Public Libraries of Suffolk County, New York

The color of success, Asian Americans and the origins of the model minority, Ellen D. Wu

eng

Includes bibliographical references and index

illustrations

index present

non fiction

The color of success

electronic resource eBook

bibliographydictionaries

Ellen D. Wu

Politics and society in twentieth-century America

Asian Americans and the origins of the model minority

"The Color of Success tells of the astonishing transformation of Asians in the United States from the "yellow peril" to "model minorities"--Peoples distinct from the white majority but lauded as well-assimilated, upwardly mobile, and exemplars of traditional family values--in the middle decades of the twentieth century. As Ellen Wu shows, liberals argued for the acceptance of these immigrant communities into the national fold, charging that the failure of America to live in accordance with its democratic ideals endangered the country's aspirations to world leadership. Weaving together myriad perspectives, Wu provides an unprecedented view of racial reform and the contradictions of national belonging in the civil rights era. She highlights the contests for power and authority within Japanese and Chinese America alongside the designs of those external to these populations, including government officials, social scientists, journalists, and others. And she demonstrates that the invention of the model minority took place in multiple arenas, such as battles over zoot suiters leaving wartime internment camps, the juvenile delinquency panic of the 1950s, Hawaii statehood, and the African American freedom movement. Together, these illuminate the impact of foreign relations on the domestic racial order and how the nation accepted Asians as legitimate citizens while continuing to perceive them as indelible outsiders. By charting the emergence of the model minority stereotype, The Color of Success reveals that this far-reaching, politically charged process continues to have profound implications for how Americans understand race, opportunity, and nationhood"--, Provided by publisher

Introduction. Imperatives of Asian American Citizenship -- Part I. War and the Assimilating Other -- Leave Your Zoot Suits Behind -- How American Are We? -- Nisei in Uniform -- America's Chinese -- Part II. Definitively Not-Black -- Success Story, Japanese American Style -- Chinatown Offers Us a Lesson -- The Melting Pot of the Pacific -- Epilogue. Model Minority/Asian American -- Archival, Primary, and Unpublished Sources

Asian Americans and the origins of the model minority