Week 1 Blog: The Model Majority

James Park

ASA2 Section A01

9/30/15

Week #1 

Throughout all the readings this week, all served to give an introduction of what to expect throughout the course and a brief insight into certain Asian American social movements and the philosophy behind them. The Asian American education stereotype is heightened when comparing population percentages as the majority of undergraduates are Asian/Pacific Islander as seen in the “UC Davis Profile,” misrepresenting Asians as the Model Minority. Grace Lee Boggs briefly mentions Asians as model minorities in her “Nothing Is More Important than Thinking Dialectically” but takes a spin on the future of social movements and how to prepare for “community-based, socially responsible education” that will enable us to focus on the bigger picture of the community. Reading countless texts in high school about social movements, especially those of inner-city students, many reflected on the experiences of African Americans and their struggles of education as affirmative action has ended. However, today Asian Americans never had that positive discrimination and people continue to label us as the Model Minority. Instead of enrolling students solely based on academics and extracurricular, race and ethnicity play a major factor for universities in order to reach a diversity quota.

My question for this week is whether or not things would have been different had we not been the Model Minority and how the struggles of our cultural values and backgrounds would have influenced our education today?