NEWSMODEL MINORITY

The jury's still out on the fabled Asian-American success story.

Sure, the statistics might tell you otherwise. Once again this year, Asian-American men topped the charts in the latest U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics on earnings for the 2nd quarter of 2010, making $901 in median weekly earnings. Asian women were second at $854, followed by white men at $838. Not surprisingly, those with advanced degrees, who were working in the financial or business sectors, had the highest salaries.

Yet the image of Asian-Americans as a homogeneous group of high achievers ignores the diversity of Asian-American experiences. Statistics like those above mostly help to perpetuate the model minority myth, when in fact there are as many Asian-Americans above the curve as there are below it. While some South Asians and Northeast Asians are doing particularly well, the same is not true for the vast majority of Southeast Asians, including the Hmong or Cambodians.

Let's break down the demographics further. For example, a quick peek at the stats shows that Asian Indians have the highest level of educational attainment with 64% holding bachelor's degrees. Conversely, Laotians, Cambodians and Hmong have the lowest rates of high school completion. The same disparities hold for family and personal median incomes. Lumping together all Asian groups into one category masks the poverty and ignores the academic difficulties of certain subgroups.

I’ve officially lost count. For a while, I could tell you exactly how many times I’ve been called a racist, but now the number escapes me. I do know, however, that it’s quite a bit.

People on the right have hurled that term at me for saying that immigration reform is necessary, or for pointing out that SB 1070 might make Latinos nervous, or for implying that ethnic minorities often have different perspectives than the majority culture does on some issues (that last one is a huge no-no).

However, people on the left have also tossed it my way (the term “imperialist” is also popular with them). Most recently, I was called racist for using the word “Hispanic” instead of “Latino” — or it may have been the other way around. I can’t recall.

In any case, whenever I am accused of being a racist, I wonder if I should ask the person to reconsider and choose another insult. (I can supply a lengthy list, if they so desire.)

You see, I’m concerned that we’ve watered down the terms “racism” and “racist” to the point that they've lost all meaning. Once upon a time, these words conjured up images of guys in KKK hoods, or of George Wallace standing in a schoolhouse doorway, or of old women shrieking slurs in public. This was hardcore stuff.

Move over, Bobby Jindal. There's another Indian-American politician in the house, ready to take South Carolina by storm.

12 states held primary elections yesterday in what turned out to be a good night for GOP women, with ex-CEO Meg Whitman cruising over Steve Poizner in California. In South Carolina, braving racist slurs and allegations of extra-marital affairs, Tea Party candidate (and, ironically, the daughter of Indian Sikh immigrants), Nikki Haley thrashed her nearest opponent. But since she garnered only 49% of the vote, falling short of the required majority, Representative Gresham Barrett — famous for his proposed legislation to ban immigrants from terrorist countries — and Nikki Haley are now set for a run-off election.

Instead of hailing this as a win for immigrants or South Asians, the mainstream media is tagging it as a victory for the Tea Party. Which brings up another point to ponder: how exactly is the daughter of Sikh immigrants rising to prominence as the Sarah Palin-approved darling of a movement so imbued in backwards views of race?

For one, her name-change was crucial. Nikki Haley was born Nimrata Randhawa Haley but she adapted the nickname "Nikki" because of the fact that her real name “wouldn’t fit on a yard sign." That worked out quite well, since many in the Tea Party might also have a hard time pronouncing and accepting her as Nimrata. Foreign-sounding names certainly can be political suicide.

Second, Haley became a Tea Party darling only after downplaying her Sikh heritage and playing the ambiguously white card. When Haley first ran for the state legislature in 2004 and became the first Indian-American to hold office in South Carolina, she seemed proud of her Sikh background. But during the elections this year, she evidently felt forced to adopt more mainstream, Christian values.

The other day, I tweeted a link to a post calling for a “Day Without Mexicans,” a rally to protest Arizona’s anti-immigrant laws. In response, my pal Sunnykins — who’s Asian-American — responded [edited for clarity]:

Why does this country only have room for binaries? Black vs White. Mexican vs American. My family immigrated too.

I had no answer. But it’s a really good question to ask when other U.S. towns are becoming emboldened by Arizona’s actions

I could recount the histories of immigration of various racial and ethnic communities on the lands snatched from First Nation peoples — but other authors have done better jobs and have more space than I do. For example, as Dr. Vijay Prashad writes, reflecting on the real — and media-perpetuated — tensions between blacks in the U.S. and other immigrant groups of color: "Since blackness is reviled in the United States, why would an immigrant, of whatever skin color, want to associate with those who are racially oppressed, particularly when the transit into the United States promises the dream of gold and glory?"

In other words, here in the U.S., immigrants of color fall into the historical black/white binary, and often feel they need to “choose sides” and “cast their lot” with either African- Americans or whites.

Back in the 1990s, if MTV's Daria Morgendorffer was a breath of fresh air in the terminally predictable world of suburban girl-centered media, then Jodie Landon — one of Lawndale High School's only black girls — had the same effect (times ten) for "tokens," people who were the only one of their kind to penetrate the suburban bubble.

When Daria debuted in 1997, the 'burbs were still a place that felt like a prize for American families who had earned it. Spacious homes, safe neighborhoods and good public schools — all the fodder on which the satirical show regularly dined. With her perfect academic record and crazy number of extracurricular engagements, Jodie was the product of what middle-class black parents had pushed on their kids throughout the preceding decades. (Her coupling with the only other black boy in the school, Mack — a similarly well-rounded jock — only reinforced the image). The pair were the embodiment of the adage that black people had to work twice as hard to achieve half as much, a belief that seemed to fuel the pair's unending drive, which Daria's producers regularly and hilariously invoked.

With her neat braids (weren't those mandatory?), calm demeanor and non-threatening blackness, Jodie was everyone's idea of the perfect black girl. She wasn't the materialistic BAP (Black American Princess), like Saved by the Bell's Lisa Turtle, or impossibly ditzy and underachieving, like Fresh Prince's Hilary Banks. She didn't even seem to have any of that token black girl angst, like The Baby-Sitter's Club's token, Jessi. So girls of the '80s (who became the women of the '90s) rallied around Jodie — the one positive reflection of our identities.

In 1992, four white police officers were acquitted after being caught on tape brutally beating Rodney King to a pulp. The people of America took their resulting fury at the verdict out on each other: In Los Angeles, for example, preexisting tension between black South Central residents and Korean immigrants reached a boiling point. The news was flooded with images of black kids looting Korean corner stores, while store owners chased them out with rifles. King's response to all this? Five words that, once they departed from his bruised lips, spread as quickly as the footage that had first inspired them: Can We All Get Along?

SNL had a skit before King even finished his sentence. The plea was an instant laughingstock sensation, enthusiastically mocked on the nation's morning shows: Can We All Get Along? The words were parodied, punned, imitated and eventually played out — everything except contemplated.

Two decades later, our black president has an Indonesian sister. "White privilege workshops" actually exist, and newscasters toss around the term post-race. America's racial landscape is massively different. Unfortunately, the neighborhoods that serve as hotbeds for black and Asian tension haven't seen much change.

In San Francisco, for example, a group of Chinese is rallying for attention after black youth committed multiple crimes against Asian elders — one of which resulted in an 83-year-old Chinese man getting beaten to death. Yet the rally was focused less on the racial tension the crimes involved, and rather the failure of police, officials and press to acknowledge such a phenomenon. While some community leaders choose to avoid the issue out of fear of fanning the flames, others are insisting that race had nothing to do with the crimes.

I’ve learned a lot of things by following the debate over illegal immigration. For example, I’ve found out that illegal immigrants routinely break into people’s homes and carjack Americans with impunity. I mean, there are scores of horror stories on internet message boards and cable TV news programs about what happened to good, God-loving (or do I mean God-fearing?) communities once a day laborer moved in next door.

Apparently, it’s not a small percentage of troublemakers who commit these crimes either, but each and every undocumented worker. Therefore, we can't consider a pathway to citizenship for any of them. They're all guilty. So let’s raze their neighborhoods to the ground.

You know, while we’re at it, let’s look at how else we can improve America. Well, Hispanic neighborhoods, even after you get rid of the illegals, are still not up to the standards of 1950s America, so maybe we should clear those out as well. And of course, black neighborhoods are really scary, so those people will have to go as well.

After all, even though it’s just a small percentage of people who commit the vast majority of crimes in even the most blighted areas, we simply can't take any chances.

Often, we think of immigrants as being simply Mexican in origin. But while Mexican citizens do make up the largest group of undocumented immigrants (about 59%), black immigrants from African and Caribbean nations are also a sizable group.

And yet for many black immigrants, that's where the sense of connection ends. As TheRoot.com recently noted, during last month's cluster of immigration rallies, there was a conspicuous lack of black participation.

The crux of the reason, I think, is the feeling among black immigrants that immigration struggles just don't apply to them. Only a small percentage of privileged immigrants of African and Caribbean origin ever make it into the States, and those that do tend to be more educated and more wealthy than other immigrants (Mexican or otherwise). In fact, over at RealClearPolitics.com, Clarence Page makes the case that African immigrants are the real "model minorities." After all, black immigrants from Africa have the highest educational attainment of any demographic group in the country, including whites and Asians. Page observes that fully 44% of African immigrants have a college degree, while only 29% of immigrants from Europe, Russia and Canada do. For the broader the U.S. population, that figure is just 23%. And for Mexico-born immigrants, that figure is just 5%.

There are distinct class differences that prevent many black immigrants from siding with Mexicans — or even noticing the struggle that's going on. After all, the current system is working pretty well for wealthy black immigrants.