In the echo chambers of subreddits and other online platforms, Asian Americans are stewing fearmongering and racist attitudes towards fellow underrepresented groups. I’ve seen it for myself; over the past few years, I’ve noticed an alarming trend of anti-Blackness both online and beyond within my own community.

Someone no longer close to me who is Asian once said: “If Black and Latino people weren’t so violent, then we could work together to solve racism.” 

A lot of people I know have internalized the “model minority myth,” which characterizes Asians as high-achieving, hardworking and more intelligent in comparison to other racial groups such as Black and Latine Americans. These uninformed beliefs bury the long history of interracial solidarity throughout American history.

This bigotry reveals itself most clearly around subjects like affirmative action. Before its repeal in 2023, I heard people complain about how being Asian is a disadvantage in college admissions, and how Black and Latine students “steal” the spots of other “more qualified” students. 

So when I read the news about a new organization, Students Against Racial Discrimination (SARD), suing the UC for alleged use of affirmative action, alarm bells rang in my head. Reading more into the case, I confirmed my suspicions. 

On SARD’s website, it accuses the UC of “discriminating against well qualified White and Asian applicants in order to race-balance incoming classes, and of often harming Black and Hispanic applicants by admitting them into academic programs for which their preparation is insufficient to compete on equal terms.”

To quickly debunk the claims made in this excerpt: There is no concrete evidence that the UC continued to use race as a factor in admissions since 2023, and graduation outcomes for Black and Latine students are not substantially lower than white students. There is also no evidence of anti-Asian discrimination at the UCs.

This lawsuit shows that in reality, the model minority myth is using Asian Americans to validate the logic of white supremacy by putting down other racial groups.

In the Vox article, “The history of tensions — and solidarity — between Black and Asian American communities, explained,” Scott Kurashige, professor and chair of comparative race and ethnic studies at Texas Christian University, describes the effects this has.

“The model minority stereotype really isn’t meant to define Asian Americans. Rather, it’s meant to define African Americans as deficient and inferior to white people by using Asian Americans as a proxy or a pawn to serve that purpose,” Kurashige said. “It was never an accurate portrayal of Asian Americans, but actually consciously meant to distort and stereotype Asian Americans.”

In this way, the model minority myth drives apart interracial solidarity. This stereotype comes from post-WWII efforts from Japanese Americans to assimilate into society after President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s mass incarceration of about 112,000 people from March 1942 to the end of the war. In addition, immigration policies post 1965 favored Asian ethnicities such as Chinese, Korean and Indians, meaning that they had higher average socioeconomic status than other immigrants, both in the U.S. and their homelands. 

In a predominantly Black-White racial structure, many Asians assimilate and internalize white supremacy to avoid being at the “bottom.” This was my experience for most of my life; my family members, people in my community and relatives would make casual racist comments and stay silent on anything political.

Until I went to university. Here, I learned that Asian Americans weren’t always the silent minority.

In classes, I was able to learn about the history of Asian Americans’ participation and radical actions. In 1969, Asian American organizers at UC Berkeley joined in solidarity with African American, Chicane, and Native American organizers in the Third World Liberation Front movement to demand curriculum by and for students of color. Together, their action resulted in the establishment of the Ethnic Studies department at UC Berkeley. 

In the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests, many Asian Americans joined the movement. I’ve learned of organizations like Nodutdol, Anakbayan and GABRIELA, all Asian American/Pacific Islander groups committed to social justice, democracy and liberation.

Learning this history empowered me. Connecting with this legacy, I didn’t feel so alone in believing that we need interracial solidarity to combat the common enemy of white supremacy. 

However, East Asian student clubs seem apathetic to injustices directly affecting students on campus. While other large ethnic organizations on campus like Bayanihan and Asian/Pacific Islander Student Alliance demonstrated solidarity with the encampment, expressed outrage at the violence of the subsequent raid and continue to be outspoken on student rights — the ones centered around East Asian ethnicities have stayed silent. 

For other East Asian ethnic student organizations who have yet to speak, it’s not too late to express solidarity. I call on all of you to end your silence and join others in using your voice.

Looking forward, as Trump threatens the most vulnerable in our country, especially immigrants, now is not the time to look away and disregard history. The pathways that many of our families took coming here are at risk.

To the Asian Americans who think they’re “better” than Black, Latine or other marginalized groups here in the US:

You’re being used as a pawn in the greater scheme of white supremacy. 

The answer is not striking down affirmative action, spreading racist stereotypes or staying out of the way.

We can unlearn the model minority myth and relearn our legacies of solidarity. And that starts with overcoming the status quo.