Ragged Dick By Horatio Alger: Summary

In other words, the Asian American model minority myth was a shield against the persecution of the Chinese and Japanese in the U.S. Sadly, that shield was quickly picked up by opponents of the Black Civil Rights and Black Power movements and used as a weapon against Black Americans who were stereotyped as a “problem minority,” mired in crime, unemployment and inter-generational poverty because of cultural deficits they would do well to overcome by making like Asians and pulling themselves up by their bootstraps.
But that was 60 years ago. Since then, the myth making has been taken to its bizarre yet predictable conclusion, making the claim that Asian Americans as a whole are not just rising, but have already risen, to the status of the most
Ragged Dick (eventually Richard Hunter, Esq.) is one of the more popular characters in the fables of Horatio Alger, a 19th century writer of short novels promoting hard work, thrift, and cheerfulness in the face of hardship as keys to the American dream. Written just after the Civil War, at a time when the U.S. was rapidly industrializing and many were displaced by the resulting changes in the American economy, Horatio Alger’s story of Ragged Dick, a street urchin who rises to the middle class, served as a lever to get poor whites from field (or tenement) to factory.
The Asian American model minority myth’s durability is testament to its utility in making the case that racism cannot stand in the way of those with the right work ethic and a cheerful or at least stoical attitude toward the suffering and disadvantage racism imposes on its victims. The myth provides a smokescreen for one of the most fundamental contradictions of U.S. democracy – our ideal of liberty and equal rights, and our history of slavery and enduring legacy of white supremacy – and allows our policy makers to avoid the systemic reforms that are necessary to address that