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The Color of Success: Asian Americans and the Origins of the Model Minority (Book)

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Book Citation:

Wu, E. D. (2015). Color of Success: Asian Americans and the Origin of the Model Minority. Princeton Univ Press.

  1. The Birth of the Model Minority
    1. Asiatic Exclusion in the 1940s: 
      1. Asians (specifically Japanese and Chinese) were marked as “definitely not-white” (Wu, 2)
      2. Asians saw housing and schooling segregation, work discrimination (barriers put in place to bar them from high-status positions), and utter denial to citizenship naturalization (Wu, 3)
        1. Most Asians worked low-status jobs such as gardening, laundering, truck driving, domestic labor, and restaurant work (Wu, 3)
      3. Asians were seen as “aliens ineligible to citizenship” and “professional carrot washers” until the abolition of the Exclusion’s regime (Wu, 3)
        1. They were deemed as incapable of assimilation due to the vast differences between Asian culture and white, American culture (Wu, 3)
    2. World War II’s impact on the AE:
      1. 120,000 Nikkei (people with Japanese ancestry) were removed and incarcerated from America, two-thirds of which were American citizens, and half of who were under the age of 18 (Wu, 12)
      2. The “race-neutral” Executive Order 9066, signed on Feb 19, 1942, by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, gave authorization to “prescribe military areas … from which any or all persons may be excluded.” (Wu, 13)
        1. This was directly applied onto Japanese Americans living on the West Coast (Cali, Oregon, and Washington) (Wu, 13)
        2. Japanese immigrants, both 1st, 2nd, and 3rd gen, left their homes and were piled into 16 “assembly centers” and then later moved into “relocation centers,” which were concentration camps in all senses of the term. These camps were located in isolated areas like Arizona, Arkansas, and Idaho. (Wu, 13)
          1. Hirabayashi v. United States (1943), Yasui v. United States (1943), and Korematsu v. United States (1944) defended the legality of mass imprisonment, evacuation, and detention of Japanese people, or “enemy aliens,” living on the Pacific coast. (Wu, 13)
      3. World War II both helped and fought against the yellow peril.
        1. While thousands upon thousands of Japanese had been targeted and imprisoned, 1943 saw both the repeal of the 1882 Chinese Exclusion laws and the resettlement of Japanese internees. (Wu, 15)
          1. Japanese individuals who had been deemed “sufficiently loyal and assimilable by camp administrators” were encouraged to resettle in urban locations like New York City, Chicago, and Denver. However, by 1944, only a third of the Nikkei population, approximately thirty-six thousand people, participated in the resettlement program. (Wu, 13)
        2. After Pearl Harbor, Chinese people were allowed to naturalize and gained access to higher levels of employment. As shown by Wu, Chinese employees elevated their social status and found a place in the American economy: “Chinese in professional and technical fields more than doubled from 1940 to 7.08 percent in 1950, while the percentage working in clerical and sales positions went up to 15.96 percent.” (Wu, 15).
          1. Chinese Americans became renowned for their job  working capability and range and were seen in all levels and kinds of  (Wu, 65)
        3. Liberals argued that the Exclusion was unsustainable, and that good relations with China, especially during World War II, needed to be upheld through polite conduct with Chinese Americans. The importance of Chinese inclusion into American culture while maintaining a semblance of unique, individual Chinese culture led to the redefinition of the assimilation of Chinese peoples (Wu, 45-46).
          1. At the same time, the welfare of Chinese Americans directly depended on America’s relationship with China; the bridge between Asia and America was already unsteady due to China’s quickly rising Communist regime and the tension between Chiang Kai-shek and Mao Zedong, who led the Nationalist and Communist parties respectively (Wu, 46).
          2. “Bowl of Rice” fundraiser festivals in multiple Chinatowns across the country celebrated Chinese culture and garnered empathy for the immigrants
            (Wu, 47).
          3. China’s alliance with America became official upon America’s declaration of war against the Japanese. This alliance led USA government officials to contemplate the repeal of the exclusion laws. (Wu, 47).
    3. Asians, mostly Japanese and Chinese, face reversal of racism in America in the 1970s
      1. “the almost total disappearance of discrimination … and their assimilation into the mainstream of American life” (Wu, 2)
      2. The aftermath of World War II “triggered seismic changes in popular notions of nationhood and belonging, which in turn challenged the stronghold of white supremacy” (Wu, 3).
      3. The dismantling of the Asiatic Exclusion led to an uncertainty in the social standing of Asian Americans (Wu, 2).
        1. New stereotype created: the “model minority”
          1. “A racial group distinct from majority, but lauded as well assimilated, upwardly mobile, politically nonthreatening, and definitively not-black” (Wu, 2-3)
          2. “Oriental” children became favored in schools for being “so bright and so well-behaved and hard-working”(Wu, 3)
          3. Asians became the most beloved people of color in America (Wu, 3)
          4. Japanese and Chinese found the leap from their previously low status to the title of “model minority” was because they were “living examples of advancement in spite of the persistent color line and because of their racial (often coded as cultural) differences.” (Wu, 7)
      4. Asians found themselves forced into the Western narrative of national racial progress, which was based on the distinction between “good” and “bad” minorities. (Wu, 4)
  2. Wars and their impact on the statuses of Asian immigrants:
    1. World War II:
      1. Nisei in uniform bolstered the reputation of Japanese Americans through their heroic acts on the European fronts of World War II. During this period of goodwill, the Japanese American Citizen League (JACL) went to great lengths to display Japanese Americans’ unquestionable loyalty to the US, even going so far as to exclude Japanese Americans who had renounced their loyalty and US citizenship (Wu, 74).
        1. JACL went through with a social campaign with the sole goal of keeping peace with the US government. At the front of this campaign were the accomplishments of the Nisei soldiers; with Japanese Americans in the headlines of papers during WWII, JACL hoped to demonstrate “unwavering loyalty to the United States demonstrated through the sacrifice of military service” in order to secure a permanent place in American society (Wu, 74).
          1. JACL’s enlistment of a “warrior persona” and the accomplishments of the Nisei soldier mended the sore spot of Pearl Harbor’s impact on the social status of Japanese Americans and sealed America’s impression of a “model minority”; Japanese Americans were willing and able to assimilate properly and display great loyalty, going so far as to partake in civic duties such as serving military time (Wu, 75).
            1. This approach was greatly flawed and wasn’t a cure all, however. In her book, Wu stated, “The league’s reliance on racialized martial patriotism to rehabilitate Nikkei citizenship was a concession that Japanese Americans could not eradicate their difference from whites (and hence remove lingering status disparities) but instead could only hope to endow this difference with positive meanings” (Wu, 75-76). This showed that, despite the general positive outcome, the underlying bitterness of racism and a self-inflicted inferiority complex would continue to stain the efforts and the social statuses of Japanese Americans.
        2. The 33,000 Japanese Americans who served during World War II garnered national recognition for their efforts. The all-Nisei 442nd Regimental Combat Team accumulated seven Presidential Unit Citations and earned 18,143 individual citations while suffering 9,486 casualties, totaling over 300 percent of its original infantry strength. Many female Japanese Americans enlisted in the Women’s Army Corps and the US Air Force, while others labored as medics, mechanics, and clerks in the Quartermaster Corps, instructors and interpreters for the Military Intelligence Service Language School, and Army Map Service staff; and a number worked in the Office of Strategic Services as well as the Office of War Information (Wu, 75).
    2. The Korean War/Cold War:
      1. As McCarthyism took its fear-mongering hold on America, China’s entry into the Korean War only made Chinese Americans increasingly nervous: with one emboldened headline on a newspaper, Chinese Americans went from “hardworking and loyal allies”  to “Communist opponents seeking to corrupt democracy.”
        1. In order to quell violence and harassment towards ethnic Chinese living in America and quickly dissociate themselves from Chinese Communists, both Chinese and Chinese American figures and groups took hasty action. 
          1. The Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association (CCBA), located in Washington, D.C., stated, “whole-heartedly behind the United States Government and with all the free peoples of the world as they engage the menace of communism” (Wu, 112).
          2. New York’s Chinese Nationalist Daily issued a list of four statements in order to solidify the loyalty of Chinese Americans: “We, the Chinese-American citizens, pledge our loyalty to the United States. We support the Nationalist Government of Free China and her great leader, President Chiang Kai-shek. We support the United Nations Charter and the efforts made by the United Nations troops who are fighting for a united, free, and independent Korea. The Chinese Communists are the stooges of Soviet Russia. Those who are invading Korea are the Chinese COMMUNISTS, not the peace-loving people of Free China” (Wu, 113).
          3. The Kuomingtang Party, in response to Chinese Americans’ pledge of loyalty to both the US and to the Nationalist Government of Free China, elevated CCBA China-based ambassadors to important positions within the Nationalist Party in hopes of increasing its good will with America (Wu, 114).
      2. Chinese Americans, as a result of their determined opposition to the Red Devil and multiple community campaigns of anti-communism, experienced the exact opposite of the hostility Japanese Americans were consigned to after Pearl Harbor (Wu, 120).
        1.  Earl Warren, the governor of California at the time and a promoter of the Nikkei concentration camps, supported the Chinese American anti-communist efforts (Wu, 120).
        2. Elmer Robinson, the mayor of San Francisco from 1948 to 1956, assured the city’s Chinese community that construction of the Ping Yuen public housing development and Chinese Recreation Center, both in Chinatown, would go unhindered as “proof and promise of your loyalty and your continued fidelity to the United States of America” (Wu, 120).
        3. Cities with large populations of Chinese immigrants, including Chicago and San Francisco, chastised hateful attacks by “Caucasians” against Chinese Americans (Wu, 120).

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