Barriers to Ambition across Class, Race, Ethnicity, and National Origin

This chapter examines barriers to ambition based on class, race, ethnicity, and national origin. It notes that many nations do a better job in delivering on the American Dream than America does. The United States has lower rates of intergenerational mobility than other comparable countries. The public radically underestimates barriers to ambition based on race, class, and ethnicity and the resource disparities in families, schools, and support structures that hobble disadvantaged youth. Americans also fail to address the racial barriers and biases that persist across class. Children of some recent immigrant groups are an exception to these patterns and have higher ambitions and achievements than children of similar backgrounds with American-born parents. But those advantages fade with each generation, and even members of “model minorities” confront disabling stereotypes and marginalization. Society pays a substantial price for the failure to address these inequalities, and the chapter closes with key reform priorities.

A “Model” American Musical

This chapter submits three properties that define Hamilton as a model American musical. First, it is a model cultural commodity on multiple political fronts: rendering race ambiguous, it appeals to the typical Broadway audience; promoting utopian fantasies, it enchants the underprivileged. Second, it puts forth a model history education tool that lauds white Founding Fathers, applauds American exceptionalism, and downplays atrocities suffered by its disenfranchised people. Last but not least, Hamilton facilitates the rise of model minorities—the elitist people-of-color who thrive in a neoliberal society where individuals do not necessarily operate on a level playing field. This essay proposes the term “model minorities”—both a critique of and reparation to “model minority,” a problematic term coined to refer to Asian Americans in the 1960s, to elucidate the key relationship between Hamilton and the minority population in the times of neoliberalism.

Model Minorities and Overcoming the Dominance of Whiteness

Stereotyping Asian Americans as successful or model minorities is not positive. Instead, it is a form of racist love that reinforces White supremacy. How can a positive stereotype reinforce White supremacy? Because the process of revering Asian Americans as model minorities leads to other groups of people, such as people of color and Indigenous people, being reviled. But if the model minority characterization of Asian Americans is inaccurate, what should curriculum studies scholars do? Disproving a “stereotype” is impossible. Curriculum studies scholars and theorists should not attempt to disconfirm something that is untrue, or something that is racist, but instead should narrate the reality of being Asian American. The model minority stereotype of Asian Americans has been studied and contested over 50 years within the context of the United States. Over these 50 plus years, the model minority stereotype has taken on a transcendent meaning. Overcoming the dominance of Whiteness requires Asian Americans to transcend “positive” stereotypes via critical storytelling. This will require curriculum studies as a field to continue to interrogate: What are the realities of living in racist Amerika for Asian Americans?

“I Haven’t Done Anything to Be Polarizing”: Jeremy Lin’s Strategic Appropriation of Black Masculinity

This thesis investigates the appropriation of Black masculinity by Asian American basketball player Jeremy Lin. Subjecting media coverage to a combination of content analysis and critical discourse analysis uncovers the presence of four appropriative themes of Asianness: (a) the supraethnic viability of Asianness; (b) the necessary defeat of Blackness; (c) the disallowance of anti-Asian sentiment; and (d) the presence of a helpful Black cohort. These themes are themselves given meaning by five racially magnetized frames that position Asian Americans in opposition to Blackness across multiple dimensions: (a) Asian Americans as model minorities; (b) Asian American men as emasculated; (c) Asian Americans as invisible; (d) Asian Americans as forever foreign; and (e) Asian and Black Americans as enemies. The results of this study suggest that Asian American men benefit from the appropriation of Blackness, but that this benefit is contingent upon their ability to uphold heterosexist, white supremacist ideologies. Keywords: Jeremy Lin, basketball, race

“I Haven’t Done Anything to Be Polarizing”: Jeremy Lin’s Strategic Appropriation of Black Masculinity

This thesis investigates the appropriation of Black masculinity by Asian American basketball player Jeremy Lin. Subjecting media coverage to a combination of content analysis and critical discourse analysis uncovers the presence of four appropriative themes of Asianness: (a) the supraethnic viability of Asianness; (b) the necessary defeat of Blackness; (c) the disallowance of anti-Asian sentiment; and (d) the presence of a helpful Black cohort. These themes are themselves given meaning by five racially magnetized frames that position Asian Americans in opposition to Blackness across multiple dimensions: (a) Asian Americans as model minorities; (b) Asian American men as emasculated; (c) Asian Americans as invisible; (d) Asian Americans as forever foreign; and (e) Asian and Black Americans as enemies. The results of this study suggest that Asian American men benefit from the appropriation of Blackness, but that this benefit is contingent upon their ability to uphold heterosexist, white supremacist ideologies. Keywords: Jeremy Lin, basketball, race