Model Minority ◽  
The United States ◽  
Sociological Research ◽  
Socioeconomic Outcomes ◽  
Interdisciplinary Field ◽  
Racial Ethnic

Asian Americans currently make up about five percent of the US population and are one of the fastest growing racial/ethnic groups in the United States. The history of Asians in the United States spans more than 200 years. The term “Asian American” covers over twenty nationality groups. It covers a wide variety of identities, languages, cultures, and experiences, yet this diversity has been masked with the assumption of homogeneity and the model minority image. Research within sociology on Asian Americans often focuses on dispelling the model minority myth through the empirical analysis of heterogeneity within the Asian American population, particularly in regard to educational and socioeconomic outcomes. Other sociological research examines contemporary stereotypes and discrimination against Asian Americans as well as the racial stratification of Asian Americans in relation to other racial/ethnic groups in the United States. However, it is important to note that Asian American Studies is an interdisciplinary field, and much sociological work is informed and influenced by multi- and interdisciplinary work. Therefore, although focused primarily on sociological works, this article will include books and articles from other disciplines that have important implications for sociological research.

scholarly journals Mathematical Performance of American Youth: Diminished Returns of Educational Attainment of Asian-American Parents

2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 32 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shervin Assari ◽  
Shanika Boyce ◽  
Mohsen Bazargan ◽  
Cleopatra H. Caldwell
Keyword(s):  
Educational Attainment ◽  
Ethnic Minorities ◽  
Asian Americans ◽  
Asian American ◽  
Test Score ◽  
Parental Education ◽  
Mathematical Performance ◽  
Asian American Youth ◽  
Parental Educational Attainment ◽  
Hispanic White

The Marginalization-related Diminished Returns (MDR) phenomenon refers to the weaker effects of parental educational attainment for marginalized groups, particularly ethnic minorities. This literature, however, is limited to Blacks and Hispanics; thus, it is not clear if the MDR phenomenon also applies to the educational performance of Asian Americans or not. To explore ethnic differences in the association between parental educational attainment and youth mathematical performance among 10th-grade American high schoolers, this cross-sectional study used baseline data from the Education Longitudinal Study, a national survey of 10th-grade American youth. The analytical sample included a total number of 10,142 youth composed of 1460 (14.4%) Asian-American and 8682 (85.6%) non-Hispanic youth. The dependent variable was youth math performance (standard test score). The independent variable was parental education. Gender, both parents living in the same household, and school characteristics (% students receiving free lunch, urban school, and public school) were the covariates. Ethnicity was the moderating variable. Linear regression was used for data analysis. Overall, parental educational attainment was positively associated with math ability (test score). We observed a statistically significant interaction between ethnicity (Asian American) and parental education attainment on the results of math test scores, indicating that the boosting effect of high parental educational attainment on youth math function is smaller for Asian-American youth than for Non-Hispanic White youth. While high parental educational attainment contributes to youth educational outcomes, this association is weaker for Asian-American youth than non-Hispanic White youth. Diminished returns (weaker effects of parental education in generating outcomes for ethnic minorities) that are previously shown for Hispanics and Blacks also apply to Asian Americans.

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