Although I formally learned about the model minority concept for the first time in this psychology course, I encountered the notion many times in high school through my close friendships with several Asian Americans. All of these friends outwardly embodied the model minority stereotype; two of my Chinese American friends followed the math track that began college calculus work two years before the “advanced placement” track, three of these friends qualified as National AP scholars and all of them enrolled in highly selective universities with two entering as engineering majors. The intelligence, motivation and work ethic that these friends displayed made them exemplary students that fulfilled the stereotypes associated with the model minority.

I distinctly remember several occurrences when after receiving a high exam grade or doing well on a paper, when these friends joked about their academic success resulting from being Asian. Although in high school I rarely thought twice about these light-hearted jokes, it occurred to me when filling out the “association charts” in class (writing down the first words that come to mind after reading the name of a racial group) that I internalized the stereotypes behind these jokes. The first words that popped into my head after reading Asian American were intelligence and motivation – words that characterize the model minority identity.

Throughout high school, I never considered the negative implications and falsehoods associated with the model minority label because my Asian American friends seemed to be on the fast track to success with their exceptional performance in academics. It never occurred to me that society used their educational success as a stab against other racial groups of color or that their salaries remained lower than White Americans despite their hard-work and dedication (Wu, 51). I think that this obliviousness to the destructiveness of the model minority stereotype contributes to its resilience as a “meme” that “can be passed on from person to person, society to society, and generation to generation” (Wu, 59) because it seems much easier to ignore or justify a stereotype that apparently represents positive attributes and achievements. After learning about how the model minority concept, I wonder how it affected my Asian American friends in high school. Did they feel more pressure to perform well academically? Why did they make so many jokes that played off of the model minority?