Model Minority Quotes

The Asian male has an interesting history as far as Western appropriation. At one point, we were completely sexless Chinamen building the railroads. Then, World War II came around, and it was like, Asian guys are coming after the white women. We became a menace for a second.

The Vietnam War was taking place, which was raising all sorts of questions in the United States, and it was forcing Asian-Americans to stop thinking of themselves as model minorities and to identify themselves more with world revolution, which was very important in my development.

When I was at MIT I was a good model minority. But the concept of an Indian immigrant creating e-mail in Newark, N.J., blows the mind of certain people.

But being Asian American, a lot of Asian American guys come up to me who are in interracial relationships and they tell me, 'Growing up my partner had a big crush on you and so you're probably one of the reasons why she married me, so thank you.'

Within the model minority rhetoric, Asian Americans are represented as “good” minorities and African Americans are represented as “bad” minorities. Here, the achievements of Asian Americans are used to discipline African Americans. As model minorities, Asian Americans achieved the status of “honorary Whites”. Again it is important to point out that the honorary whiteness of Asian Americans was granted at the expense of Blacks. It is also significant that as “honorary Whites,” Asian Americans do not have the actual privileges associated with “real” whiteness.

For us as Asian-Americans, I think the bane of our existence is one stereotype - 'Sixteen Candles,' the Long Duk Dong character.

Asian American success is often presented as something of a horror - robotic, unfeeling machines psychotically hellbent on excelling, products of abusive tiger parenting who care only about test scores and perfection, driven to succeed without even knowing why.

There were definitely auditions and even bookings and jobs where I played your typical Asian model minority: an IT tech guy or something of that nature. It's tough sometimes, especially when you're starting out, because they make these roles sound as if they won't be a typical nerd.

Some of my contemporaries don't want to talk about the female problem because they feel like whenever they get a teaching position or an award, we are just being pinpointed, fitting into the model.

Americans are fickle. And what constitutes the enemy is always changing. Believe it or not, at one time Blacks were the favored model minority over Asian Americans.

There have been, in recent years, many Asian American pioneers in the public eye who've defied the condescendingly complimentary 'model minority' stereotype: actors like Lucy Liu, artists like Maya Lin, moguls like Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh. They are known, often admired.

I am just a nice, clean-cut Mongolian boy.

To our American neighbors, we were model immigrants, a poster family. They told us so. My father had a law degree, my mother was on her way to becoming a doctor, and my siblings and I got good grades and always said 'please' and 'thank you.'

I tried my hardest to be the opposite of a stereotypical Asian student.

Living in the West, you see how there's only two versions of how Asian men are supposed to be. Either they're very nice, yuppie husbands with children in ads, or they're IT geeks.

One stereotype I get a lot as an Asian actress is that you're playing the model minority - that Asians are the best, that they're perfect and positively moral all the time.

Great numbers of Asian Americans do not fit the model minority or 'tiger family' stereotypes, living instead in multigenerational poverty far from the mainstream.

One of the things I like about comedy in general is that it affords Asian Americans the opportunity to not be noble.

I don't think people understand the model-minority stereotype is negative. You are boxed in. You have to untangle that to find your own path.