From Model Minority to Movement Maker

For more than half a century, the Asian American community in the United States has been known as the “Model Minority.” It came during the Civil Rights era and was used as a term to look down upon Black activism. However, now this Model Minority has turned into the Movement makers, but this movement is not a shift in perception. It is a reconfiguration of American political power. Starting in 2020, the events that took place during that time dissolved the illusion of safety that the economy was supposed to give. The anti-Asian hate crimes were on the rise, and xenophobic rhetoric surrounding COVID-19 added fuel to the fire, leading to the Atlanta spa shootings. The community, which was once praised for being unobstructed, realized that being this way did not save them. This brought to an end the “Model Minority.” 

For the first time in decades, the New York Times opened pages to ethic studies and the lived reality of Asian immigrants. This gave rise to #StopAsianHate, which was a loud, angry, grieving rebuttal to the image the Asian community had built for them. For decades, the people thought about the Asian community in a similar way: “If they can make it with immigrant grit, why can’t everyone else?” This was an attempt to prove that systemic racism was a myth, while ignoring the Hart-Celler Act of 1965. Earlier generations saw their survival strategy as adhering to the white-privileged and separating themselves from Black and Brown struggles. This has changed among younger generations, who believe that the struggles of other people of color are shared. They understand that the same structures that enabled the killing of Vincent Chin in 1982 are the ones that enable the over-policing of Black neighborhoods. 

This movement has been especially evident in electoral politics; it was prominent in Georgia and Nevada in the 2020 and 2022 elections. In Georgia, AAPI voter turnout increased by 80% compared to the previous cycle, due to Groups like Asian Americans Advancing Justice and local grassroots. This causes two Senate seats to flip to Democratic Margins. This power was built, door by door, in the strip malls of Duluth, Georgia, and the suburbs of Gwinnett County. This does not mean there was no inner conflict; this era was extremely messy, as political interests of a first-generation Vietnamese refugee in Orange County do not always align with a third-generation Japanese American in Seattle, nor with a Hmong farmer in the Central Valley or a South Asian tech worker in Texas. 

However, being a Movement Maker means facing these tendons head-on and aligning towards a common goal. Being a “Model Minority” was written for Asians, but being “Movement Makers” was a narrative they wrote for themselves. From the global domination of K-pop and Bong Joon-ho’s searing critique of class in Parasite, to the raw, unapologetic anger of young activists on social media and the skyrocketing sales of banned AAPI history books, the narrative control has been transferred to those who deserve it. The era of the Model Minority was defined by how Asian Americans survived within the system. The era of the Movement Maker is defined by how Asian Americans are choosing to change the system.