The Good Immigrants: How the Yellow Peril became the Model Minority, Oct. 2

Madeline Hsu, Professor of History and Director of the Center for Global Migration Studies at the University of Maryland, College Park will give a historical overview of the Cold War origins of the Asian Model Minority Myth.

The U.S.'s history as a "nation of immigrants" places Asian Americans at the center of national discourses.  The U.S.'s earliest enforced immigration regulations targeted Asians by race and laid out the foundations for our current immigration laws and administration which began as efforts to enforce "yellow peril' fears. These entwined agendas of racism, reduced rights for "aliens" and institutional inequalities based on migrant status and citizenship remain core aspects of contemporary U.S. society even though Asian Americans have been re-racialized as "model minorities."