A model mother

The Wall Street Journal published an article on the 8 January 2011 featuring Amy Chua and her essay “Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior” (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704111504576059713528698754.html). This is part of her introduction: “A lot of people wonder how Chinese parents raise such stereotypically successful kids. They wonder what these parents do to produce so many math whizzes and music prodigies, what it's like inside the family, and whether they could do it too. Well, I can tell them, because I've done it”.

She divulges the asian secret of success. She reveals the magic formula. Follow her rules, and your kids can be model citizens too!

It is medieval of American society to continue pretending that the American social structure is based on a hierarchy of values and morals. There have been enough movies and television series on crooked, sexy, successful people for the population to know that no such thing exists.

But when it comes to race and class it as if all that could possibly affect a person is his/her morals and values. In that case, the ghetto is a byproduct of horrible values and lazy people. Bad things happen to bad people! Thrupkaew’s “The Myth of the Model Minority” explains one possible way this idea has been invented: “Because Asian Americans' success stems from their strong families and their dedication to education and hard work, conservatives say, then the poverty of Latinos and African Americans must be explained by their own "values": They are poor because of their nonmarrying, school-skipping, and generally lazy and irresponsible behavior, which government handouts only encourage”.

Granted, Amy Chua, parenting does play a role in shaping a child’s life. But that is just part of it. Her article poses two problems: the perpetuation of asian stereotypes and the idealized american dream: anyone can succeed who works hard enough, or is strict enough on their kids.

Throughout her article she continually refers to the Chinese mother. She does not refer to all asian mothers. While this distinction may be helpful to her essay and in speaking about herself, it does little to define one population.

In the minds of the majority of Americans, Chinese gets clumped with the rest of Asian populations. This is a problem: “Asia contains nearly four billion people and over 50 countries, including those as diverse as Turkey, Japan, India, the Philippines, and Indonesia” (Chang & Au 2007).

Since the Asian category has been so heavily relied upon to make easier generalizations and labels, it has stuck. The government and the categories they have institutionalized may be at fault: “despite the clear inaccuracies created by lumping populations together, the federal government still groups Southeast Asian refugees under the overbroad category of "Asian" for research and funding purposes” (Thrupkaew 2002).

The model minority does not refer to one specific group of people form a particular country. The dominant images in the United States have done a spectacular job of characterizing asians creating the model minority and inaccurately representing an American population. The article by Chua reinforces those images. As a Chinese mother, she inadvertently is speaking for Asians because that is how America will interpret it and it mimics what is shown in the media, so it must be true for all.

Interestingly, on the side of the article on the WSJ website, there is a journal community poll that ask readers “which style of parenting is best for children?” one bubble has “permissive western parenting” and another has “demanding eastern parenting”. I wonder if this question is truly addressing geographical regions, or racial values. Obviously, it may be attributed to culturally values as well based on where one is coming from, however, lumping the whole of the east and west is too broad and leads to generalizations like the model minority.