It’s 2024: Let’s Cut the “Model Minority” and “White Adjacent” BS
Asians and white privilege, Part 1
Nearly all of us have wondered at one point or another if we belong to any given group, society, nationality — whatever. It’s just the human condition.
But this is perhaps even more true of Asians growing up in the US, once referred to as a “melting pot.” Sometimes we feel like the bones tossed out of the pot. That goes for many Asians, but particularly those of my generation, the late Boomer or so-called Generation Jones cohort. We were young children when the Civil Rights Act and the Nationality and Immigration Act were passed: thus was Jim Crow ended (at least officially) and Asians finally allowed to immigrate to the US. We were mostly in our teens when Jimmy Carter proclaimed the week of May 4, 1979 as the Asian/Pacific Heritage week — which was extended to a month by George H.W. Bush in 1990 and formalized by Congress in 1992.
Oh, by the way, it was the 1980s when the term “model minority” really took off — even though it was first coined in the late 1960s, not too long after I was born. The new term for us is now “white adjacent.” (In fact, I learned that on Medium.)
But how far have we really come?
