Op-Ed New wave of immigrants — a new target too?
Asian Americans are the highest-income, best-educated and fastest-growing racial group in the U.S. This means envy and resentment may follow.
By Gregory Rodriguez
June 25, 2012
It's official! A new study by the Pew Research Center proves the old trope true: Asians are the new Jews. All those essentially positive stereotypes you've heard about — the hard work and the Tiger Moms — have made Asian Americans the highest-income, best-educated and fastest-growing racial group in the United States. Not only that, in the last few years, Asians have overtaken Latinos as the largest group of new immigrants to the U.S.
This is all good news — both for Asian Americans and the United States — but the Jewish comparison has a dark side. Once the cheering over this study, titled "The Rise of Asian America," has subsided, we might remember it as the dawn of a new era of anti-Asian bias.
Americans tend to view race and ethnic relations as a linear progression. The triumphant narrative of the civil rights movement has us convinced that things get better over time: Economic status rises as prejudice decreases, and vice versa. We also like to tell ourselves that bias is always targeted downward, at the weakest and the most vulnerable in society.
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-0625-rodriguez-pew-asians--20120625,0,6955824.column