Are you only as smart as your race?

Oh so often, in media Asian-Americans are stereotyped as the high achievers, being all the same or just foreign even though they could have been living in America for generations. “Asians comprise the racial minority group that has ”made it” in America through hard work and education."(456, Wing)




In, “Beyond Black and White: The model Minority Myth and the Invisibility of Asian American Students”, author, Jean Yonemura Wing tries to unravel this stereotype with data she collected of a sample of Asian-American student of different ethnicity at Berkeley High School. She discusses how often Asian-American student are considered “invisible” because they are assumed to “have few academic or behavioral problems” (461, Wing). With that idea of being invisible many students with actual struggles are not getting the help they need. “It is more urgent to understand the factors influencing low-achieving Asian student, because they are the ones most in need of educational intervention and support” (457, Wing). The overachieving stereotype may seem a positive one but if the student is actually struggling that stereotype camouflages their need of support.



Difficulties that the Asian-American students face but not limited to are limited English speaking/writing skills, gap in education due to escaping refugee issues, and the overwhelming pressure of living up to the stereotype.

One of quote of the article that shocked me the most from one of the students interviewed was “A lot of Vietnamese immigrant families change the age of their children when they register, so they could learn more...spend more time in lower grades, learn more English, and not start off so far behind.” (465, Wing) It’s as if the parents know their children will struggle with the language and this extra time will be the answer to fix their education gap problems. I wonder how this will affects the child socially. Do they mind being placed in a younger age group? Will this lead to a behavior problem?


Stereotypes weather negative or positive can have negative outcomes. Being pressure to be expected to always achieve can bring up anxiety in students leading them to do poorly on test and assessments. A female student says, “It’s nerves, I tense up and forget everything” (464, Wing) If fails she must feel she wouldn’t be a “good Asian” since she not excelling the way she is expected. Claude calls this “Stereotype threat” and did studies with African American students taking a test with high stakes where after the students felt threatened by stereotypes and feared what ever did they would confirm a negative stereotype.

We as educators need to let go these stereotypes and see our student for who they are, students who are here to learn and deserves support of that.

In “Against the Dark: Anti-Blackness in Education Policy and Discourse” Michael Dumas is also concern about another threat African-American students still face, the oppression they experience due to their skin color and our country’s history. Dumas starts but referring to The national Geographic article, “The changing faces of America” and how by 2060 the Census Bureau predicts that non-Hispanic whites will no longer be the majority of the U.S. population. This won’t be the end of racism unfortunately but I would like to see how society still views this. I feel like race categorizing will still exist but it won’t be just strictly black and white. Mix races will most likely be the majority. Below is the picture featured in that article.



Dumas continues to talk about how many Black families and youth struggles to understand the many types of Black suffering such as hate crimes and the tragic shootings. Dumas quotes Saidiya Hartman (2007) “Black lives are still imperiled and devalued by a racial calculus and a political arithmetic that were entrenched centuries ago.”(14, Dumas) Why is it that that today racism is becoming more and more of a an issue. Why is “blackness” posed as a threat of the well-being of others? This is the idea of “the afterlife of slavery”. “...the Black is not only misrecognized, but unrecognizable as human, and therefore is no social or political relationship to fostered or restored”(14, Dumas) We are a society that says say we are becoming more supported and embracing our diverse communities yet we have the black population still feeling that that their place in this classification hierarchy is at the bottom. What will happen if America becomes a nation of mix races, Will that still be a thought on people's minds?