Asian Americans became model minorities only by contrast with Black civil-rights activism.

Evidence

It was not until the mid-1960s that the media and the government portrayed Asians as “model minorities,” in what Claire Jean Kim calls relative valorization. Juxtaposed to stereotypes of the lazy, militant, and inferior African American, the image of the Asian American in the media transformed into the hardworking, self-reliant, and docile immigrant. As Cindy Cheng notes, the change in stereotypes arose from cultural pluralism during the Cold War and Asian Americans’ efforts to prove their loyalty through assimilation and displays of Americanness. Unlike African Americans, who were agitating, protesting, and litigating for equal rights, Asian Americans became model minorities in the American racio-religious hierarchy. — Sahar F. Aziz, The Racial Muslim, 346

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: The mechanism — a group becomes valorized precisely by being set against an agitating, protesting Black community — illuminates how the ‘model minority’ category is structurally parasitic, not an independent achievement.
• SEED: Angle: how the model-minority valorization of Asian Americans depends on Black activism being framed as pathology — a template for understanding how Muslim assimilation is being offered today.