Released in 2017, Jordan Peele’s Get Out focuses on a Black male protagonist who goes on a trip with his White girlfriend to meet her family. As the story continues, we, the viewers, and Chris, the main character, begin to feel that something’s off. Near the end, we discover that the main antagonists have been using a form of hypnosis to enslave the Black people we see around the estate where Chris is staying. Often read in a neo-slave narrative, what often gets ignored are the scenes where we see an old Asian male, Hiroki Tanaka, in the background. He has very few lines, and every time we see him, he is surrounded by a crowd of White people while partaking in whatever activity they are doing at the time. Peele does this on purpose. The character Tanaka is set up to represent the complicity of East Asians in the face of anti-Black violence.
Despite the fact that East Asians and Black people both experience racism in America, East Asians are seen as the model minority, the minority group that proves that anything is possible if you just put in some effort. As a result, we minorities have been pitted against each other. When other minority groups fail to climb the “meritocracy ladder,” people point to us, the Asians, and the problem is chalked up to a lack of hard work. When I watched Get Out for the first time, Tanaka made me question why he was even there. Why is there a random Asian guy in a film about the conflict between Black people and White people? Admittedly, this line of questioning was soon dropped as my brother turned to me to discuss how unsettlingly creepy this film was.
Two years after the release of Get Out, the National Speech and Debate Association released a topic for debaters: “In the United States, colleges and universities ought not consider standardized tests in undergraduate admissions decisions.” It wasn’t until I engaged with this resolution that I finally could answer my question from several years prior. At first glance, it may seem like a regular debate topic with pros and cons, with nothing out of the ordinary. However, the more research I did, the more I began to feel like this topic genuinely meant something to me. Why I felt that way was obvious, I thought. I was just a high schooler about to take his round of the SATs. But then, I did some more research.
My findings were surface-level at first. Generics like how standardized tests don’t offer a holistic view of a student or how the uppermost results were skewed towards those who could afford test prep materials. My research didn’t stop there. I even learned that historically, the SAT was used to segregate Black people from White people as a form of intelligence testing. But there was one crucial piece of evidence that made me realize my place as a Chinese American in society. I learned that the overperformance of Asian Americans on standardized tests allows institutions to claim that they are diverse and multicultural. It also justifies their words when they tell other minorities that they need to do better on standardized tests because another minority group did it. I became more conscious than I ever had about the expectations placed upon my back to perform both academically and socially. Not only was this make-or-break ideology ingrained in the general public’s mindset, but it was also set in my parents, who spent thousands funding my education. And before I knew it, I had unconsciously shouldered those unreasonable standards.
The idea of the model minority has been floating around academic circles for several decades. Yet, it’s not common to see it accounted for in very many fields of study. As an aspiring economist, this devastates me. On the surface level, I can see that the connections between the model minority myth and economic theory are plentiful. But even at UT, sites of relevant knowledge are segregated into different disciplines. I can study Asian American narratives but can’t examine their economic implications. I can research capitalism but can’t analyze its impact on race. Therefore, my contract is structured to do both. I proudly propose “The Role of Asian Americans in the American Economy.”
As one of the statistically highest earning racial and ethnic groups in the U.S., Asian Americans still face unprecedented xenophobia and the idea that they’ll never be a “true American.” UT Austin’s economics department provides ample resources to discover any underlying trends in the avenues that Asian Americans take to participate in the economy. My selected courses will focus on the economics of migration and urban centers. Because Asian Americans were once immigrants inhabiting the slums of Chinatowns and Little Tokyos around America, it is imperative that this aspect be emphasized.
Hand-in-hand with economics, the philosophy department acts as the framework that I will structure my thesis around. While economics gives me numbers, data, and current events, philosophy teaches me how to search for a deeper, more abstract meaning behind the actions of both individuals and groups. With a focus on the breakdown of monolithic structures, I hope to use my newfound knowledge to explain the trends that I discover in economics alongside developing the critical thinking skills that are essential to pursuing my thesis.
The last discipline my contract stresses is, inevitably, Asian American Studies. While philosophy and economics act as a conduit, an instrument, for describing and exploring the model minority myth, Asian American Studies provides me with narratives and personal accounts that bring life to an otherwise dull paper filled with cold analyses. I will better understand the voices of those who experienced first-hand anti-Asian violence in America.
Altogether, my contract’s goal is to cohesively tie these three disciplines together to create a thesis that deconstructs the model minority myth in more than one dimension. With the Humanities Program, I’m able to examine a set of stereotypes that have been plaguing Asian Americans for decades on end under a unique set of parameters. As I become increasingly educated in the process of writing my thesis, I also hope to bring up my community so that one day, there won’t be a young Asian American wondering why someone who looks like them is siding with the antagonists in Get Out.
