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The Truth Behind Indian American Exceptionalism
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2021/01/the-making-of-a-model-minority/617258/
Many of us are unaware of the special circumstances that eased our entry into American life—and of the bonds we share with other nonwhite groups.
In 1978, several years after leaving India and coming to Texas, my parents decided to move out of our middle-class neighborhood in southwest Houston. Our new home, a few miles away, was a custom-designed contemporary structure on a one-acre lot in the exclusive Piney Point Village, population 3,419, a community that vies for the title of “richest city in Texas.” We had a swimming pool and a three-car garage, where my dad, an immaculately tailored allergist, parked his silver Cadillac and my mom parked her ivory Mercedes. We had, quite clearly, arrived.
Like countless other immigrants, my parents had come to the United States, in 1969, with little cash in hand. Within a few years, my devout Hindu mother, orphaned at an early age, had switched from a sari to tennis skirts and was competing at Houston’s swankiest clubs. My father, who hadn’t owned a pair of shoes until he was 10, was buying season tickets to the Houston Symphony, where he promptly fell asleep during every performance.
Our world was filled with Indian doctors and engineers. We never stopped to ask why their entrance into American society had been so rapid. We simply accepted that their success was a combination of immigrant pluck and the right values: Indians were family-oriented, education-oriented, and work-oriented.
There was a term for our place in the country’s racial order: model minority. The concept is generally traced to a 1966 article in The New York Times Magazine by the sociologist William Petersen, which focused on Japanese Americans; the basic idea was extended to other Asian Americans. Of course, the notion of “model minorities” comes with a flip side—“problem minorities.” The terminology took on life at a time of intense social unrest: race riots across the country, the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., the emergence of Richard Nixon’s racially charged “southern strategy.” Many Americans were losing what faith they may have had in the possibility of racial equality.
Many of us are unaware of the special circumstances that eased our entry into American life—and of the bonds we share with other nonwhite groups.
In 1978, several years after leaving India and coming to Texas, my parents decided to move out of our middle-class neighborhood in southwest Houston. Our new home, a few miles away, was a custom-designed contemporary structure on a one-acre lot in the exclusive Piney Point Village, population 3,419, a community that vies for the title of “richest city in Texas.” We had a swimming pool and a three-car garage, where my dad, an immaculately tailored allergist, parked his silver Cadillac and my mom parked her ivory Mercedes. We had, quite clearly, arrived.
Like countless other immigrants, my parents had come to the United States, in 1969, with little cash in hand. Within a few years, my devout Hindu mother, orphaned at an early age, had switched from a sari to tennis skirts and was competing at Houston’s swankiest clubs. My father, who hadn’t owned a pair of shoes until he was 10, was buying season tickets to the Houston Symphony, where he promptly fell asleep during every performance.
Our world was filled with Indian doctors and engineers. We never stopped to ask why their entrance into American society had been so rapid. We simply accepted that their success was a combination of immigrant pluck and the right values: Indians were family-oriented, education-oriented, and work-oriented.
There was a term for our place in the country’s racial order: model minority. The concept is generally traced to a 1966 article in The New York Times Magazine by the sociologist William Petersen, which focused on Japanese Americans; the basic idea was extended to other Asian Americans. Of course, the notion of “model minorities” comes with a flip side—“problem minorities.” The terminology took on life at a time of intense social unrest: race riots across the country, the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., the emergence of Richard Nixon’s racially charged “southern strategy.” Many Americans were losing what faith they may have had in the possibility of racial equality.