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Visualizing the model minority myth

The ‘model minority’ construct is one that suggests specific groups - like the Asian diaspora - experience a greater degree of success (e.g. higher incomes, lower poverty rates, higher graduation rates...etc) compared to the population at large. Although the model minority construct may cloud perceived disadvantage for some Asians, it remains a destructive force on an individual and communal level. It is a tool that validates anti-blackness, while simultaneously protecting the systems of white supremacy. 

The model minority myth is harmful because it:

• Fosters racism within Asian communities towards other groups of colour - often dividing and pitting POCs against one another. 
• Creates the idea of “good immigrants” and “bad immigrants” while upholding the notion of meritocracy and the “American Dream”. 
• Leaves the voices of many Asian groups out of discussions of racism, gender inequality, representation, ableism, sexual orientation and sexuality. 
• Wipes out a whole history of oppression and solidarity in conjunction with other minority communities. 

The model minority myth often erases the history of oppression that many Asian communities faced in
North America. The Chinese Immigration Act (1885) placed a $50 head tax on all Chinese immigrants
to Canada. The head tax's intention was to dissuade Chinese people from entering Canada after the
Canadian Pacific Railway was built. Chinese labourers who worked on the railway were paid a fraction
of what their fellow labourers were paid. (Image source: Wikipedia) 

Not only does the myth of the model minority obscure a history of oppression against Asian communities, but it also serves to erase the ongoing racial injustices within the Asian diaspora by only highlighting the successes of the community.  Racism against Asian communities is alive in various forms in the present day.  For instance, a 2012 study by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development found that Asian Americans face significant housing discrimination: when it comes to renting, Asians are, on average, shown 6.6% less units compared to Whites, and told about 9.8% less units.  These rates are comparable to the housing discrimination faced by Black and Hispanic communities. 

Finally, the model minority myth is dangerous because it dismisses the various Asian identities that exist by homogenizing communities with radically different experiences, histories, traditions and values. So, what exactly does the present-day experience of the “model minority” look like? By visualizing existing data from the 2007-2009 American Community Survey 3-Year Estimates, here we show that the experiences of the Asian diaspora are vastly different when it comes to income, poverty, education, and health insurance coverage.

Income Levels 

When it comes to income levels, while some Asian communities thrive in relation to White, Black and Hispanic identifying groups, many clearly fall below White median family incomes.

Poverty Rates

Comparable to the statistics on income levels, although many Asian communities have a lower percentage of families living in poverty than Native-American, Black and Hispanic-identifying groups, many of these same groups are still at an economic disadvantage compared to White families.  Some groups (e.g. Bangladeshi, Cambodian) experience poverty rates comparable to Native-American, Black and Hispanic-identifying groups, and the Hmong community experiences poverty rates greater than all other minority groups. 

Health Insurance Coverage

The high cost of health insurance is one of the primary reasons people lack coverage.  A large number of Asian American groups are uninsured at rates greater than the White population, and many groups have greater or comparable rates of uninsurance to the Black population. 

Education

One of the most prevalent stereotypes perpetuated by the model minority myth is that Asian Americans exceed other groups on academic outcomes. The overall academic success (e.g. high rates of post-secondary education attainment, not shown here) of some Asian groups often obfuscates the low educational attainment of others. It is certainly true that some groups (Filipino, Indian, Indonesian, Japanese, among others) have the greatest high school graduation rates compared to all other groups.  However, at the same time, many Asian communities (e.g. Chinese, Bangladeshi, Vietnamese, Laotian) have a percentage without a high school diploma comparable, or greater than Native American and Black communities.  Cambodian and Hmong groups in America are comparable to the Hispanic population, with close to 40% of the population lacking a high school diploma in these groups.   

Just as with any other minority group, the Asian community is complex with a variety of experiences and struggles that go far beyond the accepted stereotypes. Parsing apart the monolith that is presented through mainstream media, microagressions and blatant discriminatory acts reveals an assortment of vibrant cultures - each with their own challenges and triumphs. To ignore these stories is to dismiss identity - to strip away humanity. It is crucial to question ideas like the model minority myth and ask who truly benefits from such a divisive narrative.

This post was co-written by TK Matunda and Lorraine Chuen, and is a follow-up to our previous piece, The Model Minority Myth and Me.

The model minority myth and me - a preface.

Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about my identity as a Cantonese-Canadian, as a child of immigrants, and as a woman of colour. As a product of my identity, I have experienced my share of systemic racism in various forms. However, I am also acutely aware that as a person of East Asian descent, these forms are often mild and disguised, that I am able to occupy space in a way that my black counterparts cannot, and that I do not experience the blatant brutality that my black counterparts do, among a long list of other privileges. So, as my self awareness has grown exponentially over the last half year, I have been finding it increasingly difficult to situate myself in explicit discussions about race. I strive to be an ally but often don’t know the extent to which I should have a voice in the struggle against white supremacy. I feel between worlds and irrelevant, with neither the traumas of black POCs rooted in my lived experience nor the privileges of my white colleagues.

A 7 year-old-me in my small & very white hometown of Trenton, ON.

In heated discussions about race, I often feel uncomfortable in my silence; I worry I am being complicit in the face of injustice. This is largely rooted in a fear of my own ignorance; after all, I grew up in a tiny, conservative, and predominantly white town, and my family rarely spoke of race. I acknowledge that, as a result, I am still in the early stages of a long process of unlearning decades of internalized whiteness. I have assumed the role of active listener and of frantic learner, eliminating white male authors from my reading list, and filling my bookshelves instead with Junot Diaz, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Ta-Nehesi Coates and Zadie Smith. I bought books at a rate faster than I could read them, and it slowly became clear that in my frantic attempt to better understand black-white identity politics, I was neglecting to acquaint myself with my own racial context and cultural history. I was neglecting it because, to me, it felt secondary and somehow less valid, somehow less urgent— after all, I knew that I enjoyed an abundance of privileges, and that I was part of what most believed to be a “model minority”.

I spoke to TK about this cognitive dissonance a few weeks ago, and we decided that to more deeply explore my personal issues with identity, we should work together to deconstruct the myth of the model minority, backed of course by statistics, on the blog. So in this month’s post, we explore the idea that although the experience across different POCs is not monolithic in nature, the concept of the model minority is nevertheless a myth — and it is a dangerous one.

Stay tuned for our upcoming data-post.

- Lorraine

Nicki didn't lie: MTV has a race problem, and we have the numbers to show it.

As you all probably remember, in late July, Nicki Minaj took to twitter about the 2015 Video Music Awards (VMA) nominations and her snub for Video of the Year.

If your video celebrates women with very slim bodies, you will be nominated for vid of the year 😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊

— NICKI MINAJ (@NICKIMINAJ) July 21, 2015

This tweet, which had the potential to start an actual conversation about the imbalance of recognition for black female artists, turned into a “twitter feud” after Taylor Swift responded to the message, thinking it was directed at her.

@NICKIMINAJ I've done nothing but love & support you. It's unlike you to pit women against each other. Maybe one of the men took your slot..

— Taylor Swift (@taylorswift13) July 21, 2015

This ignited an exchange of tweets between Nicki and Taylor, in which Nicki and her following raised very real and very valid points about racism in the music industry, the disregarding of white privilege, and the non-inclusive/toxic nature of white feminism.  Unsurprisingly, the media (and a handful of celebrities) failed to see any of these actual points.  

Although in the end Taylor did apologize for misspeaking (not really adding anything else to the conversation), the whole fiasco showed that a lot of people are either ignorant, ambivalent or dismissive to issues of racism within the music industry.

Which brings us to this project: instead of just telling you about the racial discrepancies, we decided it might be more effective to show you MTV's racial bias -- one that dates back to the very beginning of the VMAs -- through hard numbers.  To do this, we explored race-related data about VMA nominees from the first awards show in 1984 up to this year's show, which will happen on Sunday night. 

  First, a bit about the VMAs: 

The MTV Video Music Awards are an annual ceremony that honours the best in the music video medium. For many North American teens and 20-somethings, it's a cultural touchstone for what’s hot in music pop culture. Think: Madonna and Britney's kiss,  Lady Gaga's meat dress, Fiona Apple's iconic speech, and where the future Rihanna, Nicki and Beyonce will debut their first single off of their collaborative album. (...We can dream, right?)

How the VMAs are selected is a complete mystery. MTV is very secretive about their selection process and their voting committee that decides the winners of the 6 "Professional categories" (Best Direction, Best Art Direction, Best Choreography, Best Editing, Best Visual Effects).  For the "Major Categories", MTV picks the nominees and open voting decides the winners - these include: Video of the Year, Artist to Watch, Best Male Video, Best Female Video, among a slew of other genre-specific categories (Best Rock Video, Best Hip-Hop Video, etc...). 

It’s important to note that although these categories are opening voting, MTV has final say over who actually wins - no matter what. So essentially MTV picks, MTV decides, MTV awards. Everyone else is just along for the ride. 

  What kinds of artists does MTV decide to recognize at the VMAs? 

To answer this question, we looked at the nominated artists for the Major Categories, coded for the race of each nominated artist, and then compared the overall number of nominations for black artists to white artists through the last three decades.  What we found was striking: except for a brief period between 2003 and 2007-ish, where the ratio of black-white nominations is roughly equal, more nominations consistently go out to white artists than black artists.

Skeptics might be tempted to argue that perhaps the fact that there are more nominations for white artists simply reflects the quantity, or popularity of music by black artists being produced and consumed in popular culture. In other words, one possibility is that black artists aren’t being under represented at the VMAs - just that there is just less music by them out there being enjoyed.

To see if this was the case, we decided to look for an approximate index of popularity of music that was being consumed by the American masses each year. We used the Billboard Hot 100 list, because the rankings take into account many factors of a particular song: specifically - sales, airtime on the radio, and how often it’s streamed online.  This makes it a pretty good index of popularity and success of an artist in the American music industry.

To narrow the data set down to a manageable size, we looked at the #1 single for each week from 1984-2014. We then coded for the race of the artist, and then looked at the total number of weeks a black artist was at #1 for each year, and the total number of weeks a white artist was at #1 for each year.

Although white music was more popular in the late 1980's, black artists generally dominated radio stations and record sales from the early 1990's to the late 2000's. Take a look at 2004, which was apparently the year that the world really loved listening to Usher, 50 Cent, Snoop Dogg & Pharrell, and Ciara.

In any case, this graph really doesn't seem to suggest that music by black artists wasn't consumed by the American public for a large portion of the last few decades.  So while music by black artists was way more popular, way more successful, and way more highly consumed than music by white artists for most of the time period between 1992 and 2008, fewer VMA nominations were still going out to black artists during these same years.

The next thing we asked ourselves was: what happens if we pit popularity (indexed by percentage of Billboard #1 spots) directly against formal recognition by music industry giants like MTV (as indexed by percentage of VMA nominations)?  How does the pattern differ between black and white artists?

If we look at the data for black artists:

This would suggest that for the larger part of the last thirty years, black artists are almost consistently more popular in the music industry than they are recognized by MTV (the light blue line is almost always greater than the dark blue line). Even during years where almost exclusively black artists are dominating the #1 spots on the billboard charts, they less than half of the VMA nominations go to black artists.

If we do the same comparison for white artists:

This suggests that white artists are consistently more recognized by MTV than they are popular. (The light pink line is almost always underneath the starred, maroon line).

Before we draw grand conclusions, however, we do need to stress that the VMAs are not necessarily a popularity contest - for either white or black artists.  While there is overlap between radio hits and VMA recognition, a close comparison between the Billboard and VMA data sets indicated that there is often little correlation between popular success and award nominations for individual artists. Take 'The Power of Love' by Celine Dion, for example; this was #1 for 4 consecutive weeks, but received zero nominations (except in our hearts).

Nevertheless, what we can conclude is that the VMAs have a history for under-representing black artists; even during epochs where music by black artists is heavily consumed and enjoyed by the general public.

So why was Nicki demonized by multiple media outlets for shining a light on what is clearly a long-standing issue?  Even with her platform and status, she is still being held to a stricter standard than her white counterparts. Good thing she's a BOSS and handling everything like a class act.

All this being said, if and when you tune in to watch the VMAs this Sunday night, consider what factors are really at play when MTV decides which artists deserve recognition and which artists do not.

  Methodological details: 

VMA Data: We included only categories that had to do with the artist “in front of the camera” (Major Category Awards), and excluded “behind the scenes” categories like art direction and cinematography that generally belonged to the "Professional Categories". 

Coding for Race: We manually coded for the race of artist for each VMA nomination and Billboard Hot 100 song. We gauged racial category from Google and Wikipedia descriptors.  Biracial Black/White artists were categorized as black. Non-Black artists of colour and groups with a mixture of people from different racial backgrounds were categorized as Other.  Collaborations done by black and white artists together were also categorized as Other. To simplify the data visualization, we only compare Black and White artists (and not Other) within the scope of this blog-post.

Notes:

• Access our Billboard Hot 100 data set  here.

• Access our MTV VMA data set  here.

• We're new to this data journalism thing. So, please feel free to suggest additional visualizations, or point out anything we may have missed or improperly coded!

This post was co-written by TK  Matunda and Lorraine Chuen.