Takaki's Essay

Matt Pepin
ENGL 201
WEEK 3

The thesis of Takaki’s essay is the perception of “success” and a paragon of a “model society” which is not in conformity with the statistics that actually portray Asian Americans.

His comparison of Asians to African Americans shows only some of the statistics for Asians but none for African Americans. Other minorities such as Mexicans, American Indians, and Cubans weren’t even mentioned. Does this animosity and resentment towards Asians reflect in the attitudes of other minorities also?

Takaki says Asian Americans have been described as “excessively, even provocatively” successful in gaining admission to universities, but he gives no data to support the allegation one way or the other. He also mentions Japanese American men in California in 1980 earned an average income comparable to Caucasians only after acquiring more education and working more hours. Does he mean that they acquired more education and worked more hours than they previously did or did they have more education and work more hours than Caucasian men? No mention is made of other minorities, including Caucasian women, in his mention of the “glass ceiling”.

When Takaki does mention that some American Asian groups do have higher incomes than Caucasians he adds that this is due to more workers per family. This could also be construed as they might have a business that employs family members, which the majority of Caucasians or minority groups are unable to do. This is a popular practice because it makes immigration easier for people wanting to come to the United States form the business owner’s home country. That aspect alone can make a business more lucrative for the owners as often something such as working at a lower wage is given up by the immigrant for the opportunity to enter the United States.

Takaki’s data that Korean shopkeepers and green grocers earn only $17,000 to $35,000 a year for an entire family doesn’t take into account that particularly a business such as green grocers have a considerable amount of their income as cash which is relatively simple not to report as income.

“The model minority image homogenizes Asian Americans and hides their differences,” states Takaki. He only mentions Vietnamese as the minority that hang out in pool halls and join gangs. Immigrants that have not learned our language and thus have limited success in finding a decent job is not just limited to Asians, any race that enters the U.S. without knowledge of the language faces the same problems.

If I were to take the position that Asian Americans are economically more successful in America today relative to white Americans it is clear form Takaki’s essay that he disagrees. Concerning the same subject in regard to African Americans, Takaki believes that the myth of Asian success not only creates resentment between the two races, but also that racism and the U.S. economy are biased against African Americans. He presents no data for comparison of Asians and African Americans; in fact his entire thesis ignores the statistics and plights of other minorities, and in my opinion only gives a one-dimensional depiction of Asian Americans. I found it hard to find validity in Takaki’s essay, because although he gave some statistics as evidence, it seemed skewered towards his opinion and offered little comparison statistically with any other group of people. His evidence wasn’t persuasive enough to convince me of his thesis.