People tell me I’m a nice person, that I am kind and considerate. They say, “That Ira, he’s such a gentle soul.” And for the most part, I try to be nice and kind and considerate and gentle. From those I love and respect, these descriptions of me are flattering. They make me blush because I never know what to do with compliments.
But I have been called something else, too. When an acquaintance of mine remarked that he didn’t see color in me; just another version of white. When another writer said I wasn’t Asian because I didn’t write Asian things. When someone once said, “Ira, you are the ‘model minority.’”
Model minority: a term created in 1966 by sociologist William Petersen in his article “Success story: Japanese American style.” The New York Times Magazine article addressed how Japanese Americans overcame discrimination in this country and achieved the American Dream. Subsequent articles soon followed, utilizing the term “model minority” to describe other Asian American groups, who were deemed to have earned “success.” Nearly all of these articles failed to take into account the overturn of exclusive immigration laws that made mobility possible, nor did these articles break down what constituted “Asian American”; if they had they would have seen the racial disparity among different Asian American groups. Here, under this umbrella term of model minority, is born the ever-present stereotypes that shadows the Asian American. Here, among these stereotypes, are the assumptions that have rendered Asian Americans invisible, stripping us of our various cultures, our heritage, painting us as another form of white living in a white world. We—Asian Americans—have done what has been expected of us. We have assimilated. We are nice and kind and considerate and gentle.
A Thai friend of mine in south Chicago once said, after being endlessly bullied at school, “The hurt is real, even if you don’t see it.” My friend took his life. His words have been echoing inside my head ever since. The hurt is real.
It was real then. And it is real now.
When President Trump labeled the coronavirus—after months of downplaying its severity—the “Chinese virus,” the model minority, in the eyes of many, vanished. Racist harassment and hate crimes escalated. Each day a model minority is beaten; each day a model minority is attacked. The word “model” evaporated because now we are seen as a danger, a threat to the well-being of this country, this white country, that never wanted any of us here in the first place.
This Asian Solidarity issue is a collection of poems and essays and graphic narratives that resist generalizations, a way being categorized that eviscerates and oversimplifies our lives. The contributors to this issue declare that language matters, that words have responsibility and the power to reinstate us. These works are counter narratives to the hate that exists in our country, the rhetoric that seeks to divide and blame. And this is “our” country too, isn’t it?
For so long, the model minority has been a justification of why we belong here. But I’ll let you in on this secret, my Sweet family: nice and kind and considerate and gentle or not, we belong here. We aren’t going anywhere. The hurt is real. But so are our words.