Hegemony and Counterhegemony

Essay from the year 2002 in the subject Politics - Miscellaneous, grade: 1, San Francisco State University (Ethnic Studies), course: AAS 710 Seminar: Critical Approaches, language: English, abstract: Ever since their arrival in the United States, Asians have been attributed certain characteristics in order to maintain the hegemony of the dominant culture. Nowadays, there are certainly many examples for the relationship between representations of Asian Americans and hegemonic racial projects. Among them, there are two which, I believe, deserve special attention: the myth of Asian Americans as the “model minority, ” and the belief that Asian Americans are spies of China. The “model minority” myth says that Asian Americans are high achievers who work very hard but never complain. As a consequence, they have managed to solve all the major problems within their ethnic minority group and, therefore, do not need any help from the government. However, advocates of this image of Asian Americans tend to overlook the fact that among Asian Americans poverty is much higher than in the general population. Moreover, they do not see that Asian Americans have limited job opportunities because many of those in the country right now are recent immigrants with poor knowledge of English. Furthermore, although the number of college degrees among Asian Americans is higher than the national average, this does not mean that they will more likely be employed in a high, for example managerial, position than whites. Finally, the fact that Asian Americans are terribly underrepresented in the government is not taken into account at all.