In many ways, race has been defined on a sliding scale of whiteness and blackness: racial minorities are held to a concept of whiteness, and it is through this lens that the "model minority" idea has been constructed. Disregarding the socioeconomic realities African Americans have faced, some have relied on culture to explain Black "failure" and Asian American "success", pinning the former on "social pathologies" and saying that the latter involved "outwhiting the whites". With this last phrase, I am reminded of a white boy at my school saying that he was "more Asian" than everyone there, citing his grades as proof of this statement. But both "outwhiting the whites" and "more Asian" place each race mentioned and the racial groups that interact with them in boxes. One refers to the view of white people as a paragon of success, and Asian Americans only the "model minority" because they are perceived as somewhat successful in embracing and performing middle-class whiteness; in the other, the perception that Asian Americans do well in school, receiving good grades and test scores, is all that they are reduced to, when of course being "Asian" is deeper than that.
If we return to race and how it is perceived to exist between black and white, we can see how racial minorities are each reduced to a single story — that while they are held against the paragon of whiteness, they are held to stereotypes that only serve white supremacy. The narrow view of Asian Americans as the model minority — as just "offbrand white" — is one that paves the road of complacency with the current state of affairs; one that deliberately sets Asian Americans apart from other people of color, creating divisions when unity and understanding is what makes us — and, indeed, any marginalized community standing against centuries of oppression — strongest. Simultaneously, we are faced with make-up tutorials that show how to achieve an "Asian look" — apparently a trendy form of yellowface. Simultaneously, we are faced with students adopting blackface to "dress up" for spirit days; with people wearing "Sexy Pocahontas" costumes on Halloween; with people, often Caucasian, adopting elements of cultures that they find exciting, while simultaneously refusing to acknowledge the suppression of cultural expression minorities have faced while held to standards of assimilation to whiteness.