The (Stereo)Typical Asian American

Surprise! There has been yet another change in plans! Instead of administering a survey, as written in my original proposal, I will be focusing solely on a literature review of Asian American racial socialization. For the next couple weeks, I will continue to gather publications and will start going through them to find trends and create classifications for the different types of socialization used by Asian American families.

In order to distinguish whether the socialization involves more assimilation into "American" culture, we must first define what being "American" is. According to a study by Devos and Banaji (2005), most people, when asked to list "American" characteristics, talk about democracy, individuality, equality, capitalism, the American Dream, the 4th of July, the Superbowl, hot dogs, McDonald's, etc.

America in a picture.

Almost no one, however, brings up race as a factor of being "American." This is interesting because when asked to do the same for "Korean" or "British," one of the first answers to pop up is race. Koreans are a type of Asians; British are a type of Europeans. But, since America is a melting pot of different races, there is no clear definition of what it means to be "American."

On the other hand, most people claim to know what it means to be "Asian." What kind of racial stereotypes are Asian American families up against? These are the most common stereotypes of Asian people:

Perpetual Foreigner
Asians are seen to be exotic, and alien in their own land. This stereotype usually leads to questions like "Where are you really from?" (As if the word "really" would change the fact that my Asian American friend was born in Arizona.) In the media, most Asians play ninjas or kung fu masters, further supporting this stereotype, if they're not doctors or nerds like the next category.

A rare exception from the stereotype: Minho (Ki Hong Lee) from The Maze Runner

Model Minority Myth
Most people strongly believe that Asians are naturally smart and highly motivated. This meme says it all:

However, the Model Minority Myth was created during the Civil Rights Movement to justify the unfair treatment of African Americans. The argument was that if Asian Americans were so successful despite unequal circumstances, why couldn't African Americans do the same? Although this logic is completely flawed, people today still think Asians are smarter.

Hyper/hypo-sexualization 
Asian women are presumed to be more feminine, while Asian men are seen as less masculine. Even worse, many Asian men are thought to be gay. First of all, not all Asian men are less masculine than White men. Also, masculinity and sexual orientation are two completely different subjects that have no definite correlation.

Out-group Homogeneity
Are you guys sisters? No. Just because we're both Asian, doesn't mean we're related. This picture draws from the out-group homogeneity stereotype, as well as hyper/hypo-sexualization:

Communication Style
Because of the collectivist culture of many Asian countries, Asian people are often presumed to be too quiet, passive, or indirect. This stereotype originates from the language barrier that most Asian immigrants experience when they first move to America. If a White person, born and raised in America, visited China, he might not speak as much as he does in America because of the language barrier. Communication style depends much more on personality than race.

The culmination of all of these stereotypes (except satirized and applied to a White person) can be found in this video: