Stereotyping Asian Americans: The Dialectic of the Model Minority and the Yellow Peril

Abstract

The model minority stereotype is viewed as the most influential and pervasive stereotype for Asian Americans today. In this article, the author argues that this seemingly positive stereotype, the model minority, is inseparable from the yellow peril, a negative stereotype, when Asian Americans are stereotypically represented in mainstream media texts. The model minority–yellow peril dialectic is explicated with the concepts of racial triangulation and the ambivalence of stereotypes. Racial meanings for Asian Americans cannot be discussed without considering both local and global contexts. The author explores historical, political, and economic contexts of both the United States and Asia in which the two stereotypes were produced and reproduced, and examines how the dialectic of the model minority and the yellow peril operates in a Hollywood film, Rising Sun.