CHAPTER 10

ASIAN AMERICANS AND PACIFIC ISLANDERS:

A "Model Minority"?

Overview

This chapter begins by stressing the diversity of Asian Americans in terms of culture and nations of origin. Chinese and Japanese Americans are the main focus of the chapter but brief sections on other groups and recent immigration are also included. We explore the different modes of incorporation into U.S. society pursued by these groups, especially the ethnic enclave. The chapter ends with an overview of the current status of these groups and an exploration of the idea of Asian-American “success.”

Learning Goals

1. Students will learn that Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders are diverse and have brought many different cultural and linguistic traditions to the United States. These groups are growing rapidly but are still only a tiny fraction of the total population.

2. Students will learn that Chinese immigrants were the victims of a massive campaign of discrimination and exclusion and responded by constructing enclaves. Chinatowns became highly organized communities. The second generation faced many barriers to employment in the dominant society, although opportunities increased after World War II.

3. Students will learn that Japanese immigration began in the 1890s and stimulated a campaign that attempted to oust the group from agriculture and curtail immigration from Japan. The Issei formed an enclave, but during World War II, Japanese Americans were forced into relocation camps, and this experience devastated the group economically and psychologically.

4. Students will learn that other Asian and Pacific Island groups come from the Philippines, Korea, Vietnam, and India, and many other societies. These groups are diverse in occupation, education, and degree of acculturation.

5. Students will learn that Asian immigrants have entered the United States through the primary labor market, the secondary labor market, and the enclave economies.

6. Students will learn that overall levels of anti-Asian prejudice and discrimination have probably declined in recent years but remain widespread. Levels of acculturation and secondary structural assimilation are highly variable for these groups.

7. Students will learn that the notion that Asian Americans are a “model minority” is exaggerated, but comparisons with European immigrants and colonized minority groups suggest some of the reasons for the relative “success” of these groups.

Outline

I. Chapter Overview

II. Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders

A. Asians and Pacific Islanders are tiny fractions of the total U.S. population. Even when aggregated, they account for slightly less than 4% of the total population.

B. Most Asian American groups have grown dramatically in recent decades, largely because of high rates of immigration since the 1965 changes in U.S. immigration policy.

C. This rapid growth is projected to continue for decades to come, and the impact of Asian Americans on everyday life and American culture will increase accordingly.

D. West Coast cities have been the most common ports of entry for these groups since immigration began more than 150 years ago.

III. Origins and Cultures

A. Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders have brought a wealth of traditions to the United States. They speak many different languages and practice religions as diverse as Buddhism, Confucianism, Islam, Hindu, and Christianity.

B. Although no two of these cultures are the same, some general similarities can be identified.

1. Asian cultures tend to stress group membership over individual self-interest.

2. Asian cultures stress sensitivity to the opinions and judgments of others and to the importance of avoiding public embarrassment and not giving offense.

3. Asian cultures emphasize proper behavior, conformity to convention and the judgments of others, and avoiding embarrassment and personal confrontations (“saving face”).

4. Traditional Asian cultures were male-dominated, and women were consigned to subordinate roles.

IV. Contact Situations and the Development of the Chinese American and Japanese American Communities

A. Chinese Americans.

1. Early Immigration and the Anti-Chinese Campaign. Chinese immigrants were “pushed” to leave their homeland by the disruption of traditional social relations, caused by the colonization of much of China by more industrialized European nations, and by rapid population growth.

2. Noel argues that racial or ethnic stratification will result when a contact situation is characterized by three conditions: ethnocentrism, competition, and a differential in power.

a. Once all three conditions were met on the West Coast, a vigorous campaign against the Chinese began, and the group was pushed into a subordinate, disadvantaged position.

b. An anti-Chinese campaign of harassment, discrimination, and violent attacks began. As the West Coast economy changed, the Chinese came to be seen as a threat, and elements of the dominant group tried to limit competition.

3. In 1882, the U.S. Congress passed the Chinese Exclusion Act banning virtually all immigration from China.

a. Conflicts such as the anti-Chinese campaign can be especially intense because they confound racial and ethnic antagonisms with disputes between different social classes.

b. The ban on immigration from China remained in effect until World War II, when China was awarded a yearly quota of 105 immigrants in recognition of its wartime alliance with the United States.

4. Population Trends and the “Delayed” Second Generation.

a. Following the Chinese Exclusion Act, the number of Chinese in the United States actually declined.

b. After 1882, it was difficult for anyone from China, male or female, to immigrate, and the Chinese community in the United States remained overwhelmingly male for many decades.

c. The scarcity of Chinese women in the United States delayed the second generation.

d. The delayed second generation may have reinforced the exclusion of the Chinese American community that began as a reaction to the overt discrimination of the dominant group.

5. The Ethnic Enclave.

a. The Chinese became increasingly urbanized as the anti-Chinese campaign and rising racism took their toll.

b. Chinatowns had existed since the start of the immigration and now took on added significance as safe havens from the storm of anti-Chinese venom.

c. The social structure was based on a variety of types of organizations, including family and clan groups and huiguan, or associations based on the region or district in China from which the immigrant had come.

d. Despite these internal conflicts, American Chinatowns evolved into highly organized, largely self-contained communities complete with their own leadership and decision-making structures.

6. Survival and Development.

a. The Chinese American community survived despite the widespread poverty discrimination, and pressures created by the unbalanced sex ratio.

b. The patterns of exclusion and discrimination that began during the 19th century anti-Chinese campaign were common throughout the nation and continued well into the 20th century.

c. As the decades passed, the enclave economy and the complex subsociety of Chinatown evolved. However, discrimination combined with defensive self-segregation ensured the continuation of poverty, limited job opportunities, and sub-standard housing.

7. The Second Generation.

a. Whereas the immigrant generation generally retained their native language and customs, the second generation was much more influenced by the larger culture.

b. This group was mobile and Americanized, and with educational credentials comparable to the general population, they were prepared to seek success outside Chinatown.

c. In another departure from tradition, the women of the second generation also pursued education; Chinese American women also became more diverse in their occupational profile as the century progressed.

8. An American Success Story?

a. The men and women of the second generation achieved considerable educational and occupational success and helped to establish the idea that Chinese Americans are a “model minority.”

b. Second-generation Chinese Americans earned less, on the average, and had less favorable occupational profiles than comparably educated white Americans, a gap between qualifications and rewards that reflects persistent discrimination.

c. Thus, Chinese Americans can be found at both ends of the spectrum of success and affluence, and the group is often said to be “bipolar” in its occupational structure.

B. Japanese Americans - Immigration from Japan began to increase shortly after the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 took effect, in part to fill the gap in the labor supply created by the restrictive legislation.

1. The Anti-Japanese Campaign: The contact situation for Japanese immigrants resembled that of the Chinese.

a. They immigrated to the same West Coast regions as the Chinese, entered the labor force in a similar position, and were a small group with few power resources.

b. Japanese immigration was partly curtailed in 1907 when a “gentlemen’s agreement” was signed between Japan and the United States limiting the number of laborers Japan would allow to emigrate.

c. The anti-Japanese movement also attempted to dislodge the group from agriculture. Many Japanese immigrants were skilled agriculturists, and farming proved to be their most promising avenue for advancement.

d. The Japanese were excluded from the mainstream economy and confined to a limited range of poorly paid occupations. Thus, there were strong elements of systematic discrimination, exclusion, and colonization in their overall relationship with the larger society.

2. The Ethnic Enclave.

a. The immigrant generation, called the Issei (from the Japanese word ichi, meaning “one”), established an enclave in agriculture and related enterprises, a rural counterpart of the urban enclaves constructed by other groups we have examined.

b. Japanese Americans in both the rural and urban sectors maximized their economic clout by doing business with other Japanese-owned firms as often as possible. These networks helped the enclave economy to grow and also permitted the Japanese to avoid the hostility and racism of the larger society. However, these very same patterns helped sustain the stereotypes that depicted the Japanese as clannish and unassimilable.

3. The Second Generation (Nisei).

a. Unable to find acceptance in Anglo society, the second generation—called the Nisei—established clubs, athletic leagues, churches, and a multitude of other social and recreational organizations within their own communities.

b. Many Nisei were forced to remain within the enclave, and in many cases, jobs in the produce stands and retail shops of their parents were all they could find. Their demoralization and anger over their exclusion were eventually swamped by the larger events of World War II.

4. The Relocation Camps.

a. President Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, which led to the relocation of Japanese Americans living on the West Coast. By the late summer of 1942, more than 110,000 Japanese Americans, young and old, male and female—virtually the entire West Coast population—had been transported to relocation camps where they were imprisoned behind barbed-wire fences patrolled by armed guards.

b. The strain of living in the camps affected Japanese Americans in a variety of ways.

c. Finally, in 1944, the Supreme Court ruled that detention was unconstitutional.

d. The World War II relocation devastated the Japanese American community and left it with few material resources.

5. Japanese Americans After World War II: In 1945, Japanese Americans faced a world very different from the one they had left in 1942.

a. In the camps, the Issei had lost power to the Nisei. The English-speaking second generation had dealt with the camp administrators and held the leadership positions.

b. The Issei-dominated enclave economy did not reappear after the war.

c. By 1960, Japanese Americans had an occupational profile very similar to that of whites except that they were actually overrepresented among professionals. Within these limitations, the Nisei, their children (Sansei), and their grandchildren (Yonsei) have enjoyed relatively high status, and their upward mobility and prosperity has contributed to the perception that Asian Americans are a “model minority.”

C. Comparing Minority Groups.

1. Unlike the situation of African Americans in the 1600s and Mexican Americans in the 1800s, the dominant group had no desire to control the labor of these groups.

2. Unlike Native Americans, Chinese Americans and Japanese Americans in the early 20th century presented no military danger to the larger society so there was little concern with their activities once the economic threat had been eliminated.

3. Chinese Americans and Japanese Americans had the ingredients and experiences necessary to form enclaves.

V. Contemporary Immigration from Asia and the Pacific Islands

A. Rates and Causes.

1. Immigration from Asia and the Pacific Islands increased dramatically after 1965, as did immigration from Central and South America and the Caribbean.

2. As we have seen every time we have considered immigration, joblessness and lack of opportunity in the sending countries are almost always a primary cause of the decision to move.

3. Asian immigration is also shaped by “pull” factors. The United States has maintained extensive military bases in South Korea, the Philippines, and Japan since the end of World War II, and many of the immigrants from these nations are the spouses of American soldiers.

B. Ports of Entry: Recent Asian and Pacific Islander immigrants use many of the same ports of entry as immigrants from Latin America, with the West Coast being the most common destination.

C. Modes of Incorporation.

1. The members of most Asian American groups are newcomers. Thus, most Asian immigrant groups are still in their first generations, and it will be years before the second and third generations grow to adulthood.

2. Asian immigration is segmented and individual immigrants enter U.S. society in three general ways:

a. through the primary or mainstream labor market in which jobs are well paid and relatively secure.

b. through the secondary labor market in which jobs are poorly paid and insecure

c. through ethnic enclaves.

D. Immigrants and the Primary Labor Market.

1. The immigrants entering the primary labor market are highly educated, skilled

professionals and business people.

2. Because they tend to be affluent and enter a growing sector of the labor force,

Asian immigrants with professional backgrounds tend to attract less notice and

fewer racist reactions than their more unskilled counterparts.

E. Immigrants and the Secondary Labor Market.

1. Frequently ignored in the glitter of Asian success stories are sizable groups of uneducated and unskilled laborers. This group includes large numbers of undocumented aliens, the less skilled and less educated kinfolk of the higher-status immigrants, and a high percentage of the refugee groups from Southeast Asia.

2. The experiences of these less skilled immigrants are strongly affected by gender, with female immigrants often being more vulnerable and more exploited.

F. Immigrants and Ethnic Enclaves: The enclave provides contacts, financial and other

services, and social support for the new immigrants of all social classes.

VI. Four Case Studies

A. Filipino Americans.

1. Today, Filipinos are the second largest Asian American

group.

2. The Filipino American community is diverse, with some members in the

higher-wage primary labor market and others competing for work in the low-wage

secondary sector.

3. Language differences and anti-Asian prejudice and discrimination

limit the educational and occupational choices available to the group

as a whole.

B. Korean Americans.

1. Immigration from Korea to the United States began at the turn of the century, when

laborers were recruited to help fill the void in the job market left by the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act.

2. Recent immigrants from Korea consist mostly of families and include many

highly educated people.

3. Korean Americans have formed an enclave.

a. The group is heavily involved in small businesses and retail stores, particularly

fruit and vegetable retail stores or green groceries.

b. As is the case for other groups that have pursued this course, the enclave allows

them to avoid the discrimination and racism of the larger society while surviving in an economic niche in which lack of English fluency is not a particular problem.

C. Southeast Asians.

1. A flow of refugees from Southeast Asia, particularly from Vietnam, began in the

1960s as a result of the involvement of the United States in the region.

2. The Vietnamese are the largest of the Asian refugee groups, and contrary to

Asian American success stories and notions of model minorities, they have

incomes and educational levels comparable to colonized minority groups.

D. Indians: Immigration from India was low until the mid-1960s, and the group was

quite small at that time.

E. Summary.

1. Contrary to popular perceptions of Asian success, recent Asian immigrants

are diverse in origin, characteristics, and impact on U.S. society.

2. Each trajectory has different implications for upward mobility, conflict with other

groups, prejudice and discrimination, acculturation and integration, and a host of

other variables.

VI. Contemporary Relations

A. Prejudice and Discrimination.

1. American prejudice against Asians first became prominent during the anti-Chinese

movement of the 19th century.

2. In more recent decades, the average social distance scores of Asian groups

have fallen even though the ranking of the groups remained relatively stable.

3. Although prejudice against Asian and Pacific Island groups may have weakened

overall, there is considerable evidence that it remains a potent force in

American life.

4. The continuing force of anti-Asian prejudice is marked most dramatically,

perhaps, by hate crimes against members of the group.

B. Assimilation and Pluralism.

1. Acculturation. The extent of acculturation of Asian Americans is highly variable

from group to group.

a. Japanese Americans represent one extreme. They have been a part of American

society for more than a century, and the current generations are highly acculturated.

b. At the other extreme are groups such as Vietnamese Americans, who are still

in the first generation and have scarcely had time to learn the American culture

and the English language.

c. The great variability both within and between Asian American groups makes it

difficult to characterize their overall degree of acculturation.

2. Secondary Structural Assimilation.

a. Asian Americans are highly urbanized, a reflection of the entry conditions of

recent immigrants as well as the appeal of ethnic neighborhoods, such as

Chinatowns, with long histories and continuing vitality.

b. The pattern of schooling for these groups is very different from other U.S. racial

minority groups.

c. If we look at the occupations and income for Asian Americans as a single category,

the picture of success and equality is sustained.

d. The ability of Asian Americans to pursue their group interests has been sharply

limited by a number of factors, including their relatively small size, institutionalized

discrimination, and the same kinds of racist practices that have limited the power

resources of other minority groups of color.

3. Primary Structural Assimilation: Studies of integration at the primary level generally

find high rates of interracial friendship choices and intermarriage.

VII. Comparing Minority Groups: Explaining Asian American Success

A. Asian and European Immigrants.

1. Chinese and Japanese immigrants arrived in America at about the same time

as immigrants from southern and eastern Europe.

2. Some important differences between the two immigrant experiences are clear,

the most obvious being the greater racial visibility of the Asians and Pacific Islanders.

3. Another important difference relates to position in the labor market.

Immigrants from southern and eastern Europe entered the industrializing East

Coast economy, where they took industrial and manufacturing jobs.

4. In contrast, Chinese and Japanese immigrants on the West Coast were forced

into ethnic enclaves and came to rely on jobs in the small business and service

sector and, in the case of the Japanese, in the rural economy.

B. Asian Americans and Colonized Minority Groups.

1. Some Asian groups (e.g., Chinese Americans and Japanese Americans) rank far

above other racial minority groups on all the commonly used measures of secondary structural integration and equality.

2. A more structural approach to investigating Asian success begins with a

comparison of the history of the various racial minority groups and their modes of

incorporation into the larger society.

a. Many of the occupational and financial advances made by Chinese Americans

and Japanese Americans have been due to the high levels of education achieved

by the second generations.

b. The efforts to educate the next generation were largely successful.

3. At the time that native-born Chinese Americans and Japanese Americans reached

educational parity with whites, the vast majority of African Americans, Native

Americans, and Mexican Americans were still victimized by Jim Crow laws and

legalized segregation and excluded from opportunities for anything but

rudimentary education.

4. The structural explanation argues that the recent upward mobility of Chinese

Americans and Japanese Americans is the result of the methods by which they

incorporated themselves into American society, not so much their values and

traditions.

Classroom Activities and Suggestions for Discussion

1. Show your students a well-made documentary on Hispanic Americans and discuss it in relation to the concepts and theories in the text book. Two possibilities documentaries include:

· No Hop Sing, No Bruce Lee: What Do You Do When None of Your Heroes Look Like You? (Available from http://www.eai.org) In this short documentary, Asian American actors discuss ethnic identity, mass media stereotyping and their subservient roles in the mass media.

· Between Worlds. This hour long documentary that explores the experiences of Vietnamese Amerasians who left Vietnam in 1992 through the Orderly Departure Program. The film follows them from a refugee camp in the Philippines to their arrival in different regions of this country. It documents their lives for five years as they struggle to learn English, pursue educations, and find employment.

2. If possible visit a local "Chinatown" or a cyberspace chinatown (e.g., San Francisco, New York, Honolulu, Washington, ChinatownUK). Before your visit, you might show your students Chinatown: A Portrait of a World-Renowned Neighborhood (PBS. Available from KQED at 1-800-358-3000.) This video addresses various aspects of the Chinese American experience, but specifically explores the history and culture of Chinatown. Topics include the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, the Chinese Telephone Exchange, and the diversity of Chinatown, among others. Additionally, it explores the neighborhood as a place for new immigrants today. How does what students observe mesh with their reading? How does it differ?

3. What the film Joy Luck Club (1993, directed by Wayne Wang) and discuss it in terms of relevant concepts and theories from the text.

4. Explore differences in Asian cooking as a metaphor for understanding the diversity of the Asian American experience. You could have students cook different recipes that reflect different ethnic groups (e.g., Vietnamese, Chinese, Japanese, Thai, Indian, Hmong). Recipes can be found in good cookbooks or online. Or, ask a local restaurant to arrange for a more authentic group dinner than students might typically find in Americanized restaurants.