The Model Minority Myth Analysis

After discussing the type of education my mother received during her childhood, we realized how all these events affected her ability to obtain social mobility later on in life. Because she was placed in remedial classes, she fell behind in school, causing her inability to graduate high school, which greatly limited her job opportunities.
The model minority myth “holds that Asian Americans have been more successful in the United States than other native ethnic groups and that they have been more successful because of their cultural heritage, not the material resources they have brought with them” (Wodziak). The model minority is a myth and is a dangerous stereotype of Asian Americans in the United States. Aekyung didn’t experience overt racism
Most immigrants come to the United States to work, and many native-born Americans worry about the effect on their own jobs with the influx of immigrants (Gerber & Kraut). Scholars have looked at the actual conditions of immigrant workers and explored how immigrants use their social networks to concentrate in certain jobs and industries. Many immigrants find employment through ethnic enclaves and ethnic economies. Scholar Dae Young Kim examined the children of economically successful immigrant parents and found that “the parents were mostly self-employed professionals or small business owners with considerable assets to pass on to their children” (Gerber & Kraut, 113). This finding was also supported by Aekyung’s experiences. She revealed that the reason her parents wanted to immigrate to the United States was because her aunt had immigrated and started a restaurant in Chinatown with her American husband. The restaurant was a huge success and she promised Aekyung’s mother jobs for her family if she had moved as well. Aekyung’s aunt was a small business owner in a small niche. She had found success through the ethnic enclave and wanted to share that with her family. In result, Aekyung and her family shared this economic success, making a good wage working at her aunt’s restaurant until they had to close. Finding work after the closing of the restaurant was “humiliating and tiring.” She described that the promise of jobs in the United States was nothing like the reality. She was told that everyone in the United States had work and did well, which was the truth while she was working in her aunt’s restaurant in Chinatown. Once she and her family were forced to find work outside of the ethnic enclave, she realized the promise of this “new world” was illusionary (Gerber & Kraut, 114). Due to her limited English and limited social capital, she found work