Dear Asian Students, Stop Being So Successful

It kills the social justice narrative!

As we were strolling around campus we came across the following pamphlet and we felt obliged to bring it to the attention of those Asian students who still think college success means hard work and getting good grades. It can change your lives!

---

Asian Students, do you subscribe to the harmful model minority myth (MMM)? The one that dares to suggest that you are, on average, high achieving, hard working and successful? Yeah, statistically it is true that South and East Asians have the highest standardized test scores and are the highest earners, but acknowledging it is WHITE SUPREMACY! How can it be white Supremacy when you’re not even white and you actually outperform whites, you ask? Well, it is white supremacy because: 1. Everything bad is white supremacy, regardless of the identity of the parties involved, and 2. it separates ethnic groups and pits them against one another which is something only we in the critical social justice movement are allowed to do.

Worse yet, buying into the MMM may convince you that, God forbid, race is not the single most important thing in the world. Worst of all - it can keep you away from activism, which is the only goal of your college training! Now that COVID-19 and the anti-Asian sentiments that came with it are largely gone, and you are no longer literally, systemically, legally screwed by affirmative action due to your over-achievement, we must find other ways to pull you into the critical social justice movement. Besides, all my work is about social justice and activism among Asian Americans and if you don’t dedicate your college years and lives to activism, my entire work is worthless! I won’t allow this.

You bad, bad kids. Instead of aligning yourselves with the Black community in the fight towards racial justice and liberation and putting your bodies on the line for collective liberation, you bank on the myth of white adjacency. How dare you think that hard work, ambition and competitiveness are the keys to success in college? Don’t you know that these are all white traits?!

Come and learn all about my research where I prove that perpetual victimhood is a much better way to succeed in life than hard work and dedication. As an undeniable proof, I interviewed all of 25 students, which is totally sufficient to prove my point, and later re-interviewed five of them. Large sample sizes and statistical significance are white supremacy too, and quantitative research is too much work.

And for heaven’s sake, stop doing so well. It kills the social justice narrative.

Best regards,

Your very own Karen.

---

Karen Suyemoto has a joint appointment with the Psychology Department and Asian American Studies Program and Critical Ethnic and Community Studies graduate program. Their research interests focus generally on Asian American psychology and issues related to social justice and anti-racist therapy/practice/education. Their research addresses fostering awareness and advocacy for social justice through: examining relations of race and racism to mental health; investigating effects of resistance and coping with racism; and exploring the complexity of relative and ascribed power and intersectional discrimination. They are also a proud member of Faculty and Staff for Justice in Palestine.

---

We have no idea what anti-racist therapy means, but our guess is that it takes slightly neurotic and depressed individuals and makes them batshit crazy.