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Abstract

It has been 50 years since the term, model minority, first appeared in the United States to describe Asian Americans as an ethnic group that overcame the image of the “yellow peril” and successfully climbed the social ladder. Scholars have tried to debunk the myth and reveal racism behind the notion. However, the “over-education” view has flourished in Asian American Studies as the most popular research direction, serving the socioeconomic self-interest of professors with highly educated Asian Americans as research subjects (Sakamoto, Takei, & Woo, 2012). To refute the “over-education” view and meet the contextual need to generate a new paradigm of research, this article reviews major themes of the MMS through the lens of postcolonialism based on the discourse of Empire by Hardt and Negri (2000). In the domain of Empire, the model minority stereotype (MMS) is defined as a strategy for imperial control that integrates, differentiates, and manages. Asian American intellectuals and professionals are analyzed from the perspective of Empire with suggestions for future research directions.

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